Mixing Metal Drums - How I Route My HEAVY Drum Tracks

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Mixing metal drums can sometimes seem daunting if you don’t have a clear roadmap to follow as far as your drum routing is concerned.
I’ve found that the trick is to come up with a drum routing setup that allows you to quickly make big picture mix moves while still being able to dive deep and tweak at a more granular level as well.
In my latest tutorial “Mixing Metal Drums - How I Route My HEAVY Drum Tracks”, I not only show you how I set up my drum routing template within my DAW of choice (Pro Tools)..
I recreate the exact same routing setup within Reaper as well.
Reaper and Pro Tools are two completely different DAWs with some pretty major differences as far as functionality is concerned, but one thing still rings true…
You can produce identical results no matter what DAW you’re using and I demonstrate how I can replicate my exact drum routing and mix setup within both programs in this video.
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[@FrightboxRecording]

►► Download your FREE 5 Step Guide To Better Heavy Mixes: frightboxrecordingacademy.com/5-step-guide/

[@sergioandresvahos281]

Ohhh man, my mixes get better and better thanks to all your tutorials and guides!!! Underrated KZbin Channel!!!

[@leearmitage]

I've set a template up in Studio One with this routing making my life and my mixes a lot easier and better IMO thanks for your help Bobby

[@FrightboxRecording]

Happy to hear that, Lee!

[@AlexeySolovievMusic]

Just finished watching your Heavy Mixing course this weekend! Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, so much useful and really important info. If some of your subscribers haven’t bought your course you must go now and buy it, Bobby made really awesome metal production course. I really want to improve my metal mixing skills for myself and my clients but after watching Bobby’s Heavy Mixing course I really put my skills on a new level. Huge thanks Bobby for all of your important and really amazing videos and thank you super duper much for making Heavy Mixing course it’s a real treasure and gift for any metal producer or anyone who wants to be good at mixing metal stuff!

[@alexfontaine00]

no time for this now. But I think I will take the course

[@FrightboxRecording]

So happy you dug the course Alexey! Also, I'm super impressed with your mix and just sent you your PDF.

[@greghillmusic]

I'm really enjoying the complete production bundle right now. I've been starting to apply some of the routing methods and other techniques, and I'm excited to finally start dialing in a consistent work flow.

[@jeffsnider9869]

I'm setting up my template right now! Great timing on this one. I read your free 5 step guide and it's excellent. You have a very straightforward and no frills way of teaching.

[@FrightboxRecording]

So happy you dug it Jeffrey!

[@imcymk]

you can route this in studio one using the outputs (you have to set it up in the I/O setting in the song setup). create any number of outputs you need and you can now use them as auxes that's also how i route my "PRINT" track for quick exports during recording sessions

[@PhilosophiaMathematica]

Really great information here. I have your routing set up in FL Studio, so yeah it can work in any DAW.

[@alexfontaine00]

nice! I'm happy to see that I have nearly the same process! I just route in 2 other parallel buses : one with reberb and one with saturation to mix reverb compression and saturation easier.

[@FrightboxRecording]

Love it!

[@progun1corn]

I create a lot of folder tracks in studio one, it's the same of your 'stems' at the end. I route my kick snare and tom to a punch bus while every single tracks send a difference amount of parallel comp. I route OH and Hihats to a cymbal bus like your routing. I route a room track expect for snare and a specific room track for snare to a room bus, having more control on the snare hit. Punch bus, cymbal bus, room bus, parallel comp and some reverb all send to the Drum folder I created which stands for the whole drum stem.

[@FrightboxRecording]

Love it!

[@heavymetalmixer91]

I have a "Drum Mix" that gets everything drum-related. To the Drumi Mix, there are two groups that feed it: Drums and Drums Pa. The second one is for parallel processing. The ones feeding those two are: Kick bus, Snare Bus, Tom Bus, Cymbals Bus, Room Bus and Drums Reverb. Cymbals Bus and room Bus have -6dB on their sends to Drums Pa. From those busses, each one has their own kind of tracks inside but the reverb outside. This is because I wanna treat those "small" busses like individual instruments.

