Some questions about drum-set mixing

[FMiguelez]

Hello.

I recently bought Superior Drummer 2. Now I'm trying to really delve into it.

I'm really digging it, and, the way I understand so far, it's pretty much the way one would approach recording/mixing REAL drums (which I've never ever done, BTW).

I have no experience with real drums or micing techniques etc., so this is pretty new to me. Please bear with me

So far I'm playing with the Overhead, Close and distant mic room settings. One thing I'm noticing is that, despite this making things sound big and nice, EVERYTHING sounds in stereo (except for the individual drum mics).
I'm not sure I want snare and kick sound to also be in the R/L speakers in stereo because that would get in the way of other elements in the mix that are in there, and it doesn't sound punchy... it's like there's a hole at the middle of the stereo spectrum.

So how do you guys approach this?
It it common practice to narrow the stereo field of the ambience mics from the drums? How about making them mono?

Would I run into phase issues? I just want to make sure if playing with the stereo field of the ambience mics is actually something rec/mixing engineers do, and if there are good and bad ways of doing so. I was thinking of simply using something like Wave's S1 or simply narrow the field right there in SD's console.

I'll certainly appreciate any thoughts, concerns, tips or tricks.

Thank you.

[stephentayler]

It really depends on the genre.

If it is experimental, anything goes as far as i am concerned.

However, I didn't much care for the 70s and 80s nerd approach to drum mixing, with hihats panned off to the side and a wide spread on the toms.... it makes it sound like an extreme version of the drummer's perspective.

Over the years I discovered that I preferred to mix my drums - and for that matter all the instruments - so it felt like a virtual stage.

Keys and guitars could occupy anywhere with the stereo picture/spread, but drums and bass all mostly occupy centre stage. Kick, Snare, Hats down the middle, toms panned from ten-to to ten-past, overheads/cymbals half left and half right, and maybe ambient/room mikes could be full stereo.

That was my mixing philosophy for the most part, but all records are so different that there are actually no rules.... occasionally mono can be great.... if the track has more electronic elements then extreme panning can be fun.

It all actually boils down to the simple question: what do you want to hear? Is it a band playing on a stage in front of you? Are the musicians in your living room and sitting around you? What do you think The Beatles, The Beachboys, The Who, The Kinks... etc, were thinking when they made those iconic-sounding records?? Or Bowie, Yes, Queen....

No rules!!!

Enough said!! These tools give you so many options, it's up to you!

All the best

Stephen

[stephentayler]

Oh and I love to play with dynamics and the stereo picture.

Drums could be dry and close and punchy and mono in the verse and then explode into full ambient/trashy-sounding - for the chorus.... (SoundToys Devil-Loc, anyone?) .... again it depends on the genre!!

Mixing is my thing, after all!!

Stephen

[mhschmieder]

Hmm, aside from Stephen's excellent advice, the raw technical details might not be as flexible with Superior or Addictive as with BFD (my impression of AD so far is that it isn't as flexible as BFD, but I haven't worked with Superior so don't know about that one).

I despise all the presets, so always build my own kits and mixes. For the mixes, I bypass all effects as I prefer to route to DP and use my own effects per track. I go mono for everything but the overheads, and remove most if not all bleed as I haven't found it does what they say ("makes the sound bigger and more cohesive"). It overly complicates and restricts what you do in the mix when you use too much of what these drum plugs offer out of the box.

I don't use much stereo spread compared to many people, I suppose, and also don't like the trend towards putting the snare off-center. Yes, that's how it usually is in the drum set, but in the context of a mix, and from the stage perspective as Stephen suggests using, it tends to glue the music together better if it is straight down the middle like the kick. I give the toms only a slight spread, and try to place each top kit piece in a unique spot but not too wide. I process each kit piece separately but do add a little glue to the overall drum bus. Slight reverb (room or plate) may get applied, but rarely if ever to the overheads and top kit.

There will be times where something special is called for, but I keep it pretty dry and simple for most pop/rock. Too many years were lost following other advice instead of just believing in myself and my own ears. There are many ways to make space in a mix without over-widening the drums. Also, mastering is a good time to apply mid/side processing, which can really open things up if the final pre-master mix is good to start with. This is where I fine-tune the balance of the drums vs. everything else, through careful separation by frequency.

[kgdrum]

I agree with Stephen & Mark,the longer I do this, the first thing I always do is minimize the extreme panning most drum VI's set as defaults.
Did the same with Vdrums also.
Between 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock generally works.
The only time I'll use more extreme panning is for electronic,experimental music etc....where realism is not a priority,vibe and effect is more of the priority & yes all bets are off! lol
At times I freak out some people when I say I love mono and don't like extreme stereo mix's !
If you go to a club and hear a band play that's pretty much what you hear.

