Bash please, Getting back on the horse

Bash This Recording
#21

stumped? giving me problems?

why u think its terrible or what? give me the thought process lol, my mind reading is a bit weak lately

yes its ezd2 lol.

‘metal’ ezx. with no internal processing. The vid shows that this ezx focused on them already giving you processed sounds etc. On the original mix I posted I used their processed kick and snare plus added all my own compression layers but on this mix I basically just used the metal mixer with kick and snare from the default “modern” kit

IIRC I dont use any of their pre made “kits” either. i generally use the “original mix” which gives me all of the mixer channels to work with

snare = 5x14 Ludwig chrome over aluminum dampened (from the default “modern” kit)

kick = 16x22 yamaha 9000 - plastic beater (also from the default “modern” kit)

The metal kit may have been recorded with certain processing coming in, like they all are of course. But the actual kick and snare im using are pretty plain jane

The ‘metal’ ezx mixer has a ‘comp’ channel in the mixer which is compressed and i assume its basically functioning as a parallel type of “crush bus” which i have additional compression on but I have it really low in the mix on this mix. It was way more prominent in the first mix.

the only compression on this mix was as follows:

snare = antress modern compressor http://antress.blogspot.com/

kick = FG 401

2 bus = waves vcomp and L1 limiter. This is where I gained most of my volume by cranking the output of the vcomp. The L1 was not slammed, it was set at -1 threshold, which is barely on lol and -.1 output ceiling

master = only an L1 set very mild at -.9 thresh and -.1 ceiling

Nothing about this mix was in any way slammed, it was all very very mild/ no wacky eqs either. The only slammed thing was the ‘comp’ track within ez drummer but like I said i had it down pretty low

here are some of the sounds broken down further

drums only

drums only no 2 bus compression

I rendered this and called it ‘almost bare’ but i forget what all this was lol. I think this still has the comp track still on. not sure though

and this is with all compressors off, comp channel muted, reverb muted

#22

Wow. Very Interesting. On your last response, the drums only no 2 bus compression, is that the exact balance of the default main out of EZ?

And when you added the FG401 how much GR and at what ratio?

Gonna check something in my DAW…

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#23

Haw haw. Now we’re getting somewhere. I’ll be damned.

Ok. I went back and post #17 from last night and compared the drums in that thing to the “drums only no 2 bus compression”. That was the starting point I think we needed to be at.

What happens if you subtle tame 5K in the kick before compressing it? Bring up 900 to 1k on the hi hat and make sure the lowpass filters are engaged.

That ride has a nice texture when your compression is turned off. I would run the overheads through a separate bus if you’re not already doing so.

ust had a guy walk in the door…I’ll save the little snippet I dumped in Protools…follow up later. Good start!

#24

haha, no, nothing is ever that simple. I had the mix done that i posted and then I just turned off compressors etc for those snippets above but there would still be all kinds of EQ here and there and also of course things like Slate VCC and slate tube preamps at various points. There is some mid/side stuff where I slightly roll off lows on the sides

the 401 was set to 4:1 slow attack, pretty fast release, showing about 4db reduction

the kick was going thru a Slate ‘London’ tube preamp set on “kick fattener” that thickened up the kick quite a bit

u want BARE ez drums?? dead bare no nothing?? (not mixed either lol, just whatever volume pops out when ALL fx are off)

#25

Yaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy! Woooohoooo! Doesn’t that sound infinitely ridiculously better to you? Finally finally finally you have a starting point :slight_smile:

Break that sucker out into kit piece stems and now try adding guitars and bass. Try to preserve as much of that ‘natural’ sound as conceivably possible. Don’t let the compressor tone shape. Just see what happens if you let it subtly coat the transients and decay tails. That snare even with dead bare nothing is already pretty compressed, probably from the studio that tracked the samples. So was the kick. See if you can fit the drums back into the mix with the guitar and bass trying to use minimal compression on that kit. Now its balanced and it breathes like it should. As soon as you loose that you wrecked the track.

