Multi-band compression is a great tool to understand. It can really help shape the sound of your mixes and it
comes in handy when the full-band compressor sounds too heavy-handed on a track.
What follows is an excerpt from my Drum Mix Toolkit that teaches you how to use the multi-band compressor on drums.
I just released it on Kindle today so you can grab it on Amazon right here. However, make sure you read to the end of this post to see how you can get even more free stuff and help me hit the charts along the way!
Chapter 5 – How to Use Compression on Drums
Compression is a lovely subject that everyone agrees on. Each drum has a specific setting that should be used and there’s only one right way to compress everything when you’re mixing any type of genre.
Just kidding.
Satire aside,
compression can be really fun to experiment with during mixdown because there are so many different ways of doing it. One of the more powerful ways of applying compression is by using the multi-band compressor.
Multi-Band Compression For Bigger Drums
It took me a long time to start using multi-band compression effectively while mixing. I was afraid of using it for the longest time because I wasn’t really sure how to work it correctly.
So I just kept on using my other
compressors, not realizing the potential I was passing over.
I always used multi-band compressors for mastering, but that somehow seemed easier and more straightforward.
It wasn’t until I realized the problem-solving capabilities of the multi-band compressor that I got hooked on using them for mixing, especially for compressing the drums.
A multi-band compressor lets you compress the entire drum kit at varying levels throughout the entire frequency spectrum. This is great when
you need to hit the kick pretty hard in the low-end but don’t want the cymbals to constantly compress every time the kick hits.
A good process for getting into using multi-band compression on your drums is as follows:
Find a drum preset – It’s always good to start with a preset you might like. You’re going to tweak it to fit the sound, but having a preset that gets you started saves you time.
Tweak the crossover bands – Solo the
frequency bands in your multi-band compressor and move the crossovers to where they make sense to you. Make the low-end band only tackle the low-end of the kick drum; have a low-mid band that’s tackling all the meaty stuff that can cause you problems in the dirty middle; and tweak your high-mid crossover so you’re tackling the crack of the snare and the punch of the beater of the kick drum. Finally, let the high-end crossover worry about the sheen of the cymbals and the air of the
drums.
Tweak the compression settings – At this point you really just have four compressors working together on separate frequency bands. Then you can tweak the individual compression settings, the threshold, ratio, attack and release until each compressor is working the way you want to. Don’t be afraid to push one band of the compressor harder than another. Sometimes you need to be more heavy-handed in the lows and the low-mids while you only lightly compress the
highs.
Compressing the Drum Group
Compressing the drum group can tighten up the entire kit. It glues the tracks together and creates a punchier overall sound. Go for a few dBs of gain reduction at a 4:1 ratio to get started. Then tweak the attack and release until you get a tight drum sound that isn’t completely cutting out the transients of the kick and snare while still riding the peaks of the drum bus.
I find a fairly quick attack that’s not all the way fast (i.e. letting
the initial transient through while still compressing the entire signal) and a release that’s either timed to the song or at least resets itself fairly quickly, will usually do the trick. For really quick attack times and character, a FET style compressor like an 1176 will work well.
If you want a transparent compressor that doesn’t color the sound as much, you can go for a VCA style circuit, popularized by the DBX 160. But if you want tone, some character and a slow reaction time
(guaranteeing your transients will get through), use a opto style compressor like an LA2A emulation.
Multi-band compression is a great option as well because you can tweak the compression settings differently depending on the frequency range. This is a good option if you want a higher ratio on the low-end to thicken it up and a more aggressive threshold on the low-mids to tame the boxiness and boom. You’ll then tweak the high-mids and high frequencies to let them breathe, possibly adding a
slow release to the highs to kill the unnecessary sound from the room recording.
A third compression option is to be very conservative on the drum bus and use parallel compression to make them more powerful.
It’s an easy way to get the best of both worlds: a steady and dynamic drum group with some powerful compression blended underneath.
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