How to Mix Heavy Drums - Part 1 - Kick Drum | SpectreSoundStudios TUTORIAL
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- Опубліковано 10 гру 2024
- You guys asked for it, here we go! The first installment of "How to mix Heavy Drums"
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I'm Glenn Fricker, engineer here at Spectre Sound Studios. I love making records, and after doing it for sixteen years, I want to pass on what I've learned. On my channel you can find tutorials on how to record guitar, bass, real drums and vocals. There's reviews and demos of tube amps, amp sims, drums, mics, preamps, outboard gear, and plugin effects.
We've covered Moon on the Water, played Bias FX, given you the absolute best in Stupid Musician Texts, ranted & raved about bass guitar, and this channel is where The Eagle has Landed.
Everything you've wanted to learn about recording Hard Rock & Heavy Metal can be found right here on this channel!
I also respond to your comments & questions: The best make it into the SMG Viewer's Comments series of videos. Loads of fun, lots of laughs.
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Great, can't wait to see how you mix the St Anger snare.
easy, just take off the snare-wire on a piccolo type snare!
DUDE !!!! Every time I hear your intro music I just scream in happiness and go ripping down the street in my Hot Rod !!! Frikkin LOVE that sound
That sine wave trick was extremely cool, gonna remember that one!
You should cup the mic while recording drums
it works wonders honestly, it's my preferred technique.
But what if you can't bring 13 of your friends to your recording joint?
Doesn't matter how many friends you can bring, just cup and record each part of the kit individually 'cause you're gonna edit and quantize the shit out of them anyway.
***** Exactly what i had in mind
Except your not getting the entire sound of the kick by doing this... by putting a "focusing" device on the mic, you're getting a limited, narrow focus of the sound source, instead of picking up the pleasing resonance of the entire drum. Drums are as much about how they sound in the space they are in, it's not always about the isolation of getting the frequencies of a close-mic. I imagine you could get a nice "click" from the beater with this method, but you'd be missing energy in certain resonant frequencies as well by baffling the mic. I wouldn't ever do what you are suggesting, at least not without adding a secondary mic to grab the resonance of the whole instrument.
Excellent video. This is the kind of stuff that got me to subscribe. Perfect blend of practical experience with old school and new school techniques. All delivered to the audience in a package that promotes experimentation rather than limitation. There's sooooo many ways to attack a mix creatively, I appreciate proper attempts to focus on the infinite variations of 5 to 10 parameters instead of 50. Keep it coming!
+rlibby404 will do!
That bass drum sounds so nice... my ears feel so pleasant. It's got that thwack and punch, but also enough low end and a massive sound. That's just using mics with no eq.
Well done Glenn, this is trve art of recording drums.
Immediately used several tips from this video, especially using the tone and a sidechained gate to fill out the tone w/o a subkick. Thanks, Glenn!
Wow! Love the frequency generator tip! I'll have to try that out!
That sine wave trick is amazing, thanks for showing this. I also tried to use convolution reverb with a one sinewave cycle as an impulse, sort of worked similarly but it was hard to control this thing.
I've never thought about putting the master chain when mixing so I don't fuck up my drum sound when actually mastering. Will always do now, * TJ voice * Thank you Glenn !
Gonna try and incorporate as much of this into EZD2 as possible. Thanks for this! So in depth
The side chain technique is just awesome. But that kick sounds great by it self
FUCK YES!!! YES!! THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!!! Can't wait for an episode about room microphone mixing.
I watched this as well as a bunch of the other mixing videos and combined with a friend explaining the basics of bus mixing drums my sound has improved in leaps so thank you very much from rhode island
Thank you for the video Glen! Ive been taking the Hardcore Mix Vault Lessons so this was nice to take notes to for comparison on how two different engineers go about mixing kicks. Always enjoy learning some new things
I've also been doing mix vault! It's super cool, because I've had so many different teachers but my passion has always been Silverstein type pop punk / hardcore. So getting to actually learn more about mixing that genre by dissecting the mixes I've always referenced is amazing :D
I've been waiting for this series for over a year... I got back into recording as a drummer because you inspired me to. So any new tips and tricks for drums is MUCH APPRECIATED!!!
That tone generator/gate trick is awesome!
Thank you Glenn. Tutorials like this were the reason to subscribe at the first place. Especially the tone generator tip was extremely useful.
Came at the perfect time. Just got my 8 channel interface in and our drummer and I are chomping at the bit to give his drums a go.
I'm about to try this for the first time myself. I'm so excited! These videos are going to make my life so much easier. Thank you Glenn!
