Master Class - Audio Mixing - 01 Drum Basics
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- Опубліковано 21 жов 2024
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James Hurley gives an overview of how to mix drums for your live event audio mixes. This chapter focuses on gain structure and phase for the full drum kit.
It has been at least 2 years since I found this series and I have been just coming back to listen and refresh my memory. This series is just complete and great. I have recommended it to everyone I met and are serious about bringing their game to the next level
I stumbled on these videos about four years ago and implemented a lot of the techniques James uses, and it really cleaned up my FOH mixes. These videos helped me grow from a small church engineer, to a larger church, to now touring with big CCM acts. Love the simplicity and the approach. Thanks for making the "Master Class" series!
See a lot of people saying stuff like "it'd be nice to have this much time live". That's why I arrive for my engineering job between 10 am and noon for an 8 pm show, when I know the band probably won't even show up till 5. I have 5 hours to set up mics, create a decent scribble strip, line check, familiarize with stage plots, setup presets, ring out mics, activate basic effects, set up DCA's and aux's and anything else I might need. It really helps to have that time when that Solo acoustic act you were planning for just showed up as a full band, and they're an hour late for sound check. An ounce of prevention is worth 120 db of feedback in the middle of a show.
At 4pm I travel an hour to work to arrive an hour before first band’s check, to set stage and desk and do some basic system EQ.
Doors are at 9pm.
DJ finishes at 3am.
I’m out by 3.30am, travel an hour or so home (being late transport isn’t as good).
Home by 4.30/5am.
In bed by 5/5.30am.
If I get 8 hours sleep I will be up at 1pm.
I then have 3 hours of my day to do anything I need to do such as washing and cleaning, banking, admin, shopping, eating and the basics.
If I arrived 5 hours early I would have to sacrifice sleep and all personal care.
No job is that important 🤣
Jessey Winkler I like early, but not all the time lol.
What does that make your hourly wage?
Preach Jessey!!!
If i was hourly i wouldnt feel right doing that. Im paid per show, and i helped renovate the space i engineer in so its like a second home. Every other aspect of my life suffered on show days, but only like 3 days a week so it was ok. Not gonna share my pay, but it was crap for the hours i was there. Which was ultimately why that job wasnt sustainable.
Bro, I've watched hundreds of mixing tutorials and by far to me yours are the best. I love your style of teaching and more over what you like as far as how you like things to sound. One day, I hope to be as skilled as you are at mixing and as an art. Love these videos, please keep them coming..
This is extremely helpful for me starting to mix worship. The drums at this church have only 3 mics (kick, snare, mono overhead) but your discussion of toms and fundamental freqs are great.
My friend this is great I like it I'm joash Misiocha from Mombasa (Kenya) sound engineer at the Mombasa Pentecostal church
thank you for putting so much effort into sharing this knowledge, i appreciate that you try not to second guess yourself and instead trust your intuition, i feel like im constantly trying to work on that
You are the master of the bation class!
HEY BRO I GOTTA THANK YOU, YOU HELPED WITH A LITTLE STRUGGLE I WAS HAVING IN MY DRUM MIX, AND ITS HELPED ME WITH OVER ALL MIX, DEFINITELY KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, THANKS AGAIN!!!
I've been looking all over for this series..... Thanks man
I’m going to watch all your videos now!
Though he set his preamp before his faders, it does work out better that way in some situations. By setting the faders at unity gain you are effectively able to "ride the fader" during a live performance without making drastic changes. Why? Faders are designed so they increase in volume exponentially. The lower you are in the channel strip the more increase or decrease in sound depending on how much your more. Take the x32 for example; lets say you had a lead guitar channel and set the gain to the correct level and then brought up your fader up to the desired volume. Let's say that volume was -40db and it sat well in the mix. If you need to adjust that guitar for a solo, or pull it down to make space for the vocals, the slightest move would make a massive change in volume. If you move 1cm up from -40db, you effectively increased 10-15db, and if you move 1cm down it's close to -20db. But if the gain was built with the fader at unity, the same 1cm travel up or down would only add or subtract roughly 5 db of volume. What this means is that you have greater control of the entire mix as you can make the desired changes in volume for each channel without completely destroying balance. It is once way of doing live sound, and especially helpful in a house of worship context where you constantly need to be adjusting volume. But everyone has their own opinions and workflow. Sound engineering is a science as much as it is an art from. Just trust your ears and what sounds good and you should be fine.
