Mixing Drums and triggering

I

Ikiru

New member
Hey! Amateur engineer here :)

I need some help with mixing drum overheads. My problem is that the cymbals tend to sound very airy and distant, making my overall mix sound all over the place. Is there any way I can salvage this without having to rerecord the entire drum set/song (because of time constraints and that the song is played under a "live" situation so it's hard to sync the drums with the rest of the tracks)? I've tried to reinforce the OH tracks using cymbals created from Reason but I find copy pasting very very tedious. My EQ settings doesn't seem to help much either. I just want to have the OHs sound closer and brighter.

I've seen people use triggering to make drum kicks sound stronger and wondering if I could do the same for the OHs. Can someone let me know a little about triggering and how its done in protools?

Thanks!
 
then it's probably easier to rerecord if post production work takes longer than it.

drum trigger = sound replacement. may be one shot, maybe multisamples.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3DM7Qrv3OI

protools beat detective quantize tighten it. and replace away via tempo midi, that's all I can think of.

would you like to post up your drum track for me to check out and hopefully help you better with it?
 
But I don't have beat detective, at least I don't think so =/ Can't seem to find it. I've seen friends using a gate to do triggering, though I can't find tutorials on that on youtube.

Here's the raw drum track, unbalanced with no plugins. OHs are panned extreme left and right, and you might hear the drummer singing, but I managed to EQ it out after. The rest of the song masks it off as well.

http://www.4shared.com/file/249008993/696f3a2c/DRUMS.html
 
Hi

What mics are u using for your overheads?

I use a samson CO2, seems to give me pretty good results. Small diaphram pencil condenser mic may do the job for u :)

For recordings, its advisable to use cymbals with shorter decay :)

I just heard your recording.

Seems like you are riding on a pretty washy crash cymbal. You could change that cymbal to something less washy and brighter.
 
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Ah well, that's the only cymbal we have for that set and the drummer I recorded didn't request for a change so we went with it, and I'm not a drummer myself so when it comes to the drum kit itself, I'm a complete dunce.

I used the KSM141 for my overheads, also a small diaphragm condenser mic which worked alright for a test recording I did, the cymbals sound relatively brighht, but the mic placement this time was bad thus the dull far away sound. Though no matter how closed I placed the mic it just didn't sound right. And I had to make do with it because I was using a school studio and there are time restraints.

By the way, I can't seem to get Beat Detective anywhere, is there like an LE/free version (like a demo or something) for download?
 
ah wanted to reply yesterday but was busy with recording..

actually a cymbal with long decay is good, maybe cos i often work with cymbals with short decay. especially the tempo of your song is a slow paced one, slow decay would fit alright.

i'm on cubase , I have no idea with protools, only seen people use it. and the "industry standard" is to quantize/tighten drumtracks using beat detective.
i downloaded the drumtrack, my advice is next time it's essential to get your drummer to record metronome tight or punch in take. if you're not going to take your initial drums recording seriously you probably shouldn't take the entire song seriously at all cos it's just gonna do more harm than good. but then again your "school" situation is understandable.

"gate" is compression. dynamics. you can utilize compression to manipulate original sound individually esp drumtracks. trigger is "replacement"

Beat Detective : http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=beat+detective

I took your drumtrack and played around with it , fixed tempo at 142bpm cos your drummer's tempo keep shifting here and there, compress,eq,reverb here and there, got a little careless with the toms/kick overtone resonances. the intro's drum-snare is "trigger-enhanced" see if you can hear the "attack" difference compared to the 2nd part. let me know what you think of it. this's just an example and I only have your drums.mp3 to work with.

click here for link
 
to answer your question :
Sound problems -
either eq or compress , or replace (trigger).
very tedious? this song's drums structure is considered very simple already, wait till you got to deal with funk/metal/drum intense genres.

Tempo problems - quantize

still cannot solve or not effective in your situation, then re-record without fail already. or program drums.
 
MCA : thanks Px haha, actually it's even more punchier, but I mellowed it down on how I feel it should sound roughly in the final master in terms of levels. I guarantee if you try to record guitar/bass/vocals and mix in with my drums mix, it'll sound like "pails" although still cut through the mix. but only the attack. that's why I was saying this is just a guideline. I'm still not sure what genre this is, maybe clean guitars maybe distortion/heavy ones.

ikiru : personally I think the cymbals sound fine as is, if I were you I'd be worried about the snare because he tends to "rest" his stick upon hit giving the CHAKrkrrkrr... sound + hit soft.
 
Its such a transofrmation really. I havent got myself to work around with gates, limiters and compressor but I suppose using these devices the right way could get you these results. Are there any onboard mixers that can be used to get this kind of results or somewhere close? I'm trying not to go into post production so much..unless its an elaborate project where the band really needs that quality of sound. I will come looking for u Ron haha.
 
Yeah, okay so it's not THAT tedious, but still quite frustrating when I've got a lot more mixing to do and since its an assignment, I've to showcase some mastering within a one week+ deadline. And it's only my second time or so mixing an actual song, so I've yet to come across horror yet haha... Anyway, this particular song is a Chinese rock ballad (at least in my opinion) just fyi.

I've just listened to your fix on the drums, and it does sound better and tighter, have not compared it properly yet though. I wasn't so much bothered by the snare than the overheads because it was that which stood out and made the entire song sound rather messy.

I also tried to get the guy to play with a metronome but he couldn't after 2 hours so I got fed up and had the entire band tracked together instead and they too preferred it that way. Probably shouldn't have done that :/ Kind of too late now.

But say I do try to rerecord the drums. Given how the rest of the instruments were recorded in time to this current haphazard tempo, I can sync them up with beat detecive, right? Or will I have to end up rerecording all the instruments again? Sorry if it's a noob question, I've only been mixing for a very short period and have much to learn about plugins and stuff outside of just EQ and compression.

Oh yeah, and thanks a lot for the tips and help. :)
 
welcome to mixing man, i understand your stress being 2nd time/new. you're "newer" than I assumed.

if the rest of the instruments were already tracked at inconsistent tempo, then yeah unless you know how to use beat detective or quantize well, you're still going to re-record the rest of all the instruments in tempo with metronome this time. you're not even familiar or have "beat detective" , I highly recommend you don't be reliant on it. then just make do with whatever you have and focus more on the mixing than fixing.
 
fast game cause ive gotta run but try this out:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1194836/DRUMS-inversion.mp3

kick/snare triggered along with some basic EQ and compression on the kit blah blah

quick thoughts,i'll elaborate later - its all about the source material! both cymbals are horrible, the left one has too quick a decay and the right one is too trashy/washy.
i reckon the snare's tuned too high and the snare wires are too tight..sounds pretty choked.
]
PS your kick sounds pretty fine actually theres no real need to trigger it. toms are aight too
 
I think the toms were probably the only few parts miked decently. I'll probably try to track the drums again and see how it goes, learn to use beat detective while I'm at it if I can find the plugin on my school's software. I can't seem to find a compatible download for my own protools.

Well, thanks anyway.
 
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Yes, the original cymbals sound rather lifeless and good job on the processing, blueprint studios.

http://www.drumagog.com/

Expensive, but probably one of the best around and it has a fabulous interface too.

Honestly, I find this sound very workable and wouldn't use any sort of trigger/replacement but that's just me ;)
 
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