Great great trick with the tone generator on the kick! I will surely use it in my next mix
The tone generator is a great idea! Pilfering that for my mixes. Thanks!
Love the sine wave trick. Thanks Glenn!
I've been using that sine wave trick on the kick for a few years now. It really adds a lot.
Oh wow, a sine wave on a kick. I learn something new everyday. Definitely gonna try that out
Thank you so much for sharing the signal generator trick for fattening up the kick. Great solution for guys like me who don't have enough channels for two kick mics! I've always had trouble getting the full sound of my kick with one mic, and getting the right blend of depth and click, no matter the placement of the mic or EQing. Problem solved!
GREAT trick with the tone generator man! always nice to see a pro share some cool tips :)
Mixing into the mastering plugins is definitely the way to go with digital generally. I tend to do that most of the time, and just check back with the unmastered mix now and then to have something for the ears to contrast with (like looking under the hood, so to speak).
"Mastering" is really a different thing than what it used to be back in the day (I'm 57 and cut my teeth on the old skool ways of doing things). Back in the day, "mastering" meant specific tools used to prepare a mix for cutting to vinyl - i.e. the mix might have some compression and eq, but that would be about all, most of the "warmth" people talk about with vinyl is really the extra stages of compression, limiting, filtering and eq that were done at the mastering stage to ensure that the mechanical process of a needle reading a plastic groove would come off well, so the sound would be "contained" in those mechanical constraints, but sound as full and big as it could be within that context.
Nowadays, though, "mastering" is just part of the sound, part of the actual mix itself, so you might as well mix into it.
Brilliant use of the sine wave generator in the side chain to beef up the low end! I'll be stealing that.... I mean borrowing that....
He, Glen great video. Nice way to show some studio tricks although it would be nice to hear the final kick drum sound in the mix that was playing earlier.
Really glad you said you put the mastering plugin first... I've been doing this for few years (and getting good results) when someone told me that's not how you're supposed to use it... I didn't understand why though...
This was absolutely the most informative and well explained video I have ever seen about drums! Now if only I could get my drummer to count to more than 3...
Hey glen i recently started recording real drums and i had problems with my playing balancing processing the real kit so i started looking for videos to mix metal drums and EVERY SINGLE ONE ITS WITH SAMPLES OR REPLACEMENT !!!!!!!!! So thanks again for this one
I just bought a kit for my studio and just got the falam slam purely on looks and cuz remo. I am getting a great click and I'm really happy that you use it. I accidentally made a good choice lol
Fuck yeah, so hyped for this series!
Awesome video! Just got subscribed!!! Personally, one of my problems, when I strarted mixing, was not knowing what sound I was looking for. I started insterting Eqs, Comps and all of the bells and wistles other Pro mixers used, not even knowing what a kick should sound like in a specific song. I find this kind of videos great cause you just explained how to get an especific type of kick sound useful in "x" scenario.
Keep the great material comming! Regards all the way from Mexico!
That tone generator trick is fucking genius! Been studying recording for a good part of 3 years now, just moved up from college to university (from England btw, i'm not sure of the equivalent across the sea :P) and I have never even thought of this! Will have to try it now, cheers Glen!
Excellent advice, especially regarding the Tone Generator in Reaper, great idea to complement the kick :)
Hey Glenn, thank you so fucking much for your channel. I Know fuck all about engineering but you have opened my eyes to just how much time, work and effort goes into recording. It would be my honor to work with you one day. Keep up the awesome work man, much metal love from down under, Adelaide. Keep it Heavy!!!
Oh and by the way, I think i need to order 50000 "Stop cupping the mic DUMBASS" shirts and hand them out to all the local bands. My bro and I now have a game of guessing how many bands have cuppers in a gig due to the number of Fuckwits doing this bullshit.
Great video, the tone generator thing is a cool idea :)
Very cool. Need this. I have the slate mastering plug too.
Hello Glenn、amazing tutorial！That tone generator trick is something I've been using before watching the video and wanted to add some things I personally do in addition to that trick。
After gating tone generator with kick and all、using a transient shaper to decrease/increase the sustain/attack of the sub bass can help you shape and blend the sound with the kick and overall mix better。Sonic Anomaly has are really good transient shaper called "Transpire" for free if you guys needed help finding one。Another cool trick is creating a folder track on top of both the normal and sub kick tracks and using a light to medium compressor to "glue" their dynamics and tone together for more naturalistic sound。Applying layers of compression on different levels of the drum can really bring out a lot of hidden characteristics。
The oscillator & gate is one of the best tricks to fatten up a kick drum, especially live if you have only 1 mic, no time and a nice digital console (even a low-mid end X32).
