My problem was the drums!

[symphonious7]

I truly think I just figured out my number one problem with mixing.  When I first started recording my own stuff, I would always play the drums from a keyboard and put it all on one stereo track, then I'd just compress and eq the entire set.  Then I finally started using a program (addictive drums) that separates the snare, kick, overheads, etc...  To me this was a ton more freedom, and I would just mix within the program AD itself.  AD has compressors and and eq for you to work with, even saturation and some other stuff, but it's all very foreign to me, and the eq is total crap it's a little 3 band.  I had always been told "route the drums out of AD so you can have full control over each separate part" but when I first tried to learn to do that, it just seemed complicated and I thought "meh, it's probably not a big deal, I'll keep mixing in AD"  

And I mean, I've never had a mix that didn't start with me working forever on the drum/bass lock, never feeling it was "there" but deciding at some point it's "good enough" and thinking I can work around it.  Today I decided to take the time to truly separate my tracks, to see if it really would make a difference.  Oh.  My. Gosh.  Being able to use my own compressors and eq's, being able to tweak the drums however I truly want?  It's like the whole song falls into place easier cause the FOUNDATION is there now!!  I just made a mix in like... 30 minutes that sounds about 10 times better than the one I'd worked on for like 2 days!!  And it was just cause once the drums and bass were truly not stepping on each other or placed together funky, everything else was just like "small fader push, BAM it works..."  

So I think the lessen here is, you can't cut corners on the foundational rhythm aspects of your song!!  I think I may have wasted a lot of time by not figuring this out sooner.....  And also just to let you guys know my computer is on the fritz, not sure if I'll have it much longer, if I disappear, you'll know why, it won't be forever though, my wife and I will figure out SOMEWAY to keep me connected haha

[starise]

 

Glad you got the hang of it!

 

I was lucky that My daw ( Sonar Platinum) has templates already made for AD-2. This made it much easier. Not too bad to do without templates though. I've done it in BFD too. One of the main issues I've had is deciding whether or not to blend overhead feeds. You can even send a composite mix alongside the regular split tracks. Can get complicated. Somehow I managed to  mix a ride and tom track together on one of my mixes which was very unfortunate for that mix.

 

For me it was so many choices I could spend literally days deciding on just the drums. I have heard some get decent results using the mixer in AD. Once you start splitting tracks though anything goes. On top of that I have specific drum plug ins that are intended to enhance an existing drum kit in different ways. It can be a tough call to decide on how complex you want/need it to be. In a rock band, the drums are a main part of the mix and they need to be real and up front.

 

In some cases the drums are too up front and need some taming. With BFD it's like that. Those drums can cut a person in two. 

 

It seems a waste to me sometimes that I've spent so much time on drums and I mainly play folk music.