If you're like some of my students, you don't have access to a drummer.
Yet, you still use a lot of drums, beats, and percussion in your songs I'm sure.
Nic Hamilton is an Audio Issues Insider and he plays most of his drum tracks on pads that trigger samples.
Other students use virtual drummer plug-ins, and then we have other musicians working in a lot of different genres that use simple beats and loops.
If you're using virtual drummers and sampled beats you might be mistaken in thinking that you don't need to do any mixing to the tracks because they sound so good out of the box.
But that just means that they'll sound like they're straight out of the box. They'll sound the same as the other song that uses the same sample because you were too lazy to add your own flair to them.
Might be a little bit embarrassing to have the same cookie-cutter sample in your song because you didn't bother to do some mixing.
As powerful and well recorded as these samples are, especially compared to subpar home studio drums, you can still make them stand out.
Here are four things to try if you want an even more powerful and professional feel from your virtual drums:
- Parallel compression for impact and power.
- A snare-stretch reverb for depth and separation between your snare the rest of your drums.
- A transient designer to change the envelope of the signal, adding more attack or sustain to certain drums.
- Reverb to change the entire ambience of your samples, making them sound like they're in a completely different room.
And don't forget, you'll still need to use EQ if you're working with other instruments that clash with the drums.
Even the best-sounding samples need to be EQ'd into the mix so that they fit with the rest of the instruments, the bass in particular
These are the kind of mixing tricks you learn inside the Drum Mix Toolkit.
- Need more information on parallel compression? There's a whole video walkthrough that includes how to use parallel compression.
- Need to add specific space to the snare sample or the drums in general? I show you how to do that.
- Want to understand transient design to add attack to your samples? There's a video on that.
- Need to know the difference between multi-band compression and full-band compression when you're compressing your drums? There's a whole video on that.
And if there's one thing my students have the hardest time with, it's getting the bass and the kick to glue together.
Not only do I talk about that problem in-depth in the Drum Mix Toolkit eBook, but I've also included a quick video with my most important tips to use when you need to keep the kick and bass from clashing and want them grooving in the mix.
The Drum Mix Toolkit helped a recent student, Tom to be "a little more fearless and creative when choosing between various mixing approaches, whilst also helping narrow down the most useful options. It also increased my appreciation for the use of gating and sample replacement in drum mixing."
So if you've been frustrated with the drum samples you've been using and unsure about what to do next to make them sound the way you want them to, or if you've had enough of the thin home recorded drums in your small room sounding wimpy and weak, the Drum Mix Toolkit is guaranteed to help you out.
Check it out here:
www.DrumMixToolkit.com