Great advice with the tone creator, gotta try that soon, thanks!
Thanks for the grea video (as always)! There's even a better option in Reaper made for that purpose. It's called 50Hz Kicker. No need to use a tone generator and a gate)
Thanks for getting this series started. This is the one I've been waiting for ever since your "How To Record Heavy Drums" series ended.
Somewhat related, you should check out Drum Forge's new drum EQ, DF-Q. It just works!
Great video. There is also a 50htz boost plugin in reaper that works a treat on bass drums.
Man that was awesome!!! i really liked the sound of those kicks and nice choice of plugins too... Ill try to check them out.
I've never tried the tone generator idea, I usually will blend in a sample underneath the natural kick to add what it's missing (click or low end). I'll definitely have to give that tip a whirl in Reaper!
This one really blew my mind. Thanks!
Great vid as usual Glen. Joey Sturgis makes a plugin exclusively designed to add the Sine wave to a mix. It's midi controlled. "Sub Destroyer" might be worth while checking out.
Damn, it takes so much work for mixing drums! I'm glad I picked up the guitar! XD
Still, really cool to see it takes that much work, gonna have to watch it a few times to really understand all the details.
Hi Glenn. Just want to say i really like these kind of videos, even tho i cant effort the mics and such and programm everything :p. It really helps my general knowledge tho! Have a good one!
Hi Glenn, thanks for sharing. The trick for Tone Generator is very useful. Best Regard from Argentina, Lian Gerbino.
Fantastic. I'm so happy this is finally comin out! As a drummer and studio rat I really dig this. Its great to learn more ways to skin a cat.
This is great and thanks for sharing your settings, this should help out a lot
Bout time! Better late than never though, thanks Glenn! Looking forward to the rest of the series!
man that sine wave trick was sweet, gotta start using that especially
This is the series I have been waiting on!
Thanks a ton for this, Glenn. I'm stuck using Superior Drummer for the moment for my recorded work (no space for my e-kit or money for a drummer, as nice as that would be), but am saving these to use for other projects. Plus, this might even help my stuff out as is. Thanks again
I am not a drummer so don't hate on me, I speak about what I saw and heard.
A guy, ex-drummer from a very well known band in my country (Alogia), loves that clicky bass drum sound. He had a pretty cheap drum set for practicing at home, alone. And I asked him how did he get such a "Black Album, Pantera (far beyond driven)-ish" sound. And all he did was tune down the bass drum (only one skin, used no outer skin), just above the point of wrinkling, plus he used plastic on his Cobra kicks. And man, it was freaking AMAZING how good it sounded in a sound room, alone! Lifts up the whole atmosphere when rehearsing!
I don't know what size was the KD, but it was a Sonor, with double layer skin (oil in between), Remo's. And ofc he always used that black patch thing where the kicks land :P
So much from a bass player ROFL
Staminist the drum being a Sonor is probably what's contributing the most to the sound you like.
Yes, you are most prob right!
I am just in a process of recording some songs for a good friend and since I have no studio, we use EZ2 and while it will never sound as food as a live drummer, I do treat all the drum parts channel by channel, just as a real drumset and I am learning a LOT!
One day I would love to record a live drummer.
I have a small home studio, but I'm not set up to record live drums either. I use a Presonus Studio 68, and it only has 4 inputs. I'm using Steven Slate 4 and doing the same with multichannel routing. I think programmed drums can sound very good when mixed and edited right, but you'll never get the feeling of capturing a live performance. There are some things you just can't emulate with programmed drums. When I'm completely done programming my drums, I'll adjust the velocity on most of the hits, especially during fills, and it helps give it a more human sound. In Reaper there's an option to humanize midi, but I haven't tried it out yet.
I did try humaniser with the combination of setting up the hits with quantizer (in Reaper) to have some small "mistakes" and it kinda gives that human factor. Music recording and production is as interesting maybe as playing music :)
At the end of the day a food drummer is always the best.
Thank you so frickin much this going to be the best series of this channel (also other mixing tutorials are awesome do it just do it)
The Sine Wave Gate trick is great, but gotta be careful with huge passages of double bass. Also keep it in tune with the song. That goes for other drums as well! Sounds awesome!
