I understand that point…but whats the alternative?? if u start with a crappy drum sound, at what point does it magically get better?
I’m not sure you do entirely. yes your drums should sound good, however making them sound good out of context of a mix will not make them sound good, or may not even work with the song. just because you can make drums sound good by themselves doesn’t mean they are going to sound good with all the other instruments. or the opposite is trying to fit all your other instruments around the drums, you will fight yourself trying to mix this way. I find it generally pretty easy for solo’d instruments to sound good, but mixing is the combination and how they work together. With something like ez drummer its pretty easy for them to sound good, for making them sound real that’s the difficulty. When recording drums, especially with a decent drummer and kit, as long as mics are in phase it generally sounds pretty good on its own, but you don’t realize how great or bad they are until you bring in other instruments. until you go through this process you wont know and its easier to comprehend the relationships and what needs adjusted when working in the context of a mix. for instance the kick drum by itself can be crushing at 80hz and sound perfectly fine, but as soon as you bring in bass its all wrong, now you have to adjust the kick drum sound in relation to the bass or the bass to the kick, and that just changed the entire sound you had. now imagine doing that with every drum/mic you have on the kit. what you started with by itself may be completely different at the end until you understand the relationship between the other instruments and you cant do that without other contents.
What im struggling with is that im saying “start with great sounding drums” and you seem to be disagreeing lol. Conceptually I cant see how there is any argument with starting with great drums. To me the opposite seems to be to start with weak drums
Like I said, I understand the point you seem to be trying to make. Its no different than guitars. You can scoop the midrange and have this huuuuge guitar sound…and then when you bring in the drums etc the guitar disappears. yeah I get that.
We can type all day but I dont see how I could ever get the point of not trying to make the drums sound as good as possible. like I said, we have plenty of pro examples where everything drops out and there are the drums alone, sounding big etc
And yes, it depends on the song too. Im amazed at how some songs just have a little tiny bit of snare and tiny bit of hi hat maybe and thats it…but they sound ok.
also the genre. Im talking hard rock/grunge/light metal. Huge drums are almost a given
great example, more Ted Templeman
In any case its all moot until i do about a dozen more mixes and see what I sound like
Personally I think it is really crucial to have your intended rhythmic structure in place from the start, as much as possible-- the foundation @Jon-Jon refers to. But how those drums actually sound at the outset is far less important IMO, provided of course you have a good quality recording of good quality playing on decent drums (or MIDI). You will have full control over how they sound as part of your mixing process and there is simply no requirement to commit to a particular sound until later in the process when you have a handle on all the interactions with the other instruments. But having the drums set early in terms of how they are played is fundamental.
So yes JJ, I do disagree that you must have great sounding drums at the start. You can always adjust that later. But if the drum performance is wrong for the song, you will be starting over at some point. I hope I’m making that distinction clear.
I think what we’re saying is that you’re worrying way too much about how you are tying your shoes before you start walking… just put them on and go dude! You’ll get the sound right eventually as your mixes progress. Good luck, we’ll be here for ya when you post your mixes!
thanks, im working on one now…remixing “Morning Light” starting from the bare stems
its not even super pertinent to the drum conversation because i only had a live drummers stereo track to work with…so there is only SO much tweaking I can do. Good practice anyway
i laid down bass on it too, only because another member asked me too so he could also remix it lol
What im struggling with is that im saying “start with great sounding drums” and you seem to be disagreeing lol.
I’m trying to say that how do you know what great sounding drums are until you have context?
Well lets look at why your drums sound weak? do they sound weak solo’d? probably not. But when you add other elements they start to. Hence the relationship between instruments. I noticed on a few of your tracks I listened to that the guitars are very forward and sound a bit compressed in the low mid, combine that with the bass and that starts pulling away from your drums body. if you have a strong vocal and the snare may suffer because of the dominant frequencies. All this starts to add up, is what I keep trying to say. if you had bad drum sounds from the start that’s a whole different story and you need to focus on tracking them, but you were saying that you had used EZ drummer, so there are no weak sounds there that is 100% how they fit the song and how you mix them with the other instruments. So this really becomes on how you mix the song. Its also why I keep saying put up a mix you are ready to work on so we can help you break down the elements and work on your drums.
Do you use a subwoofer for monitoring?
Do you have room acoustic treatment and a good controlled listening environment?
How are you using reference tracks to get your sounds?
Imma let it go because its just butting heads and its getting into word salad now. Arguing philosophies and terminology and ways of saying things
I cant keep answering “how do you know what great sounding drums are until you have context?”. Have answered that to the best of my ability probably 5 times now. I cant say anything different lol
How do I know what a beautiful woman is until im on a date with her? A beautiful women is a beautiful women is a beaut…
great drums are great drums are great drums…
in any case,let me finish this mix m working on. thats more productive than trying to get me to agree with someone elses way of saying something
Again this is context too. if you have only seen one woman you don’t know if shes beautiful or ugly until she is in a group of other women. That one woman alone may look awesome when there is nothing to compare her to and the flip side is not everyone looks at all women the same way, what might be beauty to one is not another and the same applies with mixing. this is really what we are talking about. we are not saying don’t have great sounding drums, but not all great sounding drums are going to work with the other material. just randomly mixing drums may help you within the drum kit context but when mixing them to other instruments in an entirely different thing and what we are trying to reiterate. John Bonham drums are not going to work for Slayer no matter how great they sound.
Arguing philosophies and terminology and ways of saying things
That is 90% what forums are for. Hopefully to have friendly debates on philosophies to invoke and generate more ideas and comprehension and similar terminologies. I think a large part of mixing is philosophical. some people approach it from an artistic way and some from technical. Discussing and understanding perspectives and ideology, whether I agree with them or not, was a huge part of my learning process and continues to be.
Im almost 50, how many women have I seen?? How many drums have I heard?
for the most part what I do falls into a basic hard rock/hair band/70s-90s rock thing. So we can pretty much guess that a drum sound close to VanHalen or John Bonham or Tommy Lee or Denny Carmassi or Jimmy D’Anda will get me nicely in the ballpark.
Drum kit advice, EQ, Compression settings, reverb setting…that will get me there. Im not sure that abstract rhetorical jousting will do too much lol