[@FrightboxRecording]

Sounds like a sick setup!

[@jazmani3033]

Great video, I'll definitely be giving these a try! I'm new to production but what I did was have my midi drummer, so Toontrack EZ Drummer have multitracks, but only for the Kick, Snare, Hats, Toms, an OH and its duplicate panned left and right, and a room. These all get routed to one drum group which only contains an SSL channel to refine the tone. It's a bit barebones but I just preferred to do the processing on the tracks itself.

[@FrightboxRecording]

Hell yeah, I dig it. Sometimes the less is more. Thanks for hanging and watching Jaz!

[@jerryarmitage8904]

Just wanted to say thanks. Since subscribing to your channel. My mixes have become way better. I use Mixcraft Pro Studio 9. For anyone just starting off. It's the easiest DAW to use hands down.

[@FrightboxRecording]

Dude, so happy to hear that! Makes it all worth it for me.

[@CrushingAxes]

Nice routing ! I have a hard time using parallel compressing ! I'll try to separate the hats !

[@thegreatbarryerriff6120]

Dude you're an absolute legend. Can you do a vid on gain staging? Also on mastering. Much love Australia!

[@FrightboxRecording]

There's one in the pipeline. Stay tuned!

[@Abzshred]

The way I do it is drag all my drums below my drum bus and add subtle compression to glue the drums as a whole. then I route all the drums except the cymbals to a another drum bus (crush bus) where i compress the hell out of it, distort it a little and eq it. Am I doing something very unconventional? Thank you. by the way im using reaper

[@CrushingAxes]

The stems idea is also great !

[@FrightboxRecording]

Thanks! It saves me tons of time at the end of a project.

[@surfinbird4795]

Nice Vid! I have a similar routing in Reaper. But one thing irritates me: Why do you have 7 sends from the SNR Bottom track to the reverb? One thing to consider in Reaper is if your sends are Post-Fader, Pre-Fader or Pre-FX. You can do so much cool stuff with this.

[@FrightboxRecording]

Thanks man! I have a very specific reason why the send is duplicated a bunch of times. I will be coving this in a video very soon.

[@innocencedied9902]

Nice video, very useful. You’re pretty clear and so I just got one question: What’s the title of the song you’re mixing? And the band’s name? Thank you.

[@FrightboxRecording]

The band is called Voidscape and the song is called "Drifting Purpose": voidscapenj.bandcamp.com/track/drifting-purpose

[@joelbpaul]

How do you gain stage with this routing? Does the gain build up as the tracks pass through sub-mixes and stem aux? I'm slow man, so you might have to dumb it down for me. Maybe it's a non-issue though.

[@FrightboxRecording]

Definitely a non-issue. Outside of having my kick track peak at around -18dB (on the kick track itself), I don't think about it too much. I just make sure nothing is clipping and that there's no clipping happening from plugin to plugin.

[@pastilance1]

3:03, so you like simplicity, huh? xD

[@FrightboxRecording]

Lmao! I promise it seems much more complicated than it actually is. It ends up saving me an insane amount of time in the long run when juggling multiple projects.

[@Metalkake]

You can't be giving out all these secrets sir :D !

[@frankb8616]

yup skins and tins

[@adrianprezgarcia]

I discover the cymbals thing screwing things up :(

[@FrightboxRecording]

How so?

[@adrianprezgarcia]

@@FrightboxRecording i was doing parallel compression on the bus with the cymbals, and used to sound horrible but the shell sound good so i decided to put them aside and then mix the cymbals apart, and problem solved, you are amazing giving to the people this great tip, it took me a lot of time to realize about that...

[@FrightboxRecording]

@@adrianprezgarcia I've had the same issue myself. Thanks for watching Adrian!

[@carismadesigns]

sorry.... didnt get it...

[@romanisawesome]

Sounds absolutely fucked up😂😂😂