Did you miss all the times he went back and readjusted the gains to be at the proper level with the fader at 0?
Wow! Thank you! Very effective and helpful... God bless you
❤ hi dear sir one question 🙋 first using uq or compression or Gate sir
despite all the negativity in the comment section, this helped me out big time. Thanks for posting!
That was good, thanks. just wondering, wouldnt you check your phase on the toms with all the drum channels up? Surely checking tom fades with kick and snare mics down might not show interfering phase between tom mic and kick/snare mics?
Rookie question. How are you getting the playback of your specific setup without having the drummer on set? I'm just now taking over at church, and I have a ton to learn.
Impressed with the eq on that x32, very unexpected.
Me too!
searchlight31 its a very intuitive interface so it lets roll around easy and pinpoint things fast.......
They have made it only better and better as the years have gone on with each firmware update. It comes in especially nice when you can insert several different kind's of 30 band eq's on specific channels.
This is great... Just the same way I've treated my drums on analog mixer... Thanks
Any way of getting the Drum Tracks you play so i can practice on x32 as they sound great to experiment with!! Great job by the way i like the way you explain
I'm no expert on phase. As far as I know, phase and polarity are not the same thing, but similar. All the polarity button does is change electrical. Negative becomes positive and positive becomes negative. This would flip the waveform exactly 180 degrees.
One needs to, for example, flip polarity on one of the two snare drum mics because traditionally one is pointing down at the batter side and the other point up from underneath on the snare side. Positive and negative pressure. However, on a kick for example, one would not flip polarity if a mic is inside the kick pointed at the batter head, and a 2nd mic is outside on the resonate head (but still pointed in the same direction as the inside mic at the batter head). Positive and positive pressure. I think flipping phase on toms is similar. If the waveform from the overheads and the tom mics are starting in the same direction, reversing polarity of the toms puts them out of phase with the overheads. But maybe they aren't in this demonstration.
Anyway, I guess at the end of the day it's all about what sounds better. If flipping it seems to give a better sound or performs damage control when one can't adjust mics or do anything else, do it! I'm usually in situations where I hardly have enough time for setup as it is.
By changing the polarity, you invert phase as a result.
For example, if he had the input from one of his mics going to two separate channels(playing the same signal) and one of those channels was inverted. You would hear no sound. This is a result of phase cancellation which is what happens when you invert phase.
I believe the application in this video is to show that inverting the phase/polarity of an audio source will sometimes allow for less loss of audio(phase cancellation) given how the phase of one source will matchup differently across other mics that pick up that same audio source
I'm also not sure that the way phase matchups across different mics will have a direct correlation to pressure as you've described
(I think positive vs negative pressure is more just a misuse of terminology in this case, in that negative pressure doesn't really exist in audio. Sounds just vibrate in different directions with respect to phase. Negative vs. positive is just a way of modeling amplitude of waveforms).
Although I do agree that the scenarios you explained such as micing a snare with mics above and below are likely to require phase inversion, I think it's more relevant to think about how far the mics are away from a source relative to each other and the frequencies they pick up in general. If mic A is 1 foot from the source and another mic B is 2 feet from the source, it is likely the phase of that source will be at a different place in its waveform's period based on the time it takes for the audio to travel from source to mic A and mic B.
There are honestly a number of variables that could affect the difference in phase(mic placement, mic bias, blah blah blah), so I think it's not always crazy to just try it out if you notice some loss.
Thanks for this great video, straight to the matter and visual explanations to help the rockies to understand the right focus.
James, can you make that scene available for download? What about groups? Are you using any groups besides the DCAs? Thanks.
Wow I love this sooooooooooooooooo much thanks james you truly are a blessing to the body of Christ Amen. I have been doing sound for a while i was hoping someone would come out with something like this thank God for you enjoyed every video thanks again yes yes yes yes thank you Jesus for james.
Quick question. Why don't you mute the other channels when working on a new one? I struggled to really hear the snare cos the kick and OHs were still playing
Yeside Lawal it’s the difference your looking for..... and you want to see what it sounds like with the other mics you have confirmed....
Great video dude!
a really easy to follow video James. Thanks you.
Thank you for the simple easy best way to get proper basic sound!!! Great work.
saludos desde México, sería una gran bendición si pudieras traducir todos tus videos al español, son maravillosos todos estos videos que subiste al youtube... God to bless you...
