A great tutorial about mixing drums ...

[malice]

All you have to do is do the opposite:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=732220516390769254&q=mixing+tutorial

enjoy

malice

[Old Man]

I think the video is instructive in that it is a good example of what happens a lot today:

Amazing tools are easily had by musicians and that is good, but it also means that people who have not been trained to be engineers (read as: worked your ass off at a real studio for an experienced mentor and had that same ass kicked regularly when needed) now call themselves engineers before they have learned the skills necessary. This includes ear training in terms of what sounds good and what sounds like newbee crap.

You can also tell that these guys have read all the magazine artlcles about how to do it. "gee whiz, do you bring the close mics up into the overheads?)

[mousdrvr]

:icon_eek:

[malice]

Maybe we could play a game, like everyone posts one thing they are doing wrong.

I start :

1) you don't mix drums with your eyes :D

lol

malice

[Skwaidu]

2) He's checking the phase of the 1st snare mic in relation to the bd leakage...

[seagate]

3) With a face like that you do radio, not video...

[CaptainHook]

4) They are making tutorials on mixing.

5) For some macabre reason, i actually watched it all. (My mistake i guess..)

6) They claim the source sounds were good to start with...?
Maybe it was the google video compression, or that i'm
on my laptop and not at the studio.. but... really?
THAT is a good source sound? And as they say.. "To Tape"?
I know it's all too easy to criticize on an internet forum, but
the performance was not exactly helping the situation either.

7) Is that REALLY their control room? That's where they mix?
And on headphones? Or was it purely for the "benefit" of
making the video?

[CaptainHook]

8) Adding more than 5db at a given frequency will kill your mix
because you'll be forced to compress and limit a whole bunch.

I'm pretty sure slippy would be fucked if either using alot of eq or compression would end a mix. ;)
People can AND do use both in extremes as weapons of mass
destruction in BOTH senses. Some people come up with killer
mixes, others kill mixes.

[CaptainHook]

Awh man..
I can't help myself and i might as well add to my post count:

9) "I wish proFools had a "clone" feature with an option dialog
box that let you select which parameters of the track were copied."

(Yeah, duplicate track does that in the version i have... whatever)

10) "If you dont have a room "tone", you can always just add
reverb to the whole thing. Usually i'll just add reverb to the snare and toms and gate it. "

11) I love how the mix coming from the DAW is distorted.
Beautiful. They must have borrowed the technical geniuses
behind the Mixerman Radio show to produce the video.

[CaptainHook]

Maybe we could play a game, like everyone posts one thing they are doing wrong.


I know i broke the rules, but i'm only human. Sorry.

[Brendo]

Awh man..
I can't help myself and i might as well add to my post count:

9) "I wish proFools had a "clone" feature with an option dialog
box that let you select which parameters of the track were copied."

(Yeah, duplicate track does that in the version i have... whatever)

You're running 7.x, right?

[bunnerabb]

Get a drummer in a good sounding room with a kit that has been tuned recently.

Make sure the drummer can play.

Set up mics and check the phase relationships of the mics used, to each other, as these signals come pouring into the desk.

Place them so that you don't have phase issues and you get the sound of the kit and the room.

Look into one of those IBPs if you got the dough.

Press record.

Tell the drummer to play.

See if it sounds like that drummer playing those drums in that room.

See if that's a good fucking idea.

Print.

Open mixer, play back.

Adjust to taste.

See if the other sounds that will be playing along with the drums sit well since the whole idea is to get whatever song those drums will be played on to sound like that song.

Adjust to taste.

Open beer.

High five.

Go home.

Did I miss something?

I hope so, because I'm not anywhere near what you would call a "professional tracking engineer" but I know more than that muffinhead in that video.

[otek]

12) After checking the polarity of the overheads against the kick, he never checks the snare (or any other part of the kit) against the overheads or the room.


I also love "I hate 1K on drums". :D

(and whereas I think perhaps sound related questions are a bit harsh given that we're listening to a highly compressed video, does anybody actually like the drums better "after"?)

[dwoz]

from the video:

"...and we've just got one vocal track, so here's the stereo track for that..."


"...like, sometimes I want to set the toms a little lower, or maybe a little higher."


"this drummer is more of a jazz guy".


....jazz guy.



the kid in the red shirt (!) starts talking about the functionality available on a new SSL console...he's never been in the same CITY BLOCK as an SSL.

they're having fun though.

I do notice that there are no speakers in the room at all. HOWEVER...it sounds like we're listening to the track through room bleed from monitors into the commentators' mics. Go figure.

Or maybe that's actually what the drums sound like? (shudder)

dwoz

[dikledoux]

You guys are better troopers than I am... I couldn't sit still for more than a couple minutes.

First major, actual, unforgiveable, shouldn't-tell-people-to-do-it mistake the guy made... LOOKING at an analyzer plugin and starting to make some pre-suppositions about how he was going to EQ the kick drum. He mentioned it's a nice "visual aid" and I guess that's something of a fair statement. But the guy didn't listen to 15 seconds of material before he was tweaking by sight. So he's gonna look at the graph and eq out the very things that make a kick drum what it is... and likely miss the basketbally "poink" sound because that doesn't show up on the graph.

