Kim Mossige
Participant
Topics Started: 12
Replies Created: 35
Has Thanked: 13
Been Thanked: 1
Kim MossigeGuys im really grateful for your subjective and objective opinions, is what i needed. Sometimes the “try fire yourself, use your ears” advice online is not good enough, especially if a vision strays badly from the initial plan.
Even if I’ve done mixing and production as a hobby for a long time, I always learn new basic things, and drums has been the one thing that never clocked with me, and I need to learn.. the kit-change and lowering the volume was the two best advice here that helped tremendously. Also the drum bus lowmid cleanup.
Thank you all! If you have more tips, I will take any!!!
Kim MossigeYes, i agree. After trying the kit you suggested, it was apparent that a much better sound existed for sure. I seem to have an inherent problem picking out correct drum sound, since I’ve not been a drummer until pandemic.
That’s why I love all of your opinions about this matter because it gives me a starting position. It’s a song I’ve written and spent a few years planning it, hearing it in my head beforehand. I also record and play everything, and I think that it can contribute to ear fatigue, and that I start to like what was inherently a wrong choice, if that makes sense? The song also evolved from a funky tune to samba at the end, so the genre became a bit mixed after a while too.
Kim MossigeIn mixing mainly through Audeze MM-500, and for monitoring its a pair of iloud micro at ear height, treated room with fairly low echo when listening in the room. Using Apollo x6 and a pair of x414 for recording.
Several Studios i know here have real kits and dont have the luxury of changing up snare sounds other than adding sample layers to them, but most of the engineers I’ve spoken to like to deaden their snare in a mix. Note that’s not the reason I do it, I have a weakness for dead 70s sound. In my opinion it’s not a mix problem but artistic clash maybe. Agreed that the midnight kit was better.
Kim MossigeI will try this, thanks. But about the snare on Vultures, I disagree. I love that kind of muffled sound, it’s really funky. Check John Mayer with Vultures, that’s the kind of muffled breakup sound I was going for
That’s the thing, I’ve been doing mixing for a few decades aswell. I obviously don’t have a knack for drums it seems. I do automation as a last resort, as I want the mix to sit well on it’s own first, and then finetune with automation only as a last resort, or a creative solution. Trust me I watch YT mix videos every day, I even watched a 10hour masterclass on compression. Yeah I’m that odd 😂
But these pinpointed tips and advice is exactly what I needed, thank you. I brought up my project now before bed, to try it out
EDIT: By the way! That Midnight kit did wonders! How much better it sounds! Spot on! Except the ride on it though, but that might be due to how I played it with another ride I borrowed from Decades. Will tweak more tomorrow evening.
Kim MossigeBut the drums do need some compression, losing all processing will just make it a raw drum recording? Don’t want to cut too much on the guitars, as I want then to bloom on top of everything when solo comes. I’ve already removed quite a lot of 500 mid on them.
Dead/muffled snare seemed to be the only thing fitting, I have an even bigger issue with wet snares on general 😬 trying to get that Steve Jordan Snare from Vultures
Kim MossigeThank you guys! This is exactly what i needed to hear, now i have a reference opinion to work from. It’s been hard because I’ve played and mixed all of these individually, and I’m always afraid to put drums far behind because I am afraid it will lose feel. Goes to show how important it is to have second opinions on stuff. These drum mixing tips are very valuable to me thank you!!
Kim MossigeHi! Thank you for spending time reading and asking core questions. I think I need opinion-based help in order to properly train my ears to this. I have an actual problem with what you describe – to find the correct kit. I love 70s dry sound, and Steely Dan type of drums are the type I am after, the vintage dry tone.
