Systematic Mixing Series #2: In Soviet Russia, Drums Slam You

[Ermz]

Alright, what I might do to satisfy most comers is split the time alignment stuff into its own space, introduce the phase correction tools as an option, but at heart suggest simple channel phase inversion as the best option for most situations, provided the drums have been tracked well.

This is consistent with what I've seen in the past, where people ultimately tend to have some differing ideas on how to tackle drum tracking & phase, especially in regards to overheads. I'll try to cover most bases, and introduce them as such. Just as an added note, the transient alignment I proposed originally has worked well for me, quite recently in fact, and not a single person has ever come up and said 'hey, the phase on those drums is screwy!'. So be fair, and be open to all approaches

 

[Jordon]

Glad it's working out for most of you guys!



Yes of course you can save it. Since it's freely available on the internet I'm sure many people will, without asking.

I'm considering, at the end of this, depending on how large and expansive the guide gets, to perhaps compile an eBook. A more refined, well-formatted version of these guides with additional content. And perhaps charge $2 or $5 a pop, to cover the time I'll inevitably spend putting it together?

Does that sound reasonable?

The free versions I imagine will always be available to those here on the board.

I'd buy it in a heartbeat, sir. Gotta say THANK YOU! These two (so far) guides helped me tonight in a mix. Really helped bring them to life.

It's also nice to see that I'm doing some things the "right" way, i.e. editing, EQ and so forth.

 

[Mago]

Great read Ermin!
But it's the same as with Olas tutorials, I just wished that I discovered guides like that allready 2 years ago when I was desperatly searching for it, leading me to register to this forum in the end
Not that I can't take anything from them still, I'm just more feeling like "great to hear I'm not totally off" instead of "holy fuck, my life is 300% better now cause I now know what I'm actually trying to do!11!"
Thanks for the hard work!

 

[Balee]

Thanks man these tutorials really help me a lot! Insanely good info!

 

[Max Morton]

These series made me sooo happy. You know, it's reading and realising that you are a part of some COLLECTIVE MIND that can help you if you're really enlightened
But speaking serious, thank you so much for this reading, Ermz! I'm so eager to buy the e-book. You've got a talent to teach.
It was the new feeling for me - reading something that is soooo close to my approach. Even the epithets used in the text are very similar to what I feel like calling it in my head, like "poking holes" in the guitars, etc etc. And the solution of the cymbal bleed in the tom mics is great. Simple and elegant. Gonna do it all the time now

Once again - THANK YOU!

 

[Morgan C]

A common set of tracks to start with here is the toms. Since the toms are generally a fill element, and generally only come in once every few bars, the ambient spill on them can be discarded. The idea is to chop the audio at the start of each transient, leave the entirety of the hit, all the resonance that you want, and chop again after that sustain has ended. You can create your own release envelopes here by using fade-outs of your desired length.

Regarding this, I think Mixerman said he likes to bus all the tom BLEED together, and compress it hard, just for some ambience. Totally opposite direction to what's being done here.. whatever works, I guess.

 

[Zozobra]

On the phase alignment of drums, could you not compromise?

I mean, ok, theres natural delay between the room and the OHs, and its part of the sound. Cool. True. But there can be destructive interference between the close and OH mics. Also true. So (now bear in mind I havent tried this, it just occured to me now: normally I leave them) could you do it like this:

So you start with it out of phase, and you can go for two; perfect alignment, or you can go for 3; displaced alignment where the transients still hit in a staggered fasion, but the wave forms are phase correct.

Might be the best of both worlds; still has natural delay and room sound from minimal movement of the hit, but will sound fuller than it started because its phase correct, even though its displaced. Or thats my theory, and I'm sticking to it (till someone tells me why it wont work/do anything usefull)

Edit: and thanks for the guide, Ermz, this has been very usefull to me

 

[botus99]

^ I think this guys right ^

I like to "perfectly align" drum tracks before editing, then after editing, slide the overheads and room mics as I feel needed. I like the differences you showed between columns 1 & 3, I don't think I've ever aligned tracks like you did in #3 (at least not on purpose), I always followed my ears, but that's a new guideline I can certainly use!

