Help with mixing drums

[lebowski]

I'm recording medium to heavy guitar music on top of stereo drum loops and am having trouble getting the drums to sound good. The loops are pretty good quality and i imagine have been compressed and eq'd somewhat....however almost always they seem to be kind of dull sounding and the hi hats are louder than everything else.....i try to compress and i lose the snare and kick--i try and duck the high freqs and the whole drum mix sounds even more dull...i want the drums to sparkle as well as have some attack since it needs to cut thru the big guitars but i'm not getting the eq/comp mixture right....
any brilliant ideas???
much appreciated!

[Slim Shady]

It's pretty tough if it's just a stereo loop. Subtle EQ and maybe a little multi-band compression (also used sparingly) might help a bit, but when you don't have control over the individual elements, there's not a heck of a lot you can do.

[RadioMoo]

Try this: download the free Bomb Factory 1176 compressor plug in.

Copy your loop to a new track.

Put a reverb plug on this new track - short reverb (like room) with a 20ms delay.

Put the BF1176 plug on below the reverb plug, use a fairly slow attack time and the fastest release time; hold the Shift key and use the mouse to push all the "ratio" buttons on the compressor in.

Experiment with reverb delay times and wet/dry mix, BF1176 attack times and amount of gain reduction, and raising or lowering the volume of the compressed loop track relative to the uncompressed track.

Works great with live overheads (minus the reverb plug); might help you, too.

[RussUK]

You may find it easier to deal with other parts of the mix and then the drums will look after themselves. By their very nature stereo drum tracks will cover the complete spectrum of the frequncy range - high and low and for this reason trying to compensate for this is going to be hard.

Try cutting some eq on some of the other tracks, roll off the bottom end on the guitar tracks and also compress them. If you listen to a lot of Brit pop music you will also see that often guitar tracks don't run through the whole track. Often the riff will play into the verse, drop out and return in the chorus. Also using pan on guitar tracks will bring some separation and space.

Also make sure the bass guitar is locked in with kick and then you can enhance that part of the track as they work together.

Keyboards as well need to have the bottom end rolled off.

In some ways good production and arrangement is essential if the final product is going to work and will make mixing far easier. In other words some mixing is often trying to deal with elements that are competing for airspace in the mix. Some good examples of production that works (even if the music isn't to your taste) are Coldplay, KT Tunstall, James Blunt, U2. Listen to how the different parts come and go through the songs - one of our golden rules is don't give it all away too soon.
Of course all this goes out the window if your recording a thrash/punk band!

Hope this helps, but of course this is all IMHO!

One last thing if you want to send the guitar, bass and drum tracks over as MP3's then I'll have a play with the track and see if I can help and send you back a mix. [email protected]

[GORILLA]

More than likely who ever recorded those stereo 'loops' slacked in the mixing department if your hats are drowning out everything. No matter what you do, you'll be cutting into something Comping & EQ'ing wise. To bad you do not have individual drum tracks ..... kick track / snare track/ floor tom,left tom, right tom/ hi hats/ overheads. Then you could easily fix your mix.
Yeah, you cut your highs to tame those hats and your drums will become instantly muddy. No more click in yer kick


Good Luck man

[lebowski]

thank for the responses! i will try these suggestions!!