[rentadrummer]

I don't get a chance to do much mixing, but I do use S2 for recording. I like to center the snare and bass drum, and move the hi hat slightly to the right or left depending upon whether the drums are being mixed from drummer's perspective or audience perspective.

As kg said, the one thing that bothers me about the default panning in S2 is the extreme width of the crash cymbals, which puts them as far left and right as possible. I try to picture a drummer when I'm mixing, and when the cymbals are that far apart it makes me think the drummer has really long arms, or has to leap off the drum throne to hit the cymbals.

[mikehalloran]

Ringo's kit was nearly always in mono and rarely panned center in the "stereo" mixes. Damn, if it had been true stereo, what'sthiernames might have made good records instead of the crap they are remembered for.

I agree: No Rules.

If clients want the snare out of the right and floor tom out of the left, I'll give it to them. I, OTOH, liked one mic on the bass, one on the snare/hi-hat and a pair of overheads (ORTF or M/S) set forward or behind the player - never directly overhead. I never mix the kit dead center but would put the kick drum there in my vinyl days.

I still mix narrow. Just getting into VIs and will gravitate to sets that sound good that way.

[FMiguelez]

Sorry for the late reply. I was working against the clock with a project.

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies!

Oh and I love to play with dynamics and the stereo picture.

Drums could be dry and close and punchy and mono in the verse and then explode into full ambient/trashy-sounding - for the chorus.... (SoundToys Devil-Loc, anyone?) .... again it depends on the genre!!

This is awesome. I'm so glad. You wrote that; not only because of the specific tip, but for sharing how a mixing engineer thinks and may approach things.

Also, I'd like to add that my problem is not the panning of the direct individual drum mics. I don't like panning them much and that's fairly straight forward.
I guess my real question or issue is: the more ambience / room sound I use, the more stereo it gets. With the far mics I start hearing bass drum to the sides as well.
I've heard some great records with stereo bass drums, but I want to confidently be able to control it at will.

So how do you make a very "roomy" snare with lots of ambience sound without making everything else too stereo or too roomy? (With only your given sets of direct and room mics).

I go mono for everything but the overheads,

That's exactly my point.
The way I understand is you have a direct mic for each drum in mono, and stereo pairs for overheads, middle and far positions.
So if you start with a nice quasi-mono mix for the direct mics, things will start getting more and more stereo the more you use the overhead or ambience mics. HOW do you avoid that?
I tried narrowing the spread in thise mics, but then it starts sounding a little weird... A little phasy.

I'm still totally new to Superior Drummer, so maybe the answer is right infront of me and I haven't seen it it yet...

I agree with Stephen & Mark,the longer I do this, the first thing I always do is minimize the extreme panning most drum VI's set as defaults.

Agreed. I also like my drums quite narrow in spread, but the only thing I could do so far is to narrow the spread of the ambience mics, which doesn't sound particularly good. It thickens the sound too much.

As kg said, the one thing that bothers me about the default panning in S2 is the extreme width of the crash cymbals, which puts them as far left and right as possible.

I know! I hate that. Plese tell me how I can control the panning of the cymblas to my taste in SD2. I havent't been able to figure it out because they dont have dedicated panners. Can you only do that in the overhead mics by narrowing them? What if you don't want to narrow the rest of the drums?

[mhschmieder]

I'm probably going to get back to some rock mixes this weekend, as I need some "space" before returning to my classical works, so if I open BFD this weekend I'll take a closer look at my settings. I think I might be using VSL PowerPan on the OH's to narrow to more or less the 10 o'clock through 2 o'clock positions.

I spent two complete weekends finessing my BFD mix ratios and approaches, but that was over a year ago -- I've only been working with live drums and with non-drum-oriented genres since then. I had promised Dave I'd send him my BFD presets once they were finalized, but never got to my "final pass" and didn't want to send "near-final" results. It took a lot of work, but I am way happier with my own settings than any out-of-box settings from any drum VI.

I'll see if I can find a way to "translate" my settings into plain text descriptions and post them here later this weekend (maybe as early as tonight, if yet another last-minute jazz gig doesn't come up).

[stephentayler]

Apart from room mic/ambient panning, I tend to mess with their dynamics quite radically...

Heavy compression with a fast attack, side chain compression - or frequency selective side chain ducking as in Waves C6, or my favourite, the Transient designer.... all good methods of sculpting room sound around the direct mics.

I use the same sort of methods for both VIs and real drums.

This way I find I am able to add the character of the room without compromising the clarity or punch of the direct channels. It's all a delicate balancing act!!