Amazing post Ermin, regardless of what people think of your mixes (general consensus being: holy F**!@), you simply know HOW to get your sound and WHY your doing it. Such a post from someone with this type of understanding is extraordinary

 

[Ermz]

Cheers guys. Glad it's being helpful. I've started on the bass one now. Will take it slowly though because there are deadlines bearing down this week! I'm quite keen to get this all drafted up and compiled into an ebook eventually. Already thinking about what bonus content to add into the packaged product.

Regarding this, I think Mixerman said he likes to bus all the tom BLEED together, and compress it hard, just for some ambience. Totally opposite direction to what's being done here.. whatever works, I guess.

Yeah I think Plec tries to leave tom ambiance as well. Some people use it to get their snare sound too. All depends on the individual - hence why these aren't hard and fast rules. I don't like incidental ambiance though. I like room mics, positioned specifically to get a certain type of room sound, rather than bleed between tracks. Bleed just equals messy, in my mind anyway. Subject to change, as always!

Will try to be more accommodating to multiple approaches with the actual book though, when I have more time to sit, read and think through what I'm writing.

 

[pikachu69]

Will try to be more accommodating to multiple approaches with the actual book though, when I have more time to sit, read and think through what I'm writing.

I don't see why you should have to be. You started to write this amazing free guide for us all, a glimpse into your methods and work ethic and the first thing you get told is you are wrong and instead tell us what everyone else does...
People should be more grateful and realize this is what it is. Ermz guide to Ermz sound. Thats it.
Continue to write your method M8 as that was your original intention. I thought it was fairly obvious that this was not supposed to be a difinitive guide to recording, there is no such thing.
Its fine to have a different aproach in doing things and its great that we are disscusing those ideas too but it should not be because someone has been told you 'you are wrong and this is how you actually do it'.

Thank you very much for the time it has taken you to write this for us all, I really do appreciate it.

 

[Hiroshima Studio]

Thanks a lot for this very useful and clever guide. It gave me the idea about writting something I could entitle : "how to record pro sounding songs with awful conditions".
Anyway, I'm always pleased to read papers and advices put online on this forum, because it's always a mixture of good sense, technical skills and personnal points of view.

Maybe I would like to talk my own experience : I think this forum is also useful if we discuss about our particular way of working.
In fact, recording a drum can be very tricky, but I think it would be a mistake (funny for a studio tech !) to describe it as a kind of mystical task.
For instance, I recorded the Deathcode Society's drumset in a truly rotten room, on the first floor of a little house lost in the French Alps.
First, the floor was quaking to the point I wondered if we were secure in that "hut". I even don't talk about the incidence of those vibrations on the room tone... I think you can guess it.
As I had not any coin to rent a room designed for the drums, I just kept on recording, trying to concentrate on the quality of the drummer's performance.
The drumkit itself was a hell. Imagine an empty barrels of washing liquid collection. I worked three hours just to make the tom impacts sound. I immediatly understood that I would have to use samples for the tom resonances, but as I like using the true drummer's strikes, I wanted to keep the natural impacts. So I did stick paper hankies on the drum heads, in order to prevent them to sing too loud and too long.
Those difficulties force you to be creative, maybe more than when you are used to work in a superb venue.
Finaly, the room tone was not that ugly, surprisingly. I really had to work hard (hours and hours) on the mix to reach the result I wanted. Sure it is not the best produced metal tone you can hear, but it sounds well in my demanding ears. With a lot of work, you still can reach a good result I think. So don't trust too much the quality of your gears,of your studio equipment, of your mikes : trust your ears. A good photographer is cautious with the light, a good sound tech is cautious to the tones.
I have to go to work, so, I finsih here.
Thanks again for the advices and the tutorials.

