Mixing drums is one of the hardest things to do well. But before you even dive into what kind of EQ, compression, and effects you want on the kit, you should take a few minutes to ensure your drum tracks are in phase as best they can be.
A Quick Phase Check Never Hurt
This step isn’t really a tedious one. I generally just try to make sure each close drum mic is at the best possible phase relationship with the overheads. That way you’ll have the fattest, punchiest raw sound to start with. Trust me, when you start to do this, you’ll wonder why you never did it before. Let’s take a look!
Comments
Hey Graham, thanks for this awesome Mixing tip! Also, I purchased the Rethink Mixing and MAN, it’s just what I needed to get me on the right track! I have never really mixed anything big and I’m actually working on my first EP, (Thanks to you and all of your help). I purchased Rethink Mixing tutorial right on time! I only need to purchase the Rethink Vocal and Rethink Drums and I have the whole collection! You’re an awesome instructor but now you have become my mentor without you even knowing it, lol! Thanks again and hope to share with you the outcome of my EP in a couple of months.
So encouraged to hear that my material is helping you my friend. Keep up the good work!
Hey Graham good job, I’ve learned a lot with all your tips and your work has inspired me, because you get great results with minimun gear. I have a question, Do you time time align drums or you just check the phase flipping the polarity? Thanks in advance.
Julio – This is pretty much all I do to phase check drums!
Thanks for the wonderful tutorials. I am already starting to see results. I am mixing an EP currently of five songs and a lot of what I have learned from you in being put to test in a real world and I must say it works all the time. One quick question: when you render say from EZ Drummer, or superior or Steven Slate, do you render the samples of snare and kick in stereo or mono? to mix with say real drums. Would stereo or mono make a huge difference? Also how do you go about overheads and room? One thing i noticed was then you would have to use stereo plugins and that would drain CPU resources.
Namin – Glad the tips are working. I would prefer to render the drum parts out as mono tracks and treat them like the real thing.
Hi Graham, thanks for you mixing tips. The quality of my music is much better allready.
This phase checking thing works also great when stacking sounds. Like combining multiple kicks to get a more interesting one.