WBL: Mixing drums – Pensados Place

To practice mixing techniques it’s important to acquire a strong basis of knowledge. The only real way to do this is by learning from very well practised professionals. However, convincing Andrew Scheps to take a few hours out of his week to teach may not be viable.  So using resources such as Mix with the Masters and The art & science of Sound Recording would be the way to go but once again these can be very expensive. There are however free resources like this such as Pensado’s Place. The downside to these products is that the lack of monetary motivation means that less detail is outlined.

Over the course of this journey I will be exploring the effectiveness of these informational resources on my own workflow and learning methodology. Starting with a lesson in mixing drums using room microphones for excitement:-

 

To attempt to emulate Dave Pensado’s drum mix I used a multitude of EQ’s and compressors and left the signal otherwise dry. A lot of Pensado’s drum sounds utilise  room microphones to create energy and interest. When microphones are placed further away in proximity to the sound source it begins to capture the sound of the room in response to the energy stimulus instead of the soundwave travelling directly from source. This provides more interesting and exciting sounds in a very natural way. This works very well if the ROOM SOUNDS NICE!! Which is very much the case for the studios that mix engineers of this caliber would record in.

To the record the drums I used an AKG DRUM mic set with a D112 on the kick and a c414 in the room. The room I recorded in was a brick clad walls making it very reflective, but small making the reverb very sharp and quick.

These are the changes made inside the box once the recording is complete.

 

Room Mic – C414

pulled at 800 Hz (CLA frequency)

Boosted at around 3.2khz

Boosted slightly in the top end 12-14Khz

 

Overheads – Rode NT4’s

5khz pulled

pulled at 300 Hz to remove muddiness

 

Toms – AKG P4’s

pulled between 4-8kHz

Boosted at 1.5Khz

 

The resulting sound was punchy and full. However, the room that the drums were recorded in affected the sound hugely because this particular mixing techniques exploits the fact that Pensado has a really nice drum room to record in. So to achieve such a clean sound would require a lot more meticulous work on EQ. The room that I recorded in made the drum sound very top heavy and perhaps too bright in the cymbals.

 

To make this process more effective I should mix and record the sounds I am working on in a way that is very natural to me and then again with the techniques suggested within these resources.