processing toms.

DamagedTrax

how do you guys go about doing it?

im mixing a track with a large kit at the moment (3 racks and 2 floor) and the toms are starting to sound messy they're either too boomy or too clicky and i cant get them to sit right in the mix at all.

any advice from the drum gurus in here?

trackmixstudio

Find the punch of the toms in the overheads and boost a bit.
Make sure close mics are in phase with the overhead tracks and phase align the waveforms if needed. Solo the overheads and each tom to get the pan in the same place as they are in the overheads. Also the toms may be out of phase with each other so the spill from tom1 into the tom2 mic may be out of phase and killing the attack. Gate the close mics or automate them to come up on the hits and compress them heavily with fast attack medium release. Bring up a high pass filter to just below where you can hear them becoming thin. Pull out the hollow low mids and boost at the attack (2-5k normally). Another thing to try if all this fails is to compress the overheads using a sidechain from your toms with fast attack release. This will duck the overheads to let the close mics come through on the hits.
The bass guitar and toms usually have overlapping frequencies and pulling the bass eq to let the welly of the toms through makes a big difference. A narrow cut on the bass at (depending on toms tuning) about 80-120Hz can let the toms cut through much better. If pulling this frequency on the bass is killing it try sidechain compressing the bass on the tom hits.
I always bus the toms and compress and eq the bus too to glue them together so they work as a unit during rolls.
Lots of drummers don't hit the toms hard enough in my experience and during tracking I will always tell the drummer to HIT the toms HARD to get the attack rather than that low mid "tone" you get when the toms are hit lightly.
Hope this helps.

DamagedTrax

thank you michael, ever the gentleman :cool:

ill try that out today.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

im doing the same pretty much,. I have discovered that small condensers on toms are great though ( oktava mk12 ) the spills are sweet enough and the tom hum is sweet - compared to dynamcis - dont need heavy gating .

and the attack is much nicer.

i like 57s attack but the mic is a bit thin to my ears on toms bigger than 10 inches

PaulBrewer

DamagedTrax wrote: »

how do you guys go about doing it?

im mixing a track with a large kit at the moment (3 racks and 2 floor) and the toms are starting to sound messy they're either too boomy or too clicky and i cant get them to sit right in the mix at all.

any advice from the drum gurus in here?

Prevention is always better than the cure, especially with drums.

Damping drums is a no no if you're looking for a big open sound - Of course if you're looking at a dampened sound you're elected. If you must damp that ole moongel is great stuff.

Tuning is very important. Not only the relationship between each drum but the pitches in relationship to the track. One tuning may be fine for the key of A but very hard work in E .... However drums are what they are - on that Ever27 track we just did, the drummer had a 10 and a 14 tom, you just won't get them to thud like a 16 and an 18, but that's ok.

I avoid hard gating too, rather edit out all the junk and put consistent fades on the toms ring to suit.

The only thing gated on the Ever27 track is the snare feed to reverb.



Making these decisions before mix is a life saver.

dav nagle

Have you considered using the Focusrite big tom distressor? it is amazing.. Check it out if you haven't.

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