The problem with grouping all your drums to one drum group is that some drum tracks are more powerful than others.

Take this mistake I made the other day: I routed the kick and snare to a drum bus with the rest of the overheads and room mics.

I then tweaked this and that and the other thing and I definitely did something wrong because the drums sounded really washed out and weird in the choruses.

The cymbals were all over the place like somebody was just pushing and pulling their volume. It kind of sounded like side-chain compression but it wasn't making anything sound cool. 

Turns out, the kick drum was going into the group and it was much louder than the rest of the instruments.

And because the threshold of the full-band compressor on the drum group was set too aggressively it caused the entire rest of the drum mix to pump in time with the kick drum.

The kick drum was louder, so it was triggering the compressor and pulling the gain down on everything with it.

Luckily I spotted this in time and tweaked the compressors on both the kick drum, overhead AND drum group bus so it sounded more natural.

So if you find yourself mixing and the drums are reacting weirdly like that, make sure that you don't have a renegade compressor going crazy on the wrong bus.

Learn from my mistake today, and if you want more drum mixing techniques that make your drums powerful and punchy (without sounding pumpy), then grab the Drum Mix Toolkit here:

www.DrumMixToolkit.com

Remember that if you grab it this week you'll get my free guide, Simple Drum Recording Techniques You Can Use Right Away, to help you get great drum sounds at the source as well.

This offer is exclusive to my subscribers and customers and you won't find it anywhere else. Expires Friday so hit the link to grab the Drum Mix Toolkit before then.