Problems not with the KPA, but with my drums

    Quote from Garrincha

    But something is wrong with that sound. It sounds more like a shaker than a HiHat and I can understand why you are not satisfied with it. Was that the Avatar kit in SD2? Check the 13" Sabian HHX HiHat, it has a crispier sound. Also try the different articulations like "sequenced soft". Those are hits from an actual HiHat track cut into pieces and the usually work great for groovy stuff.


    Do you have an example of a song with a HiHat you particularly like? I could have a look and see what I can come up with. But first I need to know what exactely you are after.


    For mixing just read Andy's posting. It pretty much sums up what one would usually do with drumtracks. Don't overdo compression, just as Andy said. Chris Lord-Alge, who does the most punchy drums in the whole wide universe, is said to use a 1176 comp, attack on 9 o'clock and release on 3 o'clock (if you happen to have a real 1176 or a plugin that models the reversed knob-behaviour of the original), otherwise it's a long attack and short release, and he then uses around 3 dB of compression. True, CLA will add more layers of compression at later stages (for example parallel compression like Andy describes) and he also has a transient designer as his secret weapon, but for a start he only compresses moderately.

    Yup, thank you. I will post two files tomorrow evening CET. One groove i like, i think from Jason Bonham, let's see. - and one groove i did. and we can see into this.



    cu

    My occupation: showing teenagers the many hidden secrets of the A-minor chord on the guitar.

    Small edit: Tyler is right..


    My post above was aimed at more Rock/Pop/Blues projects..


    But for Metal stuff, Direct mics are ever more important, and they become the focus, as detail that's played fast does get lost in ambient mics/distant mics,


    (small story here) - Few years back. I had a metal band send me an album to mix, so I thought OK, lets do this..was all going well, until I got a phone call from the producer saying.. Hey man, we decided that we want a more Open sounding drumkit involved, but unfortunately we have no time to re-track.. you mix guys can knock up new sounds right?"... well right!.. we can, sometimes there are quick and easy methods out there for drum replacement..


    But this case, nothing worked, as the beats of the kicks were so fast, they pretty much blended together.. So I had to go oldschool.. and literally "tab to transient" copy and paste new sample move to next...urrgh.. a zillion hours later, with a zillion kick hits in the track I was done!...then I had to repeat this for 10 other songs.. to this date it was my largest mix session, (took 6 weeks to complete the entire album) - and I swore that I'd never go back.. and have not since hah!


    I dont mix metal that much, but when I do, I insist they give me midi data to play with! :)


    I know the story. Though i do mostly metal mixing it´s somehow strange that the fastest drummers always seem to have the worst sounding drumkits and have no clue how to tune them. :) I remember one session where my final option was to secretly replace all the kick, snare and tom sound with samples. The drummer was so damn proud of how great his drums sounded :P

    I think Andys post was great (also Tills) and there's some real helpful advice for (not only) beginners. You should really concentrate more on the steps Andy was mentioning cause what you said having sounds out of the box that work immediately in a mix context, well that's not the way it works if you wanna achieve good results. you always have to adjust the signals in context to each other. if a preset is immediately working, that's just by coincidence, dont' rely too much on presets, see them more as a navigator or a compass. that's why there's no easy or quick way to produce good mixes and if you really want to get better you'll have to invest time and concentrate on that.


    Once again Andys post was one of the most concrete here I've seen. You can gain a lot from it by going through it instead of saying that's too complicated or whatever... no excuses ;)

    I have found it! I wanted to post this tomorrow, but i searched my oldest files in the web and here it is, garrincha et al
    i recorded this song in 2009, with whatever was available ATM. I do not remember exactly.
    Maybe EZ drummer, probably not, but some Halion Add-on for Cubase SE, and a sound from the ZoomG1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    And i would like to re-rerecord it with EZ drummer and a good rig of the KPA ofcourse.


    It is called Summer or Sunshine , or summer of 2k9, whatever


    This groove i played with my own hands aka keyboards :D and i like it very much, but the sound is bad, garrincha and guys.


    And here i have found a groove that is very good (IMHO, ofcourse) concerning bass and snare and cymbals and only good when it comes to the hihats.
    But this will give a good idea of what i am after. It is a backing track version of the great "Song of yesterday" by the also great BCC.




    Edit: i have NEVER seen sth like this: chrome does not play my sunshine while IE and firefox do ?( . this is strange, so please try another browser in case this happens to you, too. thx

    My occupation: showing teenagers the many hidden secrets of the A-minor chord on the guitar.

    Edited 2 times, last by Geraldo7 ().

    Hey guys, i have finally posted examples above!! now we can talk about music not theory. cu

    My occupation: showing teenagers the many hidden secrets of the A-minor chord on the guitar.

    I use Neumann KM184's on my overheads and get a great sound but I still roll the bass off after the tracks have been recorded, on playback while mixing. I can get better definition and punch from my toms, snare, kick and hi-hat by compressing and eq-ing them individually and then blending into a stereo field. The OH's are used mainly to get the sizzle of the cymbals and mild ambience though room reverbs are set separately for drums and instruments based on the overall album/project.

    Gettin' funky up in here..