Audio Recording

I received an inquiry about drum mixing tips for rock music, here it goes:

Hey!
I’ve been following your tutorials and they have been very helpful. I’m quite new to mixing and I’ve been trying to mix some recorded drums for a rock song and I find it very difficult to get them to sound good. What mean with good is, well with regards to any modern rock song. In my opinion they sound boring, dry, “hi-endish” (made up word) and lacking some space.
What is your take on them and what can I do to improve the mix. Any tips? If you have time please let me know, it would be very appreciated. Big thanks

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My Reply:

Actually before going to any drum mixing details, one of the most common problems originated in the drum recording/tracking process. There are too many factors influencing the drum sound as you will know in this post. Remember the garbage in-garbage out analogy. If it’s not recorded properly then you will have a hard time mixing it. On my experience the following are the important elements in getting a great drum sound:

a.) Make it sound perfect before doing any recording takes.
b.) Record it in a perfect room.

This is how the professionals do the drum tracking. If you have done a great job in doing those two essential elements, it will be very easy to mix drums. Lets go with each in detail. This is the drum audio you have provided:

Listening to it, its not actually that bad though it can be improved significantly. Anyway below are my suggestions to improve that sound:
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Snare is one of the most important parts of the drum that plays a significant role in rock, punk and alternative music production. This tutorial will illustrate how the snare drum sound changes with 5 different compression settings. This is a useful guide for a beginner in choosing the best compression settings for the snare. Let’s get started with the default settings (original and uncompressed snare):

This is how the snare waveform looks like “uncompressed”:

Supposing you want to apply this first compression setting:

-30.4dB threshold
2:1 Compression ratio
Scan mode: RMS
Smooth saturation: Yes
Attack time: 5ms
Release time: 10ms
Output gain: 7.6dB

The threshold depends on the peak of the snare drum; feel free to experiment to get the optimum threshold. The compressor that I’m using is the Sony Wave Hammer. This is the resulting sound:

The snare drum sounds scratchy. It adds more character to snare drum wires and also the snare drum sounds a bit sustain more than the original. Although this sound is not as thick as the other compression settings to be illustrated later on. If you need your snare drum to sound like this. You can start implementing the above settings. The output gain is adjustable depending on your desired snare drum volume. This is how the waveform looks like for the first setting:

Comparing with the uncompressed wave, compressing with very fast attack time and release time results to less energy at the maximum peak of the snare drum; as you have noticed that peak section is now thinner compared with the uncompressed snare. Let’s try this second setting:

-30.4dB threshold
4:1 Compression ratio
Scan mode: RMS
Smooth saturation: Yes
Attack time: 5ms
Release time: 100ms
Output gain: 7.6dB

The second setting has very fast attack time but slow release time. It also uses moderate compression ratio of 4:1. This is how the snare drum sounds like:

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If you do not have real drums, you can still create real sounding drum loops using Hotstepper drum sequencer for free. This tutorial will list down all the most common drum beats in rock, jazz, metal, punk and pop which can be created in Hotstepper. This is very useful and time-saving tutorial. It is because you can simply listen to the provided drum beat MP3 samples in this tutorial and download the hotstepper file. I created all these patterns from my experience and recorded the sample drum beat for listening. To get started, follow steps stated under requirements.

Requirements:
1.) You need to have Hotstepper drum sequencing software. You can download it here.

2.) Add real drum sounds to the hotstepper sound library. Follow the steps mentioned in that tutorial and ensure that the sound file specifications are correct. Please use the following file names for the drum parts for consistency with the provided pattern:

rock kick.wav
tama snare.wav
pedal hi hat.wav
open hi hat.wav
mid toom.wav
floor toom.wav
cymbal crash tama.wav
Ride cymbal.wav

Even though your drums might not be Tama (as the drum sounds above are obtained from a Tama drum kit), please use the same file name to avoid errors when you are using the downloaded Hotstepper file later on.

3.) Confirm if you have successfully added those drum sound parts to the Hotstepper sound library. Launch Hotstepper and then go to View – Sound Library. See screenshot below. The important drum sound parts are in .wav extension.

4.) Select from the following most common drum beats that you need to use in your multi-track recording projects. Listen to the mp3 sample provided and then click the link of the pattern to download the .hpa file. Take note that you can further improve it such as increasing or decreasing the tempo, adding some more takes using Hotstepper.
———————–PATTERN1—————————–
Comment: This one of the most common drum beat pattern in pop music.

Download pattern1
———————–PATTERN2—————————–
Comment: This is a fast punk alternative drum pattern. Increasing further the tempo (adjusting it in the Hotstepper) would be similar to the “Policia” by Sepultura

Download pattern2
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