I immediately felt something is missing from the snare in the solo’d version. I’m not sure exactly what it needs but as Boz said, it seems to be missing some mids…It sounds “soft” or “thin”, but it’s smooth sounding. Also, make sure to remember to alter the velocity in the midi so that your drums sound more realistic.
In the mix with your guitar, the drums seem way too buried to get a clear idea until the guitars come down in volume. In the context of this mix I don’t like the snare all that much and I didn’t like it solo’d either. The kick is fine. The toms are way too buried, so I can’t give an opinion on them. Giving the whole set some dynamics (realism) would help a lot in the context of the guitar mix version (velocity alterations).
Just listened to the solo version again. The toms aren’t bad. Of course you’ll have to EQ them and adjust their volume when you get your levels for your instruments set at mixdown.
For me, the snare and kick are the most important drums. You can probably improve the snare with some EQ.
the whole snare eq is more or less going by a ‘CLA’ type setup. He likes a ton of 8k on snare and kick. I am trying it on this one since I am also trying to learn the SSL channel strip
Its words like “way” that destroy my confidence. WAY too buried lol. wow. Like not even on the planet. WAY buried lol. That being said, yeah the toms r pretty low. Its not really mixed, just threw it out there to give some idea of the guitar ideas
ill have to listen again in a few days. I need to get this freaking BMTh doomed mix finished
Terry, that’s not the point of the template in my opinion. I have a BFD template for snare sample augmentation. It starts with 4-5 different types of snares that are a super basic starting point for any supplemental trigger replacement I can see myself using. It has all of the effects stripped off and only the raw mic groups pre-routed to a series of busses that I can find easily in the DAW.
In short, the template is a premade layout that gets me to the same point faster. Not to a finished point immediately.
My template for adding piano and B3 and Rhodes to a session track in ProTools looks like this:
Addictive Keys (Wide Ribbon Setting)
Ivory (Yamaha C7 studio grand)
Native Instruments (Lower manual only with first 4 drawbars pulled and Leslie rotars timed to a 1.6 second rise)
Master Fader
Click Track
Monitor channel aux.
Preroll set to one bar. Quantize off. Default to 48K. etc…see…none of that says anything about the way the finished product is gonna sound, its just a starting point.
Jon, be careful with those tutorials. Those are CLA ones are not meant to be roadmaps to a successful mix. Many of his mixes sound nothing like those audio legends ones. And a lot of that stuff only applies to the mix right infant of him. So remember how on the first video, he added 12 db at 120hz to a hi-hat? Or was it a bottom snare mic? Don’t start doing that on all your mixes. Please. He got away with that one track, but I assure you that’s not a regular thing.
I’m not saying those tutorials are bad. But if you listen to some of those ‘before and after’ examples, the some of the guys who posted those had obnoxiously harsh and unlistenable mixes. I mean…its as simple as this. Don’t feel obligated to boost 8k on a kick. Like…at least try boosting 3, 5, or 1.5 and don’t assume 8 is a magic frequency because CLA did it on one song.
I’ll go through some of what I learned from those on a different thread.
I’m struggling to find the point of contention here @Jonathan to be quite honest, I pretty much agree with everything you’ve said.
The importance of templates, in all their various forms was never the argument I was trying to make.
I’m simply saying, to ask how a set of midi drums is sounding outside the context of (forthcoming) music, is of no real benefit in the grand scheme.
What’s the point of commenting on how drums sound, when the instant music goes over top they’re inevitably going to get changed anyway?
All this is based on the assumption that the drums in the OP are only a starting point and not the finished drum sound.
If those drum tracks are finished, done and dusted, nothing left to do and just waiting for music forget everything I’ve said, my bad.
You’re not alone Jon. I picked up EZdrummer (the basic version) about 6 years ago but I’ve only just started using it recently. At first I thought the drum samples sounded good…Now, I think they sound kind of hollow. I’ve been trying to tweak them with EQ and compression and I think I’ve made a bit of improvement but I’m still working on it. I find that for the kind of music I’m recording (hard rock, Metal), the basic version of EZDrummer isn’t ideal. The drums just don’t sit well in the mix, right out of the box.
again, you are assuming that EZDrummer is foolproof and that no one could possibly post bad sounding ED drums. Not true. its like assuming that no one could screw up a mix if they were handed pro recorded stems.
So far I havent proven that I CAN post decent EZD drum tracks. So if these arent obnoxiously bad then I have taken a small step forward. Even at that the snare has drawn some ctiticism
Eventually id like to draw comments such as “sick drums dude!” and “cool, what are your settings?”. As u see im not quite there yet so I must persist.
if I am able to consistently get my initial drums to 95% of where theyd be for a song then i totally agree with your point. It would be silly to post them. But so far I havent been able to post up half decent solo drum tracks. I know you find that amazing lol
It would have been better if id posted up 3 shorter versions of these. The current one, a really dry one, and then one with a lot of the room mics on it. That way it would have actually tested out the “template” aspect a bit more
In any case, if I feel i need the feedback then whats the big deal?
everyone says “omg, its stupid to not post up full songs”. Ok, I bet I only did 3-4 full songs all of last year lol. Im talking with vocals/harmonies/bass/lead guitar. So only 3-4 times to receive feedback?? thats not much
Well what id LIKE to do is really learn a certain song template. Say, a certain EZD kit, certain gtr sounds, certain vocal fx sound etc. Goal being to use that overall vibe for an EP Just like for instance VH1 had a certain sound whereas VH Fair Warning had a totally different sound.
But yeah, the song thing. Im so busy trying to learn mixing that I dont spend tons of time actually writing stuff. So when these “5 for 5” challenges come along I need to do them to FORCE myself to at least puke out some sort of song output lol
I just bought Steven Slate “Trigger” (platinum with the larger sample library included). So I have that option to use eventually. Right now though I dont feel ive even come close to learning how to get great sounds from EZDrummer by itself
But I totally agree and I think most would…EZD is great and convenient but it doesnt sound like a pro sound right out of the box
Then again i dont think my apartment neighbors are feeling me getting a real kit in my 2nd bedroom lol