Have you ever tried bandfiltered noise rather than the frequency generator? You get a similar result, but it's less static as it's not restricted to a single frequency and I prefer it to using the frequency generator. So to get a similar frequency range to your frequency generator, it'd be (all reaper JS Plugins) White noise(init settings), Bandpass (52Hz, width 0.03, wet mix 12dB, dry mix -120dB), Bandpass (52Hz, width 0.1, wet mix 12dB, dry mix -120dB), Volume adjustment (+14dB) going into the gate.
Awesome glenn! I use all the slate stuff too, great stuff, and killa vid!
oh damn, that kick sound is beautiful
Waiting for this for some time, cheers Glen!
Thanks a lot for the series!
awesome video Glenn!
Great video Glenn! Thanks!!!
Good tutorial! For people who don't use Reaper and want the plugin for sub notes, I think Metric Halo Thump would the job, and it's free (vst AND aax!).
Another approach people could try that i've been doing lately and is pretty similar to the sine wave trick but with less steps is download the free Metric Halo Thump plugin and setting it to say 50hz and blending it in. Does the same thing really. Worth a try!!!
Great stuff Glenn!
What if I'm in love with the Reign in Blood bass drum sound?
Same here. I play double bass in that realm ranging up to playing like George Kolias of Nile. I basically play thrash and death metal with machine gun double bass and feel I have to use two kicks with two single pedals. I get more control and better even flow that way than with the trailing side of a double pedal. Also two beaters hitting one drum that constantly causes an uneven strength of hits with the head pushed in and not recovered from the last hit. It is also a pain and a never ending battle to tune two kicks identical so I end up using triggers both live and studio and end up using a kick sample in the end for what I do.
Then copy it and be boring. That's easy since it's what most people do these days. Using the same sounds, being boring. See, we already have Reign in Blood, we don't need another one. Even if it kinda pisses of your ego now, but go and find a unique sound. You may not be as happy but others will be because they'll be more interested in your music. Hence why finding his own sound is absolutely necessary.
@@giuliano8031 By this logic, no one should even use kick drums anymore since they've already been used. Aping someone's kick sound is not quite the same as recreating their music. Originality is great but it's possible to be totally obsessive about having "original" tones and then still make some bland unoriginal music. You could literally sample that slayer kick in your music and if it's some unique shit then no one would even give a fuck whose kick sound it was. It's just a fucking kick tone, and slayer's kick was probably inspired by someone else too; use whatever works best for the music and focus on your CONTENT being original.
You r doing excellent job sir... Cheers👌
Thanxs glenn great tips!
I wonder if you can make a side note, on GAIN and GAIN STAGGING in the mix, to clarify!
You sir are the shit.!
Wow! Thank you so very, very much for this video series!
thanks Glenn this is really helpful
Pure gold, thank you!
Maybe you can make a video on "How to record/mix clean guitar"?
Keep the good work up!
GREAT VIDEO!!! thanks glen.. u really r the man!!..
Yet another of those "Holy shit I had no idea" videos. Thank you, Glenn. :-)
speaking of limiting/clipping on each tracks/bus instead on the mixdown, David from MixBusTV told me that it's a much better way to do it so the buildup of energy doesn't reduce the headroom for mastering.
great video as always love the tip about the sine wave, i use studio one 3 so not sure if i can do it exactly the same way
The perfect bass drum sound for my style of playing is probably something like the one in Opeth's ''my arms, your hearse'' album, you can really hear it on the track April Ethereal.
I don't care if it's triggered, i still love it! It's not quite like other ''mainstream'' triggers i think.
Still triggered, which is a shame cos martin is a great player.
Triggering doesn't change the fact that he is playing. How is it a shame ?
That low frequency sounds like a some of my early attempts at creating FM drums for video game music, only mine had more click to it as I set the second operator self modulating.
FG-X is incredible. I personally can't afford it right now, so I use Boost11 which also works pretty well.
YEEEES! Been waiting for this series!
Holy eff, so much in depth stuff here. I don't even understand the gist of it >.> Gotta learn sometime though :p
Great video as usual. Technically FG-X is a clipper, but I love you.
Amazing stuff Thanks!!!
Thanks Glenn!
man i love you. great show. many years ago, i met a drummer with advanced age. he told me, that, the drums, follow a tunning pattern. per say, the snare is in d, and the first tom d and so on. i really do not remember how it follows. i wonder if maybe you could teach us something about that...?
Thanks man! Great help!
I wonder how that sine wave and the bass guitar behave together in further stages.
The bass won't go that low frequency-wise. If you're mixing metal, especially if it's fast, you might want to cut anything under 80Hz in the bass tone. Might sound thin at first, but it will help to make it sound more focus, and help to avoid a flabby mix.