I had to stop after that.

dik

[nobby]

"We'll just EQ the snare out of the kik track."

[malice]

"We'll just EQ the snare out of the kik track."

Sig material here

malice

[otek]

the kid in the red shirt (!) starts talking about the functionality available on a new SSL console...he's never been in the same CITY BLOCK as an SSL.

I think he might have.

Notice how he kind of talks like he's fresh out of recording school? :Roll eyes:

[Pimp-X]

Pretty funny.

But far, far too common.

Affordable recording gear is killing music. :lol:

[studjo]

did you guys follow the crying and lamenting over there at GS???

[lebouche]

I thought I was an idiot....in fact I still think I'm an idiot, but these guys are either retards or comics.
Maybe comic retards (no offence meant to retards or retard relations):)

[Zoesch]

HOLY FUCK!

Actually it'll be shorter to name one thing that he's doing right... which is zero.

Mixing with a spectrum analyzer on is a sure way to KILL the tonal balance of whatever you are mixing.

EQ should be treated as a non-renewable resource.

Starting with the Kick when you are NOT experienced is also a sure-fire way to get a smudgy drum sound (Plus... WTF were they doing to THE ONLY overhead they had)

"There is no right way to do it" "If you have someone who plays like John Bonham you don't need to close-mike them" "The overheads are mostly for cymbals"

It's not the cheap gear, it's the cheapening of our gene pool that's killing everything... it's awesome that they can mix and talk at the same time, certainly they're not listening. :Cry:

Oh, and when he mentions the SSL I wanted to die...

[Mixerman]

Okay, things wrong.

Beta52 in the kik.

One overhead.

The "analyst." Ugh.

Started with the kik then the snare.

Might EQ out the snare bleed in the kik????

Pans the snare. NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!! Please stop doing that!

In checking phase between the kik and the overheads, he neglected to check it against the snare and the toms!!!!!! OMG.

Suggests using an oscilliscope to check phase coherency issues.

He hates 1k on drums?

He's musing the rooms to add a little "reverb" but only used a mono oh mic???

Now he's making drum balance decsions against an unmixed track.

I'm done here.

I quit.

Malice. Fuck you.

Mixerman

[seagate]

The "analyst." Ugh.


Hey, what would you know, you don't mix ITB...

http://www.msc.id.au/private/tmp/couch.gif

[otek]

Hey, what would you know, you don't mix ITB...

If the Analyst is a symptom, methinks ITB mixing may be the carrier.

Let's hope some of us are immune to the disease.

[Zoesch]

He's musing the rooms to add a little "reverb" but only used a mono oh mic???

Now he's making drum balance decsions against an unmixed track.


But he used TWO room mics to get the room in stereo :lol:

If he was so strapped for mics an M-S arrangement for the overheads and one room mic would've given him a much better sound.

It kills me really, I think about 40% of my brain cells died watching that video.

[meLoCo_go]

ummm...
nothing to add to the subject...
but...
do I understand correct - they called sonar a protools???

[Calvin]

Oh my...the Horror!

Just brutal. I'm no genius, but at least I know enough to know that I'm not qualified to make an instructional video.

Calvin

[Brendo]

I love the way he, 7 minutes in, asks how the other guys usually do it.

"The best way of course is an oscilloscope... but, we don't have that, we don't have that here, so we have to use our ears."

Fuck!

More than 5dB limit on EQ kills the dynamics in your mix? What? Have these guys heard of adjusting the output of the EQ section?

The method I've been teaching my guys, as a starting point, is this:

1. Throw ALL the faders up
2. Fix anything that sucks - solo minimally
3. Print

Surely hearing everything together is a decent starting point to knowing how things are going to work or more importantly not work with each other?

[Brendo]

oh, and it still sounds like ass at the end

[Boswell]

I am very new to all of this and i do want to start by getting in to good habits.

I watched the video i thought the information was good. However after having read the comments on the forum i understand that there were basic faults in the information given. I dod find it strange that he could mix with no monitors and also chat at the same time. Mixing with his eyes, well that was just stupit.

What i am asking for i good practices for recording and mixing drums with a DAW at home.

It has to be said, i dod have a right good laugh reading the posts.

thanks for any help given.

[malice]

It has to be said, i dod have a right good laugh reading the posts.

thanks for any help given.

That is precisely why having fun like this can be informative.

Hidden behind the jokes are the explanations about why they are doing this the wrong way.

After the laugh, comes the reflection and then the information.

enjoy indeed ;)

malice

[TSTW]

Maybe we could play a game, like everyone posts one thing they are doing wrong.


malice

The guy on the right is being allowed to speak.

[imagineaudio]

All those guys were speaking.



would have been more useful if they just miced a really angry dog who growled and barked through the whole thing. At least they wouldn't be spreading their bullshit around.