Thank you James Hurley
Thanks for the effort. Tubby, Muddy, etc. Does this imply that certain frequencies are bad? Those that are black listed with a name like "Tubby"? While I can Goodle "tubby" it doesn't help w/o frequencies. (Too subjective.) Science and Art work together.
Input gain's not strong enough.. If you're mixing live shows like this you will have a lot of noise because of the Signal/Noise ratio . For me, the most important thing is to have a good modulation of the input signal (like one orange led on solo mode) in order to make the best use of the EQ's and compressor (be careful of the headroom who's not the same on dBFullScale compared to dBu analogic). However, your EQ's are logic and sounds good !
Ms. Fedorowsky, talking about Signal/Noise ratio problems on desks like this one? Just forget about it, forever. That is a dinosaur which should just go.
besides the gear snobs -very informative thanks x
I seriously don't understand why some engineers advise to mix around unity and build a mix with gain. It should be the other way around. Gain the preamps in a way you have good and strong (some preamps even like it hot, like Midas Pro preamps) and use the fader only to get a good level for the mix. Signals that are weak in the preamp can mess up a mix quite easely. See it this way: gain is the waterpump and the fader is the valve. A fully opened valve with low pump pressure, is less good then good pump pressure and adjusting the water velocity with the valve. Same goes for mixing. Good input level from the preamps and adjusting mixlevel with the fader. Hence, there are preamps in desks that will even sound less good when at lower gain and sound better when they are pushed, like Midas preamps for example. My advise: get your input level at good level (around zero dB average, maybe a bit less, but not much) and mix with the faders. Especialy for live/rocknroll use, low gain levels can mess with dynamics acoustic or electric. Acoustic for example high and low levels of an instrument (like brass instruments, acoustic guitars, etc.) And electric for example with the use of a gate or compressor. A compressor needs to be fed with good signal to operate optimaly. When input levels are quite low, a compressor won't act as you want/expect or you need to digitaly gain the input level of the compressor wich is always less good (pretty worse imho) than getting the input levels good from the start. Just my 2 cents.
Question, under what settings do you have the board so that you can mix the drums from a DAW this way? I do this with my XR18 but would like to do this with the X32 I use at church, it would really help a lot when I'm changing the new drum heads at church and I wouldn't hand to wait for a drummer to come in and play, I could just do it myself. Please let me know, God bless.
you can just change the input routing of your X32. Set the inputs to "card" and you can use them as playback channels from a DAW for example over the built-in USB card on the back of the device
Dear Sir, I want to know how can I use Stage Snake Cable???? And from where to where it is going on stage? Please explain briefly!
sounds like the snare in the overhead channel isnt lining up
..."vintage typewriter" is my favorite bass drum tone...
The mix sounds good
Why be at unity for everything channel? The gain stages are too low. If you are recording to a DAW, you are getting very little sound. I think the gain should be used first for even input levels. FOR should be adjusted by the faders but that's just me. Some people keep the master fader at unity so that would be impossible to have all your faders at unity as well.
That was very good man, thanks for you shared knowledge..
Thanks for this. i really appreciate you.
Can anyone tell me what's the desk please?
Bro do you have someone play or is this a track im getting confused on trying to figure out how you have sound coming in i would love to know so i can do what you do
Hi, how are you?
I have a ask to you - you have 2 channels for overheads but, in the video was demonstrated only one adjust. Dou you replicated this adjust to other channel?
+Jorge Adriano Moreira Simões There are two overhead channels, I have them linked so whatever I do on one affects the other.
is that a x32 behringer mixer
+Aswat Din yup
Yes it is!
can I have same tutorials for analogue mixers
In doing a live venue, would you do this without subs first and then add volume to the sub woofer at end?
Moises Pimentel Yes. Use an aux output on the console to drive your sub if your PA system isn't full range.
I have a problems with my snare leaking a lot of sound into my kick mic, I have tried adjusting it with a compressor but it’s not working for me, i see you don’t have that problem, any recommendations?
A gate is what would help fix that, not a compressor.
Mic positioning?
Great Videos, in a easy to understand way.
Thanks!
Real Good Stuff!!!
How does he make all the different instruments coming through different channels with a recording?
channel routing using virtual soundcheck. Waves track or Personus Capture are good programs for playback when the band leaves and you can concentrate on your mix
A decent overview on how to EQ drums, but please...
Learn proper gain staging.
Set your preamps, then start moving your faders up to the levels you want.
Not starting at unity and adjusting volume with the gain. That is backwards gain staging.