FSBass You do know that low bass is 20-80hz. Cutting the last 2 octaves from your kick, low toms, and or bass guitar is killing the bottom end in the music. Where did you get the idea that the bass drum fundamental doesn't go below 80hz? You would have to tune the thing really high and what would be the point? Even if that were the case that the fundamental note of the bass drum was 100hz you are forgetting about the lower harmonics that go right down to the last octave. It is this senseless filtering of the bottom that is killing mixes. Cutting heavily below 40hz I can understand but below 80hz?
Those old mixes from the 70's: Pink Floyd, Supergroup, Boston (just the 1st album), Fleetwood Mac sounded incredible. The drum sound on those old records kick ass over today's overcompressed, low filtered, Pro Tool-cut-and-paste rubbish and they didn't have any of the fancy toys we have today. How do you become good at mixing? Mixing videos, hints, plug ins, and tricks will only take you so far. Everybody needs experience, good full range monitors and patience.
Wow, you got a pretty precise idea of what my mixing process is just by reading a comment you didn't even understand. Thanks.
I was speaking about bass guitar for extreme metal, and about this case only. I know a bass drum fundamental can go as low as 50Hz (and sometimes below this). A bass guitar low E fundamental is 41Hz, so by cutting at 70/80Hz you're obviously making a huge sacrifice and that is without considering low tuning and 5 string basses used in metal). On the other hand, if you have a kick drum and a low sine wave under it, your low end is already saturated, and on fast double kick drums parts, it will very often be messy if you let the bass go in this area. So by hi-passing the bass guitar and boosting the second octave harmonics you can have a fat and present bass and keep a define low end. At least that's one approach.
Although I might recognise the great sonic characteristics in Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd, how are these mixes relevent to modern metal ? Gojira, Periphery, Animals As Leaders, Vomitory... these might be relevant to what we're speaking about here.
Just so you know, I'm not an edit-Melodyne-clipper-limiter kind of guy, I'm more of the opposite in fact. But the "it was better in the 70's" approach seems kinda dumb to me too. Every project and music style needs a different approach. Remember that mixing is music, music is art, art is "fake" and subjective (as it doesn't exist in Nature). We're not in for the "realistic" aspect of things. Since we're talking metal mix here, I'd like to see what Rings Of Saturn would sound like without the modern mixing arsenal : would it transport their artistic vision as well ?
If you're interested in really natural sounding mixes you can check the work of Colin Marston (Krallice, Gorguts, Extra Life...), I'm a real fan of his work. Also Tool as some pretty great sound on Lateralus, and as I recall it was recorded without any clic or time-adjustement stuff (correct me if I'm wrong).
All that being said, I might be totally mistaken. I'm pretty new at mixing (did my very first recording 5 years ago, and I've only been studying and recording for 2 years now), so anything I say here might be total crap.
Everyone just as to check for themwelves and see what suit the most for each mix. As you said, it's only experience here.
Just turn down the bass about a db or so, so that it's barely audible, and then continue to turn it down another 8-10db.
Tnx 4 tips...excellent
Woah. Super cool idea using the tone generator to add low end on that kick for a fucking huge sound.
Hell Yes!!!!!!!!!!!! That moment I've all been waiting for!!!!!!!! lol
Oh wow......perfect timing, I am just getting ready to mix some drum tracks preliminarily. Yes it is a word because I said so. So pause.....so I can go get another cup of coffee and sit down to watch this.....I will have coffee in a minute, don't say anything funny Glenn.
+Adam Rainstopper :)
Sigh....what I learned from this video is that I need to tune my kick down and I need a fucking audix d6 and a subkick. Between that and coffee and keyboards, you are costing me a fortune!
he did give you an option to use in case you don't have a subkick. That sine wave insert is a very clever little trick. Not something I would've thought of on my own.
Rhodri Davies I'm not using the same version of Reaper and I don't think I even have that plug-in. Honestly, I think that for the punk and ska and sometimes oldschool hardcore type shit I am producing, I would be ok with the D6 placed just inside the port, compressed on the way in, then tighten up the low-mids and boost the attack frequency a bit. I've been using an I-5 inside the kick, and it doesn't sound terrible when I tune the batter head high, but it's never going to be that deep fundamental frequency foundation that sits just under the bass guitar. I also use a 4 mic setup usually, kick and snare, and two large-diaphragm condensers or even ribbons as overheads, so some of the kick and snare will be picked up by those.
awesome!