Mixing From the Drum Throne | Season Three, Episode 7

[@TomBelknapRoc]

Great discussion! I listen to old tapes and it's right there for me to hear: cymbals sound great, snare sounds great, bass drum sounds killer. No toms. Didn't matter the club, didn't matter the engineer - and they ALL complained about it. It was all about how I was hitting the drums. But I always blamed it on the drums, themselves. Thanks!

[@1111Paiste]

LOVE this stuff!! Thanks guys!

[@weschilton]

Oh man, it hurts me to see you wail on that ride like that. Ouch! Haha! ;) On a more serious note, I like the point of this video. As a long time session drummer, I was always very comfortable recording myself. I record myself to this day, when practicing and rehearsing because the recording doesn't lie... it shows your playing plainly and without ego in the way. If you're not grooving, you will hear it, if you are overplaying (and you are) you will hear it, if you are rushing or dragging (especially during the too many fills you play!) you will hear it. If you aren't locking in with the band, you will hear it... hey, even if its not you that's the problem. And from that comes, both humility and improvement. We as musicians are this weird conflict of huge egos and at the same time self-loathing... so many of my students couldn't bear to record themselves because they couldn't face that they were not as good as they thought they were, or that their friends always told them they were. But every one of those students who could get past that and began to record themselves... got better! Think of the time you will save by recording yourself and avoiding all the mistakes you are making, many of which you aren't even aware of. You will practice the things you really need to work on, and waste less time.

[@funkdrummer]

It hurt me a little so see the ride being played when it was so tightly screwed on to the stand.

[@Thalos_s]

That snare sounds terrific

[@justabill63]

Really great stuff. Thank you for mentioning this approach. I have been working on this without really being able to put my finger on it. The "single point" recording setup was the missing piece for me.

[@remilaliberte3802]

This is awesome. Thank you.

[@drummercarson896]

I agree with you on the balancing act. I'm going to try your advice

[@cyface]

One additional thing to consider is the perceived loudness of very low frequencies compared to higher ones. Even at the same dB level, hats will seem much outer than the bass drum. So self-mixing “bottom up” helps make things even in loudness...

[@i3zd]

great episode y'all, especially the bit about where your toms land in the live dynamic. made me think a lot about my own playing and how i've always been hesitant to slam the toms 'cuz of how much more honest the sound is, in the quality of the drums or my ear for tuning. something about knowing your high tom doesn't sound right and not wanting to hit it hard enough to let everybody know.

[@nhojasperin]

Thank you for this. Balance is the key... I also studied David Garibaldi's Future Sounds and it has helped me mix my playing: ghost notes, tom volume vs snare volume, etc. I always try to balance my sound (and still working on it). There are many times that I have to tune my toms higher just to project almost the same as my snare. Sometimes I don't bring much toms :) And recently I use darker, thinner, drier cymbals just to match the volume of my kit.

[@GameCruncherTV]

Recently, I had to do a live recording for my church. I'm both the drum and engineer, so I did both at the same time (I really don't recommend this). I had limited channels, so I settled for a C414 up top and a beta 52 on the kick. I did about 20 minutes of test recordings to get my dynamics and tuning right. Muffling the snare, Pitching the toms up, and letting fingers lose when on the ride cymbal made it sound fantastic!

[@PatrickWitherow]

I've been recording myself with my phone recently to see how the drums and myself sound...and thought maybe that was a weird thing to do since it is far from true recording gear. Thanks for mentioning phone recording! It really does help to dial yourself and the drums in.

[@HessianHunter]

Realizing that my kit sounds completely different from the audience's perspective than it does behind the kit is my biggest frustration these days. Thanks for this.

[@betulaobscura]

This is so obvious! Pure physical laws... Acoustics...

[@dutcur]

I recently learned this too. I was wondering what difference it would make recording myself at home when the acoustics are so much different at home than at my church. At first I thought it was a tuning problem, or just the age or type of kit. However, learning how much dynamics within the kit affect the overall sound has encouraged me to give recording myself at home a try.

[@HessianHunter]

@@betulaobscura Thank you for your productive feedback. I'll be sure to take that to heart. 🙄

[@robertjohnston1813]

Incredible content!! Insightful, enlightening and confirming: Thank you.

[@williamhart6062]

In my case, play EVERYTHING loud. (Extreme Metal genres) Seriously, I’ve been trying out this concept for a few weeks, and this video reenforces my decision to do so. Keep the awesome videos coming!

[@georgepelekoudis]

🥇The part about playing with less velocity to be able to compress later! Thanks guys! Stay safe :)

[@crifox16]

7:51 cody beating that ride like it owed him money

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Hahah, oh we worked it out. All friends again :) - Cody

[@ayuu.]

