Advanced Drum Mixing: Focusing the Transients

In this drum mixing tutorial, we focus on refining the sound of our drums by reducing clutter and enhancing clarity using EQ and a Transient Shaper. Utilizing the Kilohearts Free Transient Designer (available here: kilohearts.com/products/kiloh..., we demonstrate how to effectively shape the dynamics of different frequency bands to achieve a polished result.
The tutorial begins with an introduction emphasizing the simplicity of the technique and its effectiveness in improving drum clarity. The tutorial then dissects the rack used in the process, explaining how it splits the snare into two channels: the "focus" channel for foreground frequencies and the "unfocus" channel for background frequencies. Each channel is equipped with a Transient Shaper to control dynamics independently. The demonstration illustrates how adjusting parameters such as sustain and attack can drastically alter the character of the drum, from tight and crisp to punchy and powerful.
about #Astrobear:
Astrobear is the electronic music project of John Janiczek. This project explores multiple genres with a common theme of blending polar opposites like aggressive electro bass lines with gentle ambient melodies. Astrobear was discovered when his remix of Hyperlandia by Deadmau5 was selected as the winner of the Microsoft Original by Design competition. Now, Astrobear enters 2023 releasing his first track with the Mau5trap label, titled “So Says the Sea”, as a part of the “We Are Friends 11” compilation album. Building off of this momentum, Astrobear is planning to grow the project beyond the bedroom producer gig with an increased focus on releasing and performing his music.
▶︎ Astrobear online:
Find my music and content organized at: fanlink.tv/astrobear
Follow me at: / astrobearmusic
#musicproducer #lofiproducer #hiphopproduction #audioengineer #mixingmastering #kilohearts #transientshaper #tutorial #fabfilter #equalizer

[@universebreeze]

Ahhh, that's clever! Is it something that Dan Worrall was talking about in his Punchy Drums bandpass video? Btw, your channel is a goldmine and one of the coolest discoveries that I made this year. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and all your hard work :)

[@astrobearmusic1977]

I love Dans videos but this was actually inspired by the Oxford envolution plug-in. I saw noisia using envolution on a stream and I wanted to use that technique, but didn’t want to shell out the money because I figured I could build something similar with EQ and transient shaper. I just watched the Dan Worall punchy drum video again and I think the main difference is that he doesn’t add the inverted band pass signal to the “dry” signal. So in my rack the frequencies are split into two complementary bands like it’s just slicing the frequency pie up. But in Dans video he adds the band pass as a layer, like a healthy portion of whipped cream. Idk maybe this pie metaphor isn’t going anywhere 😂 Also I will mention that the main reason I set it up this way is for the phase coherency. Dan mentions at the beginning of his video that the phase shift of the band pass is negligible so he doesn’t care about using it in parallel. I usually try to preserve as much detail as I can when mixing so adding the inverted band pass to the dry signal cancels out any of the phase distortion.

[@alexsatri_]

Instantly reminded of Dan Worrall video, but also realised you did your own twist, so congrats and well done man, that was very clever! @@astrobearmusic1977

[@astrobearmusic1977]

@@alexsatri_ thank you!

[@jacobdwyre4345]

Loving these videos bud, very informative!

[@astrobearmusic1977]

Thank you bubba!

[@Oversat_]

Great technique! Will try it out later today!

[@astrobearmusic1977]

Thanks oversat! Glad you liked the technique

[@adamtomlinson4360]

I think cause i'm not familiar with Ableton i am having a hard time following this😂 i thought they was all parallel, but it doesn't look like they are. I don't understand how that rack layout would translate to a normal mixer scenario in Cubase, Reaper, or FL Studio in my case. I thought it was a dry track and 2 parallel tracks, but i'm not getting the same result here. It just multiplies the signals in most cases. It's not "focus and unfocusing" the input sound

[@astrobearmusic1977]

I got a similar question on Reddit so let me just copy pasta the reply. I can see as a non Ableton user there might be some confusion because some of the parts that weren’t shown it was implied that you’ve already seen them because Ableton racks duplicate everything identically. So focus channel is: Bandpass -> transient shaper Unfocus channel has two sub channels Unfocus A: Bandpass (identical) -> phase inverter Unfocus B: Completely dry Then the total Unfocus channel: Sum A+B -> transient shaper The sum A+B creates an exact opposite frequency and phase response of the Focus bandpass because of how it is set up. This is how I get the band split to completely null cancel with the unprocessed signal (showing there is no phase distortion). Other multiband split methods will generally introduce phase distortion, which I personally try to avoid on drums. Also about the focus/unfocus terminology - I was borrowing it from the “Oxford Envolution” plug-in. I saw noisia using that effect on a tutorial and thought it looked cool but was too cheap to shell out money so I did my best to build an Ableton rack that does something similar.