Changing drumbalance in a song

Jason wrote mute automation on the ssl to open the room mics on every snare hit on this tune. I remember him saying it was sent to a publison fx unit to get the sound he got.

I'll do things like add a parallel snare with compression and EQ, sometimes a the same with BD. Then those will come in as things get bigger in the arrangement. Sometimes something like an effect on the bridge, or changing the room mic relationship. Other times the playing covers the change. I'll simply automate the drum parallel if needed.

Almost never but hey, I am learning from these great answers.

Honestly, the things I mention are options that I sometimes use.  Many times I don't feel the need to do anything beyond making the drums make sense. 

I do a lot of automation:

Kick or snare up/down for different sections depending on the rhythmic content of the other instruments - most of the time one shell moves one way and the other shell the other way. Sometimes it feels better to lean into a rhythm and "agree" with it and sometimes if feels better to "disagree" with it. Oftentimes this sort of disagreement is in the verse when it's a little imbalanced or intentionally unsettled anyway.

I'll automate kick low end down on double-kick sections - it helps keep the double-kick from sounding like the most intense section of a song (if it isn't supposed to be - it's often being used for tension or momentum). It also leaves a little low end in reserve to bang on a important downbeat. I'll push kicks up on important hits.

Snares get automated up on fills a lot of times. Same with toms. Similarly I'll automate toms fill-to-fill in order to make sure they do/don't stand out in the way that make the most emotional sense. Also, I'll automate low end down in a tom ride section so I can get more apparent rhythm and less rumble out of it...then bring to boom boom back for the transition.

Overheads get pushed up on big crash moments. I find I bring them down if the drummer is playing an energy that is out-of-balance with the other stuff in a section of a song. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes that's bad. I have to deal with it either way. Sometimes I'll automate a little width a little wider into bigger sections where more things are competing for the middle and the soft-pan positions.

I like to have two or three different "sets" of room mics. If I'm tracking it's often a stereo medium room, a mono close room, and a mono far room. Sometimes people hand me two pairs of stereo rooms. I can live with whatever as long as it's cool. I like to work the balance of those vs the close mics to change the size/intensity of the section. To me, the drums always feel like they're being hit harder if the ambience becomes more apparent. Taking the ambience away feels like it gets smaller. Favoring mono or stereo rooms depends on the rest of the arrangement. I often like to push more stereo sources when a song gets bigger. Sometimes the right decision isn't to push a close mic up during a fill but instead to push a room mic up to give the impression of more intensity out of the drummer.

All of my drum mics go through a drum buss. That gets an automation pass in which I ride the drum bus volume up and down during the song in real time. I play it top to bottom and try to perform the drum volume mix the same way I'd vary the intensity of the drum performance if I were playing the drums.

These are not always every time sorts of things, either. Just as the spirit moves me and if the drums (or certain parts) are really pushing the energy of the track or if they're supposed to be serving other pieces of the song.

Thanks, just used that in a tune I was working on, smart idea!

I always read this thread title as dumbbalance, which I always struggle with in every mix !

Guess, I need help in more ways than one !

secondary question: i am thinking about mixing the drums from section to section. to explain further: cutting up the drums and than mixing the drums for the intro, the verse, the refrain etc. doing a balance totally for just the one section. with clip gain.

do you ever do something like this or do you pick the loudest part (the refrain) and mix your drums to sound good there? and than do volume automation for different parts.

i am wondering, sounds really exciting to me to mix every section individually. just ain‘t shure how those transitions will work out :-)

I always start a mix by listening to the most exciting part of it and starting there.  I always apply peak normalizing to every raw track so that I know that the peaks are always at 0dB.  I then do my editing, sometimes cutting up by sections, or by individual hits or whatever I need to do.  If it's a lot of cuts I'll "glue" (Reaper function for creating a single new take out of many edited sections) them together and then sometimes edit this into sections.  At this point I can either do raw gain changes on each section (Another Reaper function allows you to grab the volume of a particular section and adjust it independently, which is before the effects and analogous to Clip Gain) or use volume automation (after the effects by default, and I usually use it on the busses).  

I'll then pull back the volumes on different things for the different sections if needed, or switch effects, etc, as needed.  

Sometimes the effects I use aren't the same ones for different sections.  Sometimes you need a really loud and long reverb for a chorus but a short ambiance for the verse, so I'll automate mutes or sends or levels into each, etc.  Usually it's just the pre-send level as that's generally enough to radically change the reverb's effect on the mix.