My mate (who i don't speak to anymore) told me a long while ago about grouping my drums together/sending my drums to a bus, he said only certain drums though, and this is what I've forgot...

What drums should be kept together, and what ones shouldn't?

I'm sure he said:

Kick Drum and Bass line together,

Snare, Clap, and Shakers and other percs together.

Is this right? Or could you tell me the right way? I'm still not 100% sure how to properly group/bus drums, is there certain plugins you can't send the drums to? My friend send sending tracks to a compressor bus doesn't work, has to be a direct insert?

What sounds should i keep together, if i were to bus them...

Thanks

 

Well first of all, there is no strict rule about grouping and/or bussing drums together. Saying that sending tracks to a compressor bus won't work is wrong however. Basically try and think of it this way, you can either process things in serial (broadly speaking this means to put effects one after the the other as in insert) or as parallel (again broadly speaking this means to process a signal via a bus and blend the two signals).

To be honest there are so many configurations that can work that it really depends what you are trying to achieve. The most common type of drum processing is called 'Parallel Compression' - You send your entire drum mix to a bus with a compressor that has extreme compression settings. This is done to create a really aggressive/pumping drum sound.

Personally I find parallel processing to be the most effective technique for processing audio. Essentially I keep the original audio 'natural' (unless im trying to obtain a specific sound) then via parallel processing I add all the 'colour' and blend it with volume. I can then take it a step further by routing all the audio from the parallel channels into a single insert channel and process all those channels together.

Hope that made sense

 

If your kick is 808-like, you should bus it with bass. If it is more acoustic, you should bus it with all of your drums.
everything depends on what kind of music you are making and what sounds do you have.

 

in Ableton i use 4 aux fx busses. 1 pingpong delay, 1 reverb, 1 glue compressor and a saturator.

 

ok, I have sub buss (kick, snare, toms) and FX Buss all routed to a main Drum Bus
I always have 3-4 kicks layers routed to a kick bus
3-4 snare layers to a snare bus
double toms to a Toms Bus
hi hat, OVHDS, room and all the sub buss go directly to the Drum bus

on the buss I use eq, comps or limiters, transients tools, analysis tools
in your case you could bus all the kicks to their sub bus, all the snares to their sub bus and maybe all the tops to a tops bus, then all the sub buss and other drums elements to the main Drum Buss

I bus percussions to another dedicated Percussions Bus

 

Last edited: Feb 17, 2016

Woah. So much buss talk.... I really don't understand all of the sub/mix/bus. I know about sending a track to a bus/aux track in Logic and then putting the FX plugins on that bus track, and sending the main track into it, but i jsut dont know about all these sub-busses, being sent into other busses, etc.

It's confusing!

 

@freakymofo
There is not much to understand really,if it works for you with one drumbus then thats it.
Many times thats all that is needed.
Every project is different and usually demands different approaches,its all about experimenting and finding things that work for a certain song.
Dont take things for mandatory,its all about your own style of work,what suits you the best.

 

Okay, thanks. Well final thing, I just need to know what drums should be kept together and what ones not? Basically, what drums should be kept mono and what drums should be stereo? That's what i was after

Kick, Snare, Clap, Toms and Cymbals?

 

I personally dont really follow the rules,that much,altough 95% of all tracks are usually in mono.
Kick,snare,claps,toms i keep mono,cymbals sometimes stereo sometimes mono,depends which type of cymbals.
Sometimes theres a vst instrument frozen,mixed with mono audio files,so it really depends how you color the sound.
You always have to check how the whole song/mix sounds in mono.
If you got only one VST drum instrument playing and you are satisfied with it and it works then thats all its needed.
Some VST drum libraries have all the tools to polish the sound within itself.
There is really not a "right" way to do it,its a very personal thing,each person has his own approach.
Like i said,dont be afraid to experiment,try even if something sounds weird or not right,you will learn most from your own mistakes,trial and error like most people.
We are all learning.

