There is no rules stating that grouping and bussing off drums in any sort of order has to be carried out whilst mixing, You just go for whatever works best for you personally and is part of your workflow, Anyone telling you that you have to do something is usually just repeating collective common opinions and practices (Not always a bad thing in some cases though, Creativity is not one of them though).

When I have a multi-mic'd, multi-tracked drum kit I will usually do the following

Group together all the mic's on the kick drum, Including triggers too (The sound of just the trigger itself whilst in isolation sounds horrible, It can really help add attack to the sound when mixed in, Even before it's converted to MIDI for enhancing or replacing).
Group together all the mic's on the snare, Same with the trigger also (but for different reasons).
Group toghether all the mic's on the tom's, Same with the trigger (Same reason as the kick drum, Especially effective on the lowest tuned and biggest sized rack and floor toms).
Group together the close mic's used on the hats and ride usually if needed.
Group together the overhead mic's along with any other close-ish other mic's such as one in front of the kit and another one at the same height and as close as to the actual drummer's head as possible.
Group together any ambient and room mic's used, If the room is actually decent sounding then it'll get used, If it sounds like shit then it will not get used.

Balance all the levels relative to one another and pan signals when/where appropriate, Then as they're group it is easier to increase the level of certain kit pieces in the mix with one fader instead of many, So it's for pratical reasons to speed up workflow.

Bussing of certain kit pieces and/or entire group is useful for processing and effects whether fully ITB, fully outside the box of a combination of the two, It has the added benefit of adding a cohehsive sound to the kit sound overall along with saving processing power/plug-in count.

That is the basics of how I personally go about starting a mixdown for a drum kit anyway. It may work well for you or it may not, Give everything a try and find out what works best for your own wants/needs/results

Best to all as always

 

Im pretty sure it is yes very informative book with good tips... dont take everything as gospel though, use your eyes and ears and sometimes look away and just listen as you eyes sometimes make your ears hear what they want to hear...if that makes sense?

also when you are sending things to busses and sends, its important to not send it to the master at the same time for eg: kick drum to kick and bass bus you would only turn up the send knob on the buss. this is so you dont get mad phasing and delay, there is also a phase invert button somewhere, use it sometimes but its more for microphone recording of drums etc

 

Last edited: Feb 19, 2016

We travel with this?




Sorry the real thing is here:

http://img.ksl.com/slc/2499/249901/24990102.JPG

 

Last edited: Feb 19, 2016

oh and one more thing that has been mentioned but not in-depth that will be your friend if exploited to advantage but your worst enemy if it ends up working against you: PHASE

Phase and its relative relationships to each piece of your drum kit sound, It is something that I always do my upmost after tuning and setting up the kit and microphones to get right as it will spare an engineer so much time in the mix to get it right at the source. Usually it's a case of a few of the awesome IBP boxes by Little Labs on the culprits

For sample based and synthesized drum and percussion sounds along with some plug-ins not reporting latency is when you'll notice it and things start sounding like crap. Voxengo (amongst other developers) offer phase correcting DSP tools, PHA-979 (http://www.voxengo.com/product/pha979/) and sample accurate delays for correcting latency delay/big phase nightmares (http://www.voxengo.com/product/latencydelay/)which you might want to checkout if you notice phase become an issue.

I think that is just about everything really when it comes to the basics, The other good folk's posting have covered everything else that I'd of brought up/mentioned, So have fun and enjoy yourself trying all your options out, That is most vital thing about creating music to me personally, Yeah some engineering jobs are damned boring but if I find myself getting bored when working on my own stuff then it is time to scrap whatever it is and move on!

 

nice! kinda confusing but got it hahah : )

its really just the concept of bring stuff together, that you treat differently to have control over the different sound groups. so you could say, hmm lets bring only the snare and kick and bass in one bus to have the rest be free from my compressor on that bus our you could say uuuhhh lets put the hats and the ride and crashes also on the kick and snare but to REAALLY affect them by whatever you have there.

 

HAHAHAHAH its a DRUM BUS!! HAHAHA

 

I really appreciate you (and everyone taking the time to help, it can be very frustrating learning.

I'm going to do this. Its something I have been meaning to do for so long. Learn compressors. I've got some detailed/lenghty tuts on compressors, the basics, etc. It's time to dig in.

 

I'll keep an eye out on this mate, thank you! another thing I've got to get to grips with

 

Yea,you can do it,we all had to,no one is born with the knowledge of how compression works
The best thing you can do is watch 5,10 or more YT tutorials on compression and watch again and again and again inbetween have your DAW opened and tweak yourself.
You will see that somewhere while youre going to be tweaking it you will suddenly realise you got it and then youll say,man its not even that hard!
With a strong foundation of how EQing and Compression works,you will have instantly A LOT better mixes as this two "simple" tools are 70% of work.
People think there is some kind of a magic plugin that will get you amazing results,when in reality its not,its all you and you can do it.
Also stop using XY compressors and plugins,usually the simple plugins that are included in a DAW are enough for learning or even pro work.
Work with that and after a while add another compressor,perhaps a tube compressor,idk just a suggestion.
Dont bury yourself with gazillion plugins,because it doesnt matter.Put it all aside and just focus on the basics.
Forget all the expensive hardware you see in certain magazines,people sitting in front of 50.000$ DAW controllers/consoles,people get afraid thinking they have to master ALL THAT when in reality mixing is very zen like,its about minimalistic approaches which altogether make a form and that form can certainly be huge.
And remember,what one man can do another can do