Mixing Drums in Pro Tools Print E-mail
ProMedia Blog - Tip and Trick
Written by Mark Hornsby   
Thursday, 01 November 2007 08:36

One of the things that I think is most important when mixing drums in Pro Tools is the use of Buss Compression.

Drum Mixing Setup

Notice in our setup, we have Compression and EQ applied to all the tracks of our drum kit. We also have a Reverb Send set up for our Snare and Toms. However, the big thing to notice is the routing.

All of the tracks (including the Reverb) are routed through a Stereo Aux Track which has IK Multimedia's T-Racks plug-in applied across it. In the T-Racks channel strip, I am using the compressor to tighten up the drums and make them sound punchier while also using the EQ to cut out a bit of 400 Hz to clean up a bit of the rumble in the kit (this can be achieved with many different plug-ins as well) . I often see engineers spending a lot of time making the Kick and Snare sound huge while the rest of kit falls by the wayside. Acoustic drums, in my opinion, are one instrument and should be addressed as such. That doesn't mean that the Kick and Snare can't shine, but we can also give the other elements of the kit the presence they deserve.