If the drums are the most important part of the song, think of it like this

Published: Thu, 10/19/17

The new Foo Fighters record is incredible.

It's so aggressive and cool and I can't get over it.

If you're a huge Foo Fighters fan like I am, I'm sure you can relate.

It got me thinking about how you start mixing, and I feel like this record prides itself on its drum sound.

It's so huge and powerful it just explodes out of the speakers.

I don't know for a fact whether they spent more time on the drum sound than any other instrument, but it makes me think about certain styles and genres and how I approach mixing those songs.

If I know the drums need to be aggressively in-your-face I'll focus on getting those drums as punchy as possible before moving on to the rest of the mix.

I'll spend time on:

Editing and sample replacement if needed
Analog summing and saturation
Transient design
EQ and compression
Parallel compression
The right reverb for the style

It's almost like you mix the perfect drum sound for the song and then sculpt the rest of the elements of the mix around the drum sound, instead of trying to give each instrument an equal space.

The fact is, certain instruments are more important than others for certain songs. Knowing which instrument to focus on that brings out the right character of the song is much more important than knowing the right compression settings or frequency curves.

Think of it like the first domino in a series of stacked dominos. If you make that domino fall, everything else will fall into place.

If you're struggling with your drum sound and you just can't get it sounding powerful enough, take a look at the things I teach you inside the Drum Mix Toolkit. I guarantee it will help you take your drum mixes to the next level.