You can try and hear my demo if you want to hear how weak it sounds.. It’s a rough demo without bass, and just placeholder instruments. Maybe it’s the playing style that lacks “energy”? https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/htp1luv5mh8s8ndn02htz/ending_1sb_test.mp3?rlkey=mu4pdnpwcc2kbcj8dfg97r7tg&dl=0
Kim MossigeYeah true. I’ve mixed and produced for over 20 years now, as a hobby only. There are just certain things I’ve not been able to grasp, and cymbals are one of them it seems. The timing, dynamics and swing are actually spot on, in how I want it to fit my song, but I think that a ride is such a strange beast I don’t know where to put it mix.. either it’s too low volume, or it’s too noisy and disharmonic. Or maybe I just have OCD who knows.. but try sota sdx and hit the ride many times in a row, in studio iso. I just don’t know if this kind of resonance is supposed to be there.. and if I mix it away (have to use -20db notch, it’s that bad), then suddenly other frequencies start to bother me.. then I’m thinking I perhaps have the wrong kit or ride, and I try a vast variety of other rides, but they just have their own problems etc..
I guess what I’m asking is opinion based, really . Because maybe I’m getting hung up in stuff that is nothing to get hung up on. It gets especially worse when I get comments about bad sounding rides on my songs, my OCD just blares up.
Asking for opinions on how you guys mix it and what you look for when choosing sounds. I play mostly soft rock or pop, 70s inspired and dry, like John Mayer or JJ cale. Also Radiohead styles.
Kim MossigeInteresting. What style of music are you doing as I don’t find the higher velocities unnatural. Most session drummers hit the backbeat hard. In fact most rimshot the backbeat as I do.
I play everything from Jezz Samba to metal. If I up the velocity on all of my pads it becomes unnatural because I don’t get to have soft hits. The way it’s tuned now feels much more natural because it feels I can have very soft ghost notes at the same time as I can hit hard. If I up the pad sensitivity, THEN it becomes like less dynamic range for me. Every subtle hits feels very loud etc.
Kim MossigeThank you everyone! I will use this workaround, although it don’t work when having to select stacking samples or scrolling through midi grooves.. I will have to try and figure out a hotkey way to temporarily bring down my drum bus volume.. this is very annoying though.
By the way, what did you mean that 127 should be sometimes hit? Limiting my dynamic range? I think it sounds wildly unnatural when hitting 127. Absolutely all of the midi grooves I buy sounds unnatural. Only when I ever play manually on my kit, does it sound natural. If I am unlucky enough to hit above 100, I bring it down to about 95. So this peaked my interests in why anyone will increase the velocity on their hits?
Kim MossigeYes, but the confusing part is that the ride was always – from day one – making the exact same velocity output as the other cymbals. So it was not a key giveaway that it had to further be tweaked on the sound module itself. It was first when I started messing with a few small tweaks like sensitivity and having an exponential curve that the real ride-feeling was being transferred to SD3, to be felt like I’m used with real drums.
Kim MossigeGot it, tall makes sense, it did from the first reply. I just didn’t get the insane difference, but in the past days I’ve come to the conclusion that it might be a bad td27kv2 profile. Adjusting a lot of the onboard settings on the sound module itself seemed to mitigate the insane volume differences I’ve had, a difference that was way more prominent through sd3 than the local control sounds, for some reason
Kim MossigeIn real life scenario we’d do proper gains staging before tracking to make it somewhat levelled during tracking, so no, this is not natural
Kim MossigeRight, i feel exactly the same. The gain is very different, im sure they recorded it well, but wasn’t properly balanced when releasing the software
Kim MossigeAside from the fact that rides are perceivably lower in volume than crashes, you also listed the three libraries in which everything is recorded unprocessed.
It is not wildly unbalanced. It is recorded as natural as possible with all of the transients in place. This is what drum mixing is all about: getting everything in balance.
jord
Thank you, so nothing wrong in other words? when recording real drums, the drummer can hear it much better than when recording with these sd3 libraries.
Some tips om how to properly hear everything and balance volume early in the production? I feel the volume difference is so big that it really don’t translate of how I hear a real drum kit when playing on real drums. A 16db perceived loudness difference is quite big.
Btw what do you mean by the sounds not being processed? They’re eq-ed, saturated and compressed on the channels by default on all presets, all as the processed button is ticked on each pad
No products in the cart.
Get all the latest on new releases,
updates and offers directly to your inbox.
Note: By clicking the 'I WANT IN' button, you will not be creating a Toontrack user account. You will only sign up to get our newsletters, offers and promotions to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time from a link at the bottom of each email. If you want to learn more about our privacy policy, please find detailed information here.