Then set all your drum faders to a DCA group, so you can bring them in and out as a whole. Which will be even more accurate than eyeballing the sliders up to unity as well.
I'm mixing in a church in a cross shape room. I'm getting a lot of feed back problems and my mix position have my back to the wall be hide the tangent how can I get a better mix not being able to here good?
What system you running?
Any room treatment?
Any Potential upgrades in the Future?
Imo if you have small room just tell the musicians to play softer.. so we no need to crank so much gain on vocals.. 😁 but its always hard to talk to musicians to lower dowb their volume.. especially the stubborn one Lol
My only complain started when I used the M32, then I did not like the x32 anymore. Sold my x32 to a friend, now faders and encoders skip or won't move..
Great video
Earned a sub. + like! Thanks for sharing this awesome video!
I love ur hair!!!
"We're gonna go with out of phase on the snare drum" .... Are you? Are you sure you didn't mean that you've just made it IN phase by flipping the polarity?
How do you get a kick in and kick out? Like...how do you split the kick between two channels
Matthew Warrenfells they are two separate mics, one placed inside the kick drum and one placed outside , they are run to separate channels on the mixer
polarity
Very cool thanks for the knowledge
Hello im from malaysia,what name for this mixer?
Evella kong behringer x32
Are you mixing live sound???how about gain??? In this video you keep lower "input gain" ,,,my question is >why do you leave too much headroom???
Digital Consoles require more headroom.
James Hurley, you still with Donna?
why, is Donna fine?
really good EQ tips
this guy is genius
I noticed you haven’t talked about gating . Your drum mix sounds great but seemed too easy without the gate issue
Try the next video. This is basics.
They aren’t necessary all the time..... you can still get a good drum mix even with two or three mics..... but gates do rock!
"Tubbyness"......"Box" ? - I wish you'dve explain these terms as you went. This is not LIVE mixing though, this is virtual mixing. In a venue you're not going to hear it all like this as you wont be using studio monitors. You'll hear it through the PA speaker and some from the actual band performing it live coming off the stage too. I'm not saying this is wrong just its not like this live at all.
Sorry - kick in & kick out? You have two mics on the kick???
Kick In the Drum. Beta 91 or similar
Kick Out. Beta 52, D6, D112 etc.
Allows you to get more thump from the kick, and blend sounds.
Total fashion wank that a lot of sheep do.....totally unnecessary, waste of a mic and waste of channel and potential phase problems as the mics are about a foot apart.
Denis Smith the audix d6 has a similar eq curve that might be able to come close to what they're trying to do.
total fashion wank that engineers have been doing since the 70's. If it gets you the sound you're going for, it's the right way to do it. Always.
MrStubat what do you think delay and an all pass filter are for?
High pass filter on the kick?!
what name for this model
could anyone tell me how he is loading and doing playback of the whole session to x32? if he is using a specific program, what is it called? Thanks!
A good free option for multitracks is Waves Tracks Live. Record and playback can be done through the built in usb interface on the x32.
Anybody know how much that console cost? I'm sure its expensive but man it looks dope.
2k. Is a behringer X32. Basically the lowest end of the digital consoles. A decent Digico (very very high end) will run you 30k-250k+
@@oliverguy3121 oh shit, I might actually get that thing this year
If we all had such an awesome board :(
behringer xr18 or x18 :D
I always though you were supposed to set your gain and then leave it. He’s mixing on the gain knobs. It’s going to effect the in ears monitors and drive the musicians crazy
:why does he boost some frequencies and then turn them down?
Umberto Cantoro because he's taking out the bad frequencies
by boosting you can hear the frequencies he can tell when he wants to cut them
I checked out of this video when you started talking about setting your faders to unity before setting your gain structure to unity. That is bad info bro. The gain is not a volume knob! It sets the appropriate level of the signal coming into the board so you dont blow out your preamps, or have too low of a signal that you wont properly be able to set your effects/compression levels. If you dont have unity on your faders then just drop or increase the mains to compensate, or even adjust the amp level to compensate. For any mixers out there, gain unity is EVERYTHING. If you dont have that, you have nothing.
Totally agree.
May you share your e-mail? I have questions to ask about Adjusting Gains at different stages in audio chain.
Polarity, not phaze.
Seems like new mixing engineers always can it phase. You are swapping polarity to CHECK the phase, not the phase of the input. Phase is not a binary concept. I remember when I said polarity forum once and I got an angry reply stating, "It's not like you are swapping the + and - wires on the connection!"
