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Mixing Snare Drums Like A Pro | With Brian Deck — Transcript

by Reverb · 2,021 words · 369 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00[Music]
0:03hi
0:04my name is brian deck and i'm here at
0:06chicago's narwhal
0:07recording studios today to talk to you
0:10about
0:11different ways of processing snare drum
0:13with plugins
0:19this first example is a song called how
0:22many times from
0:23the last alejandro escovedo record that
0:25i worked on about three years ago
0:28the situation at the time when we
0:30recorded it
0:32was uh we were working at a rural studio
0:35in the middle of italy and we had very
0:38limited resources
0:40uh the eq on the console was very
0:42scratchy and we couldn't really use it
0:44and so we got a very
0:45dry kind of flat recording of the snare
0:48drum
0:48here's how it sounds when it's all mixed
0:58[Music]
1:01here's how it sounds with just the snare
1:03drum soloed up
1:04and i'm going to turn off the plugins
1:06that i had on it
1:14and turn off the drum buss plug-ins
1:17[Music]
1:20very flat and unexciting so the first
1:23thing that i did
1:24busting the top and bottom snares
1:25together was
1:27bring a little brightness scoop a little
1:29mid-range and bring
1:31a fair amount of bottom end into it i
1:33used the neve 1073 uad plug-in to do
1:38that
1:40that sounds a lot brighter and a lot
1:43beefier
1:44[Music]
1:46another trick that i do quite often is
1:48add a little distortion to that
1:50and i used the once again the uad
1:54thermionic culture vulture distortion
1:57plug-in
1:59i have the mix dialed back to about 60
2:01percent and a fair amount of drive
2:03on it
2:07that punches it up considerably
2:09[Music]
2:12again we're listening to just the snare
2:14mics right now
2:16[Music]
2:18and i'm going to turn the bus processing
2:21on the drum
2:22all the drum mics together are going
2:24through a bus
2:26that i'm compressing with the the
2:291176 plug in and
2:32brightening with the pultec eqp1a
2:36uad plug-in
2:39[Music]
2:45and here's the full drum kit
2:52[Music]
3:00i try not try
3:05another aspect of this recording was
3:06that everyone played live in the same
3:08room you can hear that when i
3:10solo up the drum mics
3:13you can hear that keyboard playing
3:15because it's bleeding
3:17everything's bleeding the base is
3:19bleeding less
3:20because it was downstairs in an old barn
3:23[Music]
3:26but what that meant was we couldn't have
3:28any ambient mics out
3:29for the drums to add a sense of space to
3:32what was going on
3:33they were all close mics so
3:36going back to listening to just the
3:39snare mics
3:40i added a little bit of this ocean way
3:44studios room simulator plug-in
3:47which is modeled on bill putnam's
3:49original ocean way studios
3:51it's a very very realistic room sound
3:54that you get on the snare drum here it
3:55is without
4:00and it's just subtly mixed in but it
4:02gives a sense of space
4:03and it gives even more bottom end
4:16[Music]
4:18i try not try
4:22and that's how i think we ended up with
4:23a fairly exciting drum sound
4:25on what i have to admit was not my best
4:28recording of drums ever okay the second
4:32example i have for snare processing with
4:34plugins
4:35is a song called funny from chicago rap
4:39group
4:39big branch we recorded this
4:43uh entirely in my basement and
4:46the chorus has live drums on it the
4:49verses in most of the rest of the song
4:51have electronic drums mostly 808s and so
4:55i needed an acoustic kit that sounded
4:57competitive with
4:58the power of the 808s and the bigness of
5:01the 808s
5:03but we had less than ideal circumstances
5:06being in my basement with just two
5:07microphones
5:08so here's what those drums sound like
5:12coming in on the chorus
5:25pretty powerful pretty cool they didn't
5:28start out that way
5:30so here's the snare drum soloed up with
5:34all the plugins bypassed
5:43that's an uh shure sm57
5:46placed between the hi-hat and the snare
5:48drum to try to pick up both of them
