Mixing Snare with Dead Soul Revival

If you’ve been following my “first single release” journey for my new band deadsoulrevival.com you know I’ve been examining how we recorded, mixed, and promoted our upcoming release. Today let’s talk some more about mixing drums with tone and impact.

For an even more depth look into crafting drum sounds pick up a copy of my course “The Sound Visualization Method.”

Last time I explained how I like to start with the kick drum. The next track I like to pull up is the snare. For most songs these are the two drums that are going to be heard constantly so it stands to reason they will get the most attention.

On the top snare mic I generally start off by rolling off some low end up to about 125 hz. Then I’l check out the range between about 500 hz to 1K. Sometimes it can sound a little boxy in that area so I may be cutting in that range.

These moves are stripping away what I don’t like and exposing the “real” snare sound that is being masked/covered up. Doing this will quickly help your drum sound come into focus.

Up to this point I’ve been getting rid of stuff I don’t like. Now I’m going to focus on shining a light on what I do like. 

With that in mind I’m going to hunt around in the 1-2K to find the attack of the drum. I may boost here to bring out the smack. Combined with the way a compressor will grab the sound this can make for an aggressive snare tone. Finding this “point” of the snare helps to bring out that modern, cutting snare tone.

Next I like to boost in the 200 hz range if I feel like the snare needs a little weight. It’s easy to neglect this area if you’re not careful.

Next I’m going to put the snare through an 1176 style compressor. Usually I’m starting at a 4:! ratio. Usually the attack is set to medium. Once I hear the high end of the drum being effected or cut off I slow down the attack a notch.

What I’m doing here is making the compressor kick in  just after the the initial transient. Then I’m setting the release so it’s returning to zero just before the next snare hit. This setup is going to give you a punchy snare drum. Dialed in correctly you should be getting some serious “smack.”

The bottom of the snare I don’t spend a lot of time on. I’m basically just getting the snap and high end of the snare wires so I roll off a lot of lows. Sometimes I use this track in the mix, sometimes not. Depends on what kind of snare sound I’m going for. If I do use it a little goes a long way. Test flipping the phase on this track. Often the track will be out of phase with the top mic.

It’s important to understand when we eventually listen to the entire drum kit that your drum sounds are going to be combinations of the different tracks. For example, the overheads are going to be combining with your close mics. 

For this reason I don’t spend too much time on the individual mics. I get them in the general area of what I’m looking for so I can take a listen with the overheads and tweak from there. 

Looking forward we’ll get into the toms, overheads, and the rest of the drum tracks.

Until next time…

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Also, in case you didn’t know, I mix singles, EPs, and Albums for Rock and Metal bands. You can check out my work and get more info at mattclarkmixer.com/secdir/ as well as get prices, etc.

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