Actually that is EXACTLY what it's like! lol
No it's phase, in XLR you have hot pin in phase (with sinusoidal signal) and cold pin 180° out of phase. For jack it's polarity because tip is in phase and ring is 0v
@@norman7535 phase is tied with time. this is reversing polarity, not changing the phase.
Yeah, its polarity. They put that button there in case you could hear "polarity cancellation". "Man, those 2 mics sound like their out of 'polarity'." Haha! Oh, the 'wisdom' of the comment section.
this guy is a freaking genius
And why isnt that? :)
To my knowlegde the gain should not be in the area where it starts to distort, but still have the full frequencies at most? Then take care of the volume on the faders.
Hey, I'm kinda noob, and seeks answers.
Cheers.
jnjjules How so?
I'm a live sound engineer of 30 years - since when did O/H's become second in your sound check - nonesense.
-gates????
I understand your irritation even tho I am only a student of the field right now. I believe he is going for the basics and only doing eq in this video for the reason not to overcomplicate the minds of less experienced viewers
instead of boosting high end on everything like you are, turn your tweeters up. This is where proper gain structure on the PA comes in.
Proper gain structure on the PA will also allow you to run your inputs much higher allowing more of the sound into the board. Plus you will still have your faders around unity any way if your PA is set up right.
David Jaycox I think you are miss-understanding what gain staging is. Also if he "turned his tweeters up" (which I honestly don't even know if you can do that unless you are bi-amped) then his monitoring system would be biased and he would not equalize the high end when he should be doing so.
+David Jaycox NO! Period.
Oh, my apologies, I didn't realize that we aren't supposed to set gain structure on the PA. So sorry. I missed the memo.
On digital boards they have an adjustable shelf. Set it to 2k out 1.5k and now you have a"tweeter volume "
WTF are you talking about?
+David Jaycox Right and not so right. I couldn't turn down the monitors I had so I ran the console quieter. Normally you would attenuate the input on your PA processor so you can run the console at optimum voltage... you wouldn't just turn your tweeters up for gain structure reasons, however you would make sure your balance through the crossovers was correct.
Try working the delay on the inputs, between KI/KO, SNT/SNB, OHs. Now thats the PHASE issue that gives you the advantage in the crispy department ;-) Also for live, dont hpf over 30hz Kicks, If you got proper subs, theres a reason the drummers use so much money on the Kick ;-)
Which mixer is this?
Behringer X32
I want you help me
So where all the sound coming from
Parrots, which were taught to imitate drums sounds
cool lessons ! tnx..
nice and powered! :D
take a shot every time he says “tubby”
x32?...nice!
how to contact you sir?
from Malaysia
Smooth
a nine mic drumkit takes me 12 mins!
Same kick in kick out sub kick snare top and bottom 3 toms hihats and 2 overheads
You and I approach EQ very similarly with drums. That said, your gain staging makes me uneasy. In a live setting you would not be able to keep the gain that low unless you were doing strictly FOH and there was a monitor board. Don't be scared of the orange!
Matthew Rosenberg lol I know right? Why does every sound mixer wanna be at unity for everything?
Fader resolution, and easy reset
Hunter Shaw You can just pull your VCA down or route your channels to a subgroup for buss compression etc and then pull those faders down. Allows for high channel gain ensuring a good line level signal, bur channel faders can still be positioned around unity
That wasn't an actual drummer playing there, right?
You can actually record with this board, and mix from the saved section. Instead of having the drummer play all day. Once you are on the road touring as a FOH Engineer, you do not have more than 5-10 minutes to line-check and fix it in the mix. Otherwise you are the guy making the show run late.
Yea it was. A good drummer plays nice and consistently :)
it would be nice if you had that kind of time live..
ehhh????? the kick filter?
I thought it was Jason Blaha
That's the only reason that I clicked the link haha
VCA = voltage control amplifier not attenuator !
And on a digital console, it's more DCAs (Digital Control Amplifiers)
It IS attenuator, as a fader only attenuates - when the fader on a mixing console is at it's maximum, it is not affecting the signal in any way - the same as if there was just a straight piece of copper there instead of a fader. It does not amplify the signal at all. On digital consoles, since it's not truly an analog control voltage signal for the digital version of VCAs, they are called Digitally Controlled Attenuators.
POLARITY, NOT PHASE!!