Cheers

Stephen

[rhythm_kitchen]

I was told Ringo's kit from EMI was Mid-Side.

Ck out the first Traffic album where the drum kit is 'raised up'. I don't know how it's done, but probably mangling phase in some manner (or narrowing the image) whatever...

[mhschmieder]

FM, I have BFD open right now, on the one project where I felt I got to my "final settings". This is just one drum set that I created, and is specific to a hybrid funk/ska feel, so take that for what it's worth. But I have found it is a good starting template for some of the other drum sets.

I think I might have set it up from drummer's perspective, as I work with a lot of left-handed drummers anyway and so have no specific reference in my head as to which is "right". But this is separate from stereo width and how close that puts one to the drummer.

Anyway, here are the mix settings I used for this one drum set, after removing all internal effects processing and all master bleed from the kick, snare, and other channels:

Snare Bottom: -42 dB
Snare Top 1: -6 dB
Snare Top 2: -14 dB
Kick Outside: -17 dB
Kick Inside: -6 dB
Toms (Low-Mid-High): -6 dB
Crash Cymbal: -6 dB
China Cymbal: -0 dB
Chinese Splash: -0 dB
Ride Cymbal: -0 dB
Hi-Hats: -0 dB
Drum Overheads: -9 dB
Room Mic: -18 dB
Ambient Mic: -24 dB
Master Level: -6 dB

Bear in mind that these levels are merely what is needed to avoid bleeding; but the intra0kit levels do matter further down the signal path of course (e.g. inside/outside kick ratio, and the base point for various overhead mics relative to the direct signal before applying the individual trims on the overhead/room/ambient sends).

I record each kit piece separately, and record the OH, Room, and Ambient Mics blended individually into each kit piece track using the personal blend settings listed below:

Kick Drum: OH Mic Send -1.5 dB; no Room or Ambient send
Snare Drum: OH Mic Send -1.5 dB; no Room or Ambient send
Toms: OH Mic Send -9.0 dB; no Room or Ambient send
Hi-Hats: OH Mic Send -7.0 dB; no Room or Ambient send
Crash Cymbal: OH Mic Send -9.0 dB; Room Mic Send -1.5 dB; Ambient Mic Send -9.0 dB
China Cymbal: OH Mic Send -9.0 dB; Room Mic Send -1.5 dB; Ambient Mic Send -9.0 dB
Chinese Splash: OH Mic Send -9.0 dB; Room Mic Send -1.5 dB; Ambient Mic Send -9.0 dB
Ride Cymbal: OH Mic Send -0.0 dB; Room Mic Send -12.5 dB; Ambient Mic Send -9.0 dB

Bear in mind that this is a Dub kit, which combines elements of Ska and Funk and is dry.

Everything is center-panned in BFD, and I pull everything in as a mono channel (summed).

I do quite a bit of tweaking to individual kit pieces, for resonance, tuning, etc., but didn't list any of those settings as they may not be pertinent outside BFD (I don't think other drum VI's give so much control).

I spent several weekends trying different approaches, but ultimately concluded that I could most closely emulate live drum tracking by working in mono only and using the various overhead mic contributions on a per-track basis, setting the ratios in the BFD setups.

Many prefer to mix in the Drum VI, but I find that this approach quickly gets confusing and problematic in terms of signal path and later plug-ins as well as phasing and the overall stereo image of the VI's drum set.

The approach above would need to be tweaked on a per-kit basis (and per genre/context), but it is foolproof in the final mix.

You could separate out the OH mics into their own channels, but I found this started to mess up later in the signal path so decided that it's better to blend in the OH's as needed in the drum set mix window inside BFD (with careful listening).

This saves work and time on future projects as well.

Within Digital Performer, I apply compression, EQ, some Oil Can Delay to the Snare and Hi-Hats (this being Dub), pan settings, etc., with no worries about stereo imaging getting fouled up. The various overhead mics provide some natural reverb and only a little Post-Production Reverb is added afterwards to the Kick, Snare, Hi-Hats, Toms, and Ride Cymbal.

Within DP, here are my pan settings for this specific kit, which is meant to sound full:

Kick Drum: C
Snare Drum: C
High Floor Tom: 8R
High Tom: 4R
Low Tom: L4
Hi-Hats: C
Ride Cymbal: 12R
Crash Cymbal: L12
China Cymbal: 2R
Chinese Splash: [ on paper somewhere -- not used in the song I referenced just now ]

I can't understand how anyone could make use of any presets in any Drum VI that I own or have tried, as they all bleed way over -0 dBFS! This is especially true of Kontakt libraries.