Post by jmoose on Mar 2, 2023 16:50:13 GMT -6
Huh? What'd I say..? It was good?
Not sure I've ever said make or break... but I do believe 100% that the drums absolutely define the entire tone & boundaries of an album. They cover every frequency from the lowest lows to the highest highs.
My "mix" template has nothing on it. Always start with a blank session. There might be some things I do gravitate towards but its always a blank start and I'll frame out from there.
Couple reasons behind that is one... With any sort of processing, especially compression & parallel's and "smash/nuke" mode its always really easy to add that stuff and pretty much impossible to take away. Take it off and its deflating, almost like starting over.
Another is simply that every single project is different. No one-size approach is going to work...
Sent one to mastering last week that's pretty much industrial. Think Ministry & Nine Inch Nails. Total cyborg. Live drums. Programmed drums. Looped drums. All mostly really aggressive. Right now its a singer / songwriter thing that's pretty stock.
Next are some live recordings which... one set is pretty good. The other..? Whoever tracked decided to use up ALL the bits. Not sure what happened, maybe he set trims on the first band & never touched them again but every 3rd hit on kick snare & toms are at 0.0dBfs. Its a miracle they still sound like anything.
And sometimes, quite rarely but sometimes I get things that are tracked by a money hitter and they don't really need anything. Push faders up and maybe a little "correction" here & there to sit nicer. Don't wanna screw those up!
In all cases tracks get loaded into a blank session & first thing I'll do is balance out the tracks so it sounds like a reasonable kit...
For the live guy stuff that means SSL channels across the toms... need that gate to control leakage (and poorly tuned ringing toms) and I'll use the EQ because why not? After that its normal stuff? Is the snare in phase with the overheads? Are the kick dynamics pretty solid or do we need to sit on those? Snare sound good or is it cardboard?
Once the basic kit is roughed in to a static mix... faders at 0 or -5 I'll bring in other instruments. Well, they were probably already there in the background...
But parallels & stuff? Not right away. If & when things start getting lost, kick is losing impact as the mix builds? I'll go back and reinforce whatever needs it.
The exception, because there's ALWAYS exceptions... is when the drums come in and we're automatically looking for some sort of "effect" and highly audible processing. If that's the case all bets are off and I'll blow 'em up from the get-go.
