How to Mix Drums with a New AI Powered Plugin: Sonible smart:gate Tutorial

✅ Get Sonible smart:gate ➤ bit.ly/sonible-smartgate
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Big thanks to the artists Will Henshall and Evo Heyning for allowing me to use this song as a demonstration. Big ups to Mark Schulman on the drums.
Thanks to the sponsor of this video: ‪@SonibleCom‬
★ SKIP TO SOMETHIN’ ★
0:00 Intro
0:20 Pre and Post Mixing Comparison
1:16 Introduction to Sonible smart:gate
2:03 The Problem with Regular Gates
3:45 Overview of the smart:gate interface / GUI
8:58 Processing the Toms
11:08 Processing the Snare
13:04 Processing the Hi Hat
14:52 Gating the Entire Drum Bus
16:18 Ducking the Bass the Kick with Sidechain Gating
21:20 Outro
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[@Acpjohn]

You are the best

[@warpacademy]

Thanks for watching!

[@pbenson56fran]

Thank you I just learned something about release and the body of the drums.

[@warpacademy]

Right on!

[@volpe_sol]

Love how much fine tuning this gate plugin offers compared to others, it's a gate on steroids. (On a side note, which headphones are those?! Holy shit haha)

[@warpacademy]

Agreed. It's a gate with a ton of power features. I really like it. The headphones are Verum 1s.

[@pbenson56fran]

Very very good

[@warpacademy]

Thanks!

[@EnioProd]

VERUM 1 UA UA UA !!!

[@warpacademy]

Indeed they are.

[@ItsWesSmithYo]

None of it matters on my iPad, but the walkthrough made sense. Thanks as always. Studio looks fresh too, maybe first time I saw it in use after the build videos. 🤙🏻🖤😎

[@warpacademy]

Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed this one. Yes, the new room is done and I'm stoked to be working in it. Full steam ahead in the studio. Cheers Wes.

[@pbenson56fran]

Why did you shorten the release please? I am trying the learn from this tutorial on the drums part. Thank you very much.

[@warpacademy]

I shortened it to tighten up the drum. The shorter the release, the faster the gate reacts and closes when the signal drops below the threshold.

[@iansmirna5183]

I don't know if it's on purpose for this video but i found the sound of the original recording of the drums especially bad. I would start there in order to improve the sound (as we in sound engineering "shit in, shit out").

[@warpacademy]

Thanks for checking out the video and for the comments. I'm no recording engineer, but they sounded perfectly acceptable to me. Certainly well beyond the "workable" point in my books. What's most important is that the producer liked the recording and the performance and I got the green light to mix it. You say "we in sound engineering" inferring you're probably a professional working in the field, like myself. You should know from experience that you don't always have time (and budget) to be perfectionistic and precious; certainly when it requires bringing a session musician back into the studio to re-record something. You often must work with what is there, as long as it meets a threshold. In this case, I'm stoked on how the final mix turned out, the client approved it, and that's a done deal. That's my 2 cents on it.

[@wrigna1]

Not impressed at all. The results are excessively basic and dull.

[@warpacademy]

A couple things to point out here. First, using the gate to control drum mic spill is only the initial stage in the mixing process. It's not meant to sound good at this stage. Once you layer in the additional mixing, which dramatically increases loudness and shapes the drums further, the sounds comes alive. If you mixed the original signal without the gating in place it would sound way too live and overwhelmed with room ambience. Second, the client loved and approved the completed mix. As an engineer that's one of the most important benchmarks. If I feel good about the mix, and the client signs off on it, then it's a win.