And pay attention to the brightness of the cymbals. Make sure they never start to sound thin. Try to control them with filtering. Not with compression. When they start to thin out or tint, that’s more often a function of overly aggressive compression or phase cancellation than anything else. As soon as you took the EQ off or backed the compressor off (whichever you did), all the bulk and balance and clarity came back into your cymbals.

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#26

OMG! I just can’t get over it. Those drums sound gorgeous. Love the detail in the snare, all the variance in the dynamics. The snap is back in the kick and the bottom isn’t choked out. You can hear the shell of the snare, but also the rattle of the strainer. You can hear the early reflections in the bleed to the other mics. The ghost notes are present but not distracting. You actually feel a little bit of a groove in that midi loop or whatever its. Wow.

#27

Fuck yeah dude! Way to go!

#28

well its very possible that I have some wacky leftover ideas about overall volume due to my struggles with gain staging etc. In other words to me I equate compression with loudness. So in my mind there is no way to use bare ez drums because they somehow wont be loud enough lol

of course I must say that in their present state I dont hear them sounding like Chevelle or BLS etc.

In any case ill experiment some with keeping things way more natural

I have heard varying opinions on EZ drums as far as how ready to go they are out of the box. I suppose that would depend on which EZX we are talking about. As you said, this particular metal one is probably already pretty heavily effected whereas some of the other might be more bare

#29

I suspect EZ drummer may have also been designed for the guy with the guitar in a bedroom who needs a super quick point-and-shoot solution for rhythm loops to jam over. In that case, the presets would need to be aggressively dialed and hyper compressed. You wouldn’t believe the hours I’ve spent peeling compression off of Addictive and BFD to get the sounds raw so I could use my own processing on them. I have the same problem with Brass and Woodwind software too sometimes.

So on one hand, your average user will dial in a preset and go ‘it sucks’. While at the same time, the stuff that sounds ‘mix ready’ to that same person will sound like a pumping sucking mess to a guy who needs to fine tune the compression and EQ.

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#30

well its similar to stuff like line6 amps where u have some goofy presets that are way over the top with reverb/delay etc…appealing to the 15 yr olds out there

#31

what do u think of these bone stock drums? this is one of my fave ezd kits. It does have some built in compression and it has a “grunge” track in the mixer which is super distorted but its down pretty low

in any case all of the kits in this “70s” ezx are huge and fat

70s “Camco Chambered” kit

#32

Just listened to your last mix, It’s waaay better than your first!

My advice would be to mute the guitars for now and just try to get a good sound with the bass and drums first.
You need a lot more low mids with that bass so it can accomodate the guitar later on, listen to that song you posted by chevelle and try to get a similar balance in your mix.

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#33

Here’s a few thoughts. It goes without saying this probably isn’t the best kit to choose for heavy modern rock. But I can see that collection working for many other things.

At 2:43, I personally would only use those presets if I needed to for the sheer sake of convenience. At 2:47, take a quick look at that exact screen…

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I would probably prefer to use different plugins for adding distortion (Slate) and mojo (more Slate) and I don’t have any doubt the Waves stuff would have better compression and reverb. However, if I was feeling very very lazy, was using this project for something that didn’t matter, and had no desire to rebuild an entire routing chain, I would gladly use whats there. Even though Waves will have a better algorithmic reverb, I wouldn’t underestimate the usefulness of those room and chamber mics. It doesn’t matter one bit that this is a cheap $90 expansion kit running into a $180 software program. All that matters is the quality of the engineering that went into capturing this stuff.

I used to think BFD was the ultimate drum sample library. Then I grew up and realized they’re all pretty usable. I probably use Addictive the most these days, and the only reason I haven’t bought Superior also is because BFD and Addictive get me by quite nicely. I’ve been using TS drum libraries lately. They’re just amazingly incredible. I run them from inside Native Instruments Battery and Maschine.

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