Superb content as usual! Clicked like and added to my favourites way before the video even loads! Haha, I love this content because I've always been all about "Blending and Balance" no matter where I play. As a percussionist or playing other instruments. Really happy to see such content in a drummer's perspective! ❤💛💚💙💜

[@ma61]

I completely understand this idea of how acoustic instruments sounding different depending on where you are listening from in a room. I have been recording myself on a regular basis almost every week for years. Recently I have been looking for a more thick low sound from my 12" tom. since I now have my own practice space I have the time to mess with this stuff. I basically tuned the tom where I thought it would give me the desired tone but I tuned it from the perspective of the close mic. what I hear from the throne and what the mics hear can be very different. so now the tom doesn't sound so great from the throne but what the close mic is picking sounds exactly what I was looking for recording-wise. maybe this is something you can explore on your channel in the future, what you hear vs what the mic hears and records.

[@becklink]

Nice approach, playing around with binaural recordings to get a similar result. Do you tune the drum with closed headphones and solo /PFL the mic or place your ear where tom mic would be?

[@ma61]

@@becklink i stand in front of the kit over the tom and just listen by ear, check by listening to a quick recording on the close mic. i think i tune a lot like Carter Mclean.i like his approach to tunning.

[@mikaelsnare]

One of my drum teachers told me "the less mices on stage, the higher tuned drums".

[@liamdempsey7072]

Just started a go fund me for that crash/ rides recovery! Hope he feels better soon!!!

[@yrmthr]

Gates and filters go a long way! Bleed isn't a bad thing but it has to work in the mix

[@ginobata]

Great!

[@Adiaf8oros]

Love you guys.

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Aw shucks! Thanks so much.-Ben

[@OlliVimpari]

Thanks for the great content and the effort that you guys put in the making of your videos! Could you make a myth busting video about ”fixing” worn and dented heads with a heat gun?

[@jimflys2]

I'm an instrument tech and have taken a store rental kit that sounded very bad because the heads were so dented. Used my small tip soldering torch and teased out those dents. Made the weird overtones go away and they sounded pretty good. Not like new heads, but it worked. By the way, I loaned my kit to Smitty Smith for a single show and he dinged the brand new Ambassadors pretty well. Took them out the same way. I was NOT going to replace brand new heads for few dings. Worked.

[@jwc3104]

This is a skill that lot of church-bred drummers need to have. They need to play with "how will it sound to the audience" mindset, not the "I feel good bashing cymbals all out".

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

I honestly don't think it's specific to church drummers- this is a blindspot for _LOTS_ of drummers regardless of where they play. Definitely important stuff to be aware of. Cheers! -Ben

[@paulsalonikas3625]

Yeap. This is sooo right!!

[@jacksoncharbonneau7872]

That banging on the ride gave me anxiety😖

[@iau]

I've never been to a gig where you can't hear the cymbals. So yeah, no need to hit them too hard.

[@deedrumma1]

You mentioned david garibaldi and cymbal height...I read the intro to the book and have looked on Google but am not finding anything. Can you explain a little more? That is pretty intriguing.

[@gabrielcruz3997]

Goonga geenga

[@timothystephen6147]

So, I've been working with a pair of stereo overheads (SDC ORTF pair) to work on my balance, but if I were to add a LDC room mic to check the audience projection, how far do you think it needs to be from the kit?

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Hey there! You have a lot of options with an LDC since it's gonna draw the sound in more dramatically than a dynamic mic at any distance, but I'd say around 8-10 feet is a fine place to start. For this kind of exercise it has a lot to do with it simply being in front of the kit rather than overhead - for instance, you may notice a lot more kick in it and a really different cymbal sound since it's hearing them from their edge rather than facing the surface of each one as the overheads do. The room mic we use at the studio here is only 6 or so feet from the front of the kit and it gives us a very clear idea of what is and isn't getting projected forward from the kit. Hope that helps! - Cody

[@roybeckerman9253]

Playing live unmic’d with a drum screen, very much changes the sound dynamics, especially for the toms. Any tips ?

[@JohnD72277]

may I ask what the make/model/era of those hi hats are? they're gorgeous.

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Relatively recent modded top cymbal (cloning an old K) over the top from a pair of New Beats.

[@arthurazoubel5344]

I gotta admit, sometimes when we (drummers) are playing live we tend to think our instruments are the loudest ones on stage but I had many many many experiences where I couldn't keep up with the guitar amp and I'm not talking about really big stages all the time. As much loud as we can get, our instrument is 100% acoustic and the volume depends entirely of how hard you hit the drums, and we all know how bad this can be to our body and physical healthiness I completely stopped playing the shit out of my drums and hurt my arms for a couple years now and I try to set the overall band volume for the night (which I know it's the RIGHT volume for the occasion) but the guitar player seems to not get the situation yet and always raise his guitar amp volume during the show. By the end of the show he always look at me complaining that I'm not following him and it's entirely my fault I mean, why do musicians have a tendency to always want to play their instruments louder than the other band members?