5:51and it just sounds like someone's
5:53tapping lightly it doesn't sound
5:55powerful so the first thing i did
5:57was grab the ssl e-channel uad plug-in
6:02and i did a mid-range scoop with that
6:12next thing i did was i wanted a little
6:14bit of crunch on that
6:16and i grabbed the uad spl twin tube
6:19processor
6:21and i'm using more saturation than i am
6:24harmonic enhancement because i didn't
6:27want it to get too bright
6:29and here's what that sounds like
6:39so again i'm doing a kind of a lot of
6:42bus
6:43processing on these drums i'm going to
6:45put the kick channels in
6:47and we'll bring the bus processing in
6:50one at a time
6:51the first thing in that signal chain is
6:54the tubetech
6:56cl1b compressor
6:59which we have those in the rack here at
7:01the studio but
7:02we weren't at the studio we were at my
7:04house so
7:05this is a really great sounding plug-in
7:09um sounds very close to the original and
7:13i believe we're going mildly with this
7:22yeah it's a bright tube compressor and
7:25i'm
7:25barely showing one db of gain reduction
7:28we're getting quite a bit more uh gain
7:31reduction
7:32in the uad 1176
7:36uh limiting amplifier plug-in
7:41there's a a characteristic sound of the
7:44original hardware units
7:46uh due to the distinctive input
7:49transformer and line amps
7:50inside sounds great on drums i've always
7:53loved it
7:54and this does a really good job of
7:56modeling that sound
7:58we're going for a lot more character and
8:00a lot more gain reduction with this one
8:02it sounds like this
8:03[Music]
8:10starting to sound like itself now like
8:12it does in the track
8:14i'm using the pull tech eqp1a
8:18plug-in to get a little more body
8:22to the kick drum and really take it
8:25all the way toward being competitive
8:27with the 808s
8:41you can hear it's subtle but it's bigger
8:43and the final thing that i did
8:45was i employed the uad
8:48model of the classic neve line amp the
8:511272
8:53which is found throughout the 80 series
8:55consoles from the 1970s
8:58as well as their production consoles
9:00from the time the melbourne
9:01and such like so i've got the output
9:04turned down and the input turned up
9:06and that's going to give a little bit of
9:07extra crunch and glue and pull this
9:10whole thing together and make it sound
9:11tough
9:12[Music]
9:16you can hear like a flutter of air on
9:18the kick drum now and that
9:20really sits in the mix nicely
9:36on to the next example one last piece
9:39about the production of drums and snare
9:43drums specifically
9:45on funny by big branch
9:48is toward the end of the song in the
9:51last two choruses we wanted to amp
9:53things up we wanted to get bigger we
9:54wanted to get more impactful
9:56and so we decided to we we already have
10:00the
10:00the live kit that i played for you
10:02before and the 808s are back in so it's
10:05live kit
10:06and 808s together and then we bring we
10:09double
10:10and triple the live kit with a new live
10:13kit we picked a different
10:14kick drum we picked a different snare
10:16drum different hi-hats
10:18we moved it all upstairs into my living
10:20room instead of
10:21in my basement and we doubled the drums
10:24and then we tripled the drums on mono
10:26track
10:27each split them hard left and right and
10:30i'm going to play for you
10:31what those drum tracks sound like on
10:34their own
10:46interesting uh kind of small
10:50roomy um it was a 18 inch kick drum
10:53so the intent wasn't to have
10:57huge drums come in but to have a new
10:59texture come
11:00in that would layer with what's already
11:01there
11:03and those drums are just getting a
11:05little bit of
11:061176 compression
11:10well more than a little bit that's kind
11:14of a lot of gain reduction
11:16and that's bringing out the roominess of
11:17it the sound of my living room
11:20so here's what it sounds like when those
11:22come in and join the other kit on the
11:24final two choruses
11:28[Music]
11:40tonight
11:42[Music]
11:45it's cool they're you get a sense of
