A common drum mixing problem is dealing with the snare getting buried in the mix. There’s that thin line you have to find that sits somewhere between being “buried in the mix” and then sounding like it’s “on top of the mix.” Sometimes you can fix this problem the mix, but I have an alternative...
If you’re wondering about how to mix drums from your home studio and NOT let them end up as weak and wimpy, then I’ve got a couple secret weapons for you. In the last few years, I’ve become obsessed with these two mix processors that help me shape and transform my home recorded drums into...
Yesterday we talked about the overall process for mixing drums, in my post: How to Make an Exciting Drum Mix in 9 Simple Steps. Today we’re going to dive deep into the fundamentals of making the foundation of your drum mix rock solid. Rock solid. Foundation. Bedrock. Solid like a cliff? Get it? Heh…I make...
Drum Mixing is one of the most important elements of creating a solid foundation in your mix. A weak drum sound kills the rest of the mix and makes everything else suffer. That’s why I created the Drum Mix Toolkit. It’s all I’ve learned in the last 11 years of working with drums, both live, in...
I got a frantic response from Michael, one of my subscribers, about EQ that I thought I would clear up: Here’s what he had to say: Your class was awesome and I really enjoy your articles so thank you for taking the time to help people like me!!! But… I have read so many articles...
One common EQ problem on an overall mix is harshness. Usually, you’re so scared of the low-mids and causing muddiness that you end up adding too much of the high-mids to compensate. Sometimes, the solution to the harshness is something that is scary to think about, in theory. This has happened to me and I...
There’s a good discussion about snare mixing inside the Facebook community that I thought I’d draw your attention to. Curt was looking for a way to get the thickness out of his snare without adding too much snap to it. I recently finished a punk rock track where I had fun mixing the snare so...
Last week I finished a mix for one of the Monthly Mix Scholarship students that I’d like to talk about today. In fact, I’m taking applications for April this Edin was last month’s scholarship winner and we worked on one of his songs, a Bosnian singer/songwriter style song with great acoustic guitar arrangements and killer...
I’m a big fan of my mixcube, but relying on it entirely can be a disaster. Here’s what happened: I was working on a mix Making your mixes translate across all speaker systems is incredibly important. I even made a handy infographic a while ago to help you do that. So, I’ve found that relying...
I spent some time mixing this week and one of the main things I thought about was how important the drum bus is to the overall sound of your drum kit. I route my drums so that everything ends up in the drum bus. It’s easier to manage but it’s also important to not do...