 

[Uros]

1) I don't see why you should have to be. You started to write this amazing free guide for us all, a glimpse into your methods and work ethic and the first thing you get told is you are wrong and instead tell us what everyone else does...
People should be more grateful and realize this is what it is. Ermz guide to Ermz sound. Thats it.
Continue to write your method M8 as that was your original intention. I thought it was fairly obvious that this was not supposed to be a difinitive guide to recording, there is no such thing.
Its fine to have a different aproach in doing things and its great that we are disscusing those ideas too but it should not be because someone has been told you 'you are wrong and this is how you actually do it'.

2) Thank you very much for the time it has taken you to write this for us all, I really do appreciate it.

+1 and +1

 

[Hiroshima Studio]

Agree with the last two posts.

As a passionnate man, I NEED to know how other people work, especialy about SOUND and TONE. Recording, mixing and mastering is not only a question of technical skills. It's like cooking I think: at a certain level, when you are demanding, it becomes an art. In matter of art, you always are an apprentice. Even the masters say it.

 

[fitzrangerhoodngarb]

Cool. Do we have a consensus on where the phase section is incorrect?

I knew the aligning close mic transients to OH business wouldn't be up everyone's alley, but is that the extent of it, or is there more?

You either need to provide further contextualizing (for the loose terminology usage) or factual specificity.

Obviously this is not a physics lecture but, even still, it's worth using correct language at the very minimum, or it reduces the whole thing to a vanity piece, and it's better than that.

This: 'There are two major ways to go about correcting phase after a recording' is the major issue, though the rest of the section is a bit muddled as well. Change it to 'manipulating phase' or 'minimising phase difference in the pass-band' or something, rather than 'correcting phase'.

To correct the phase relationship of two complex waveforms you need to address time domain AND frequency domain components. A multi-pole filter network, ala an all-pass filter is needed, and even then it isn't perfect. I'm pretty sure you know this right?

And correct use of the term polarity never hurts. (Ok, that's nit-picking, the other stuff isn't).

etc, blah, etc. Again, good work though.

 

[Uros]

Regarding phase aligning, this is a 'trick' (not really) that I've learned from a certain engineer:

When you are setting up mics for a recording session, pull out one of those plugin phase meters in your DAW, put it on the drum buss, like for ex. that Flex stereo tool, which is free.

Then, pan snare track left, and left OH mic right, that is important. Mute all other mics. Tell drummer to hit his snare drum constantly. Then, see Flex or whatever you use as your phase meter, what does it say? Make sure that it doesn't go to the left. If it does, nudge mics around. The more it goes toward right side, the better. Then repeat the process for snare vs. left OH, snare vs. Room, snare vs. Hihat, OHR vs. OHL, OH sum vs. Room, toms vs. OH mics, etc.

As for time aligning, try this out:

Measure distance between all elements of your kit that are mic'd in relation to the snare, measure in centimeters, then use time delay in DAW to make up for it in ms. For ex. if your right OH mic is 1,5m from the snare, add 150 ms of delay on your right OH track, etc.

Needles to say, don't just go by the numbers, use your ears. In the end, no matter what your metering says, it will sound good or bad, its up to you to decide where to go.

But those 2 methods indeed work really well.

Cheers

 

[donimoines]

thorough, and in depth, thanks so much man!

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Measure distance between all elements of your kit that are mic'd in relation to the snare, measure in centimeters, then use time delay in DAW to make up for it in ms. For ex. if your right OH mic is 1,5m from the snare, add 150 ms of delay on your right OH track, etc.

Are you sure you mean "add 150 ms of delay"?

 

[Uros]

Oh, sorryy...it's the other way around. Nudge them forward 150ms

 

[schust]

Once again, very nice. Thanks ERMZ! i'll definitely be referencing this and the other doc on my next mixing session.

 

[B36arin]

No, you would have to nudge the track 4.4ms, seeing as that's the time it takes sound to travel 1.5m