11:47stereo because they come in split left
11:49and right they're not exactly synced
11:50they're not quantized
11:52there's press rolls on at different
11:55times on each
11:56of the sides and it's just a really cool
11:59extra texture to have happen at the end
12:01and and really does make that snare pop
12:04this third example of how to process
12:06snare drum
12:07with plug-ins uh comes from a song
12:09called
12:10vinegar by chicago band wreath of hogs
12:14it's a big guitar
12:18kind of indie rock band quintessential
12:21almost 90s kind of sound and
12:24it was recorded very very well i mixed
12:27this i did not record it it was recorded
12:29in the audio tree studios here in
12:30chicago
12:31well first let me play for you what the
12:34kit
12:34sounds like in context going into
12:38the first chorus which gets very big
12:54[Music]
12:59so big guitars that snare punches right
13:02through
13:03it's really great sounding wasn't hard
13:05to work with in any way
13:06i will play for you what it sounded like
13:10just the raw track with no processing
13:20that's the top snare here's the bottom
13:22snare
13:27okay so starting with the top snare i
13:30reached for
13:32the uad api vision channel strip
13:37to give a slight boost to the top end
13:40little mid-range uh cut
13:43and 4 db at 200 for the bottom
13:47this is what that sounds like
13:49[Music]
13:53a little more focused a little more full
13:57and here's the bottom snare mic
14:00i always cut a boxy frequency that
14:03usually lives somewhere around 700 to
14:061200 cycles
14:07in the bottom snare with a narrow cut
14:10here
14:10i've used the uh the
14:13nev 31102 eq plug-in high q
14:17at 700 duct uh i don't know how many db
14:21that is but it's it's a good bit and
14:23here's what that sounds like
14:25[Music]
14:29bypass
14:32papery and boxy
14:37all right and those are going through
14:40their own
14:41bus and i'm bus processing them together
14:45with um the culture vulture distortion
14:49plug-in by uad you all know
14:52by now that i like a little distortion
14:54on as many things as i can get it on
14:56it brings a nice snappy
15:00crisp high-end character that you're not
15:03going to be able to access
15:05with just eq it takes a little bit of
15:07saturation to make that happen and this
15:09is what it sounds like
15:20as well as gluing the two mics together
15:22and then i have
15:24all of the drums going through a stereo
15:26buss
15:27and i'll show you the the effect that
15:30the processors
15:31in that bus have on it the first thing
15:33i've got here is the
15:35nev 1272 model
15:38um output turned down a little bit input
15:40turned up a little bit
15:42it's just a little bit of crunch not a
15:44lot
15:45[Music]
15:52a little bit of top and bottom from the
15:54pultec eqp1a
16:03a fair amount of rock and roll kind of
16:06compression on the drum buss
16:08although i've got the mix dialed back to
16:11about 60 percent
16:12it's getting about three maybe four db
16:15of gain reduction at times
16:24and then a little finishing touch with
16:26the
16:27tubetech cl1b which is
16:30a nice bright um
16:34almost glossy kind of tube compressor
16:36that we have in the rack here
16:38but um i was doing this mix in the box
16:42so here's what that brings to it
16:50[Music]
16:51[Applause]
16:55[Music]
17:01so those are a number of things that i
17:03do to help the snare drum
17:06attain the character that i'm looking
17:07for within the context of the music
17:09and cut through and do its job i do
17:13processing on individual tracks i do
17:16processing on
17:18a bus track for the multiple snare mics
17:21sometimes together
17:23and then almost always there's an amount
17:25of drum buss processing on top of that
17:28i hope that that's helpful for you this
17:29is by no means the only way to go about
17:31it i encourage you to experiment
17:33and move further from there so thanks
17:36for
17:37looking and listening and good luck with
17:40your mixes
17:47it's like i've never been kissed before

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