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Man, thank you for bringing this up. It's honestly a huge issue that I hadn't experienced until a bandmate years ago bought a real-deal Marshall half-stack/JCM900 combo and there was LITERALLY no chance of matching it when he'd get excited and pump it up. Up until then i'd been the one wth the volume issues :) I've said this before and i'll say it again now - some instruments (drums for example) have a built-in responsibility for minding the quiet end of the spectrum on stage because of their inherent capacity for acoustic volume, which is why we as drummers have to practice doing our job at a variety of dynamics. If an instrument on stage has a *literal* volume knob, and doubly so if that instrument is plugged into a wildly powerful amp (for the record, this isn't a guitar player issue, could be keys/bass/vocal/anything), they must remember that they're still part of an acoustic space even if everyone and everything on stage is mic'd and has monitors. In addition to making it impossible to match them on stage volume-wise, they're also making it difficult for the rest of the people on stage to play and hear in a balanced way, not to mention making it super difficult for the engineers out front to mix the band properly. As to reasons, i've run across everything from ego to 'i'm psyched about my new distortion pedal' to, unfortunately, frequency-range-specific hearing loss. Lots of factors at play, but i'll tell ya it's one of the most frustrating problems i've experienced doing this job... - Cody

[@arthurazoubel5344]

@@SoundsLikeADrum Absolutely! These guys sometimes reach a point that they don't even care about who they're playing for (obviously, the audience). I mean, we do what we do because there's someone there paying for us to entertainment him. Of course we HAVE to have fun, but before satisfying your own ego we need to do our best to the music and to the audience

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Couldn't have said it better!

[@StuartJrBarrett]

Dope lesson man!!!!!! What platform do you use to do your editing ???

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Thanks so much! I edit everything in Adobe Premiere Pro. -Ben

[@pauliusmscichauskas558]

I am a mixing/recording engineer, not a drummer. I've already noticed, that Cymbals are too loud in recordings, that causes too much bleed that I would like to get rid of. So, I'd like to buy quieter Cymbals for the studio. Anyone have any recommendations? Mostly Rock/metal.

[@davidiand7]

Do you have any thoughts on the Yamaha EAD-10?

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Cool device though I’m not sure I’d recommend it for judging acoustic balance. Great for effects and things like that.

[@davidiand7]

Sounds Like A Drum, thanks for the comment, I was thinking more of using it instead of individual mics for connecting to the PA, there are a number of possible options changing to drum sound through the PA as I understand? I am 74 now started at 16 played for 4/5 years had a break of 30 years worst decision I have made and started again at 50. Now we have internet and we can connect with experts like yourself, get and share so much information. I have been playing Roland TD25 for the past couple of years and can’t get along with it, so I have decided to go back to acoustic Probably a Pearl Export fits my budget, so your tuning tips are the best that I have seen to date, I like the idea of coated heads on the toms reminds me of my first kit in the sixties.

[@remygaron8311]

I spend my life hitting the snare rimshot now my hand is srcewed RST repetitive strain injuries 😢😢😢 now i do not play anymore makes me sick🥁🥁🇨🇦🇨🇦

[@SoundsLikeADrum]

Oh man! That's a very real thing. Have you tried playing with alternative implements like Broomsticks or brushes?

[@elsanilssonmusic]

Battle that guitar amp! And also my amp.

[@atoms12123]

I don't think I've played a rimshot since the day I went to a grimy basement show in college and one band was a metal duo, guitarist and drummer. I had musician's earplugs in (gotta protect the hearing) and every time the drummer hit the snare, I was in literal pain. I had to leave the room it was so uncomfortable. If only he knew what we were hearing.

[@paullowther124]

I'm the same. I find my snares to be pretty loud anyway, and its only occasionally I will play a rim shot. I've sat watching bands before and wince every time the drummer hit the snare.

[@betulaobscura]

It is so funny because that mentioned Queens of the Stone Age album is so poor mixed and mastered (loudness war! over-produced etc.). It sounds very flat and thin. The better audio system you have, the more you hear it! This album has nothing to do with good drum sound! Maybe they recorded it good but later processing, mixing and EQ completely destroyed it! It is pathetic, especially when we consider how many "professionals" were involved in making, recording, mastering that album... Shame! Want to hear good drum sound? Check Isis "Oceanic" or Deftones "Around the Fur" or "White Pony" LP's...