 

exactly as stated above, there are so many different ways of doing it depending on what you are trying to accomplish.... I often bounce drums to audio quickly (sometimes a cpu saver with larger Kontakt libs etc), and then parallel process with different things, sometimes it will introduce phasing issues (usually a problem with 3rd party plugs that report latency incorrectly...)... so sometimes you have to scooch the audio around etc...

sometimes I just use serial fx on different elements, and sometimes I group stuff and throw some eq/compression whatever on it to "glue" it together...

DAW's enable you to do it many many different ways, because there are many ways to skin a cat! (although, again, who wants to skin a cat? ;))

 

Thanks, i never knew it was more of a personal thing, always thought certain drum sounds strictly had to be either mono or stereo. Trial and error is a good way to go, i like to learn!

Okay, so is it okay to put a compressor on a bus/aux channel and send drums to that? I was told that you couldn't buss a compressor, only stuff like reveb, echo etc. I can set up a buss channel with a compressor on it and send all my drums to it if i want to?

Throws me off a bit, becasue some drum sample audio files sound different to others, so putting them into the same compressor might not sound good, where as individually compressor each drum sound seems safer? I'm learning...

Need to find a nice compressor plugin thats fairly straight forward and that i can send all my drums to without loosing the goodness of them all

 

@freakymofo
You might want to check out Recordingrevolution`s channel on youtube,i think Graham has some of the best tutorials on yt.
https://www.youtube.com/user/recordingrevolution

 

Sure it's ok! It's more common in PT then Ableton etc, where I would normally just group certain elements etc and then use a compressor over it.... And you are right, with different sample packs/instances/etc , the sounds may be all over the place, so the same compressor will not get you what you want.... but say, in the case of a live kit, I would generally take the whole kit, send it to an aux, and compress it there, New York (or Parallel) style, to use at will....

I'm not sure what DAW you are using, but honestly, say if I'm working in Ableton, the stock compressor is pretty good, and then if I want more "mojo", you could use the "glue" compressor, or one of the more cpu intensive third party options....

again, no hard and fast rules, basically just using your ears to get the sound you want with different tools!

 

I think the biggest problem today is that kids stepping into the world of production are being introduced to already polished drums(or any other) sounds and think they have to beef it up a lot,when in reality it takes very little polishing,mostly just light compression and some EQing.
Modern VST instruments and libraries are mostly already very processed.

 

I hear that. I use so many different samples form many different packs, and form my own sample library, they're all quite different. so Often feel I need to compress each sound individually. I use Logic Pro 9!

So if I'm not using a kit, and instead different drum samples, would you think that it's still okay for me to send them all to the same compressor bus?

 

Right, okay, so, parallel compression is when you send a bus to a bus? So i send all 4 of my drum tracks, snare, clap, hats and crash, into Bus 1, and then send Bus 1 into Bus 2, and put a compressor on Bus 2? Is that right?


AND ... Is grouping the same as Bussing, though? Can i just select my 4 (or however many) drum tracks, and send them to a Bus, and then form there, apply FX, or send that Drum Bus, to another bus, with compression on, etc...?

Just getting a little confused between grouping, and bussing.

 

heya Freaky,

I have uploaded an ebook to help you with busses / sends / and configuring your DAW

here is the link

http://peeplink.in/371e6a6d736c

also recordingrevolution has some great videos and you should really search youtube for logic pro tutorials, this is the quickest way to learn

 

cheers dude! I'm downloading it now! For Logic?

 

It's certainly OK, but not necessarily necessary! As Von_Steyr accurately said above, there are so many different kits out there right now with so many effects pre applied, that the "normal" rules don't apply all the time... Basically just use your ears... If you are not running into CPU issues, no problem compressing every sound individually at all! it really depends on what you are trying to do, or communicate sonically... and there are so many ways to do that, none of which are necessarily right or wrong.... experiment by sending all your different sounds to one bus and see what happens when you throw a compressor over the group... does it accentuate the low end too much? or make certain things disappear?

the best thing about music is that rule books are thrown to the wind!

but from what you are describing, I would probably address the different sounds on a per track basis, and then perhaps from some additional juice, send to an aux, or not....

 

Here is what layout works for me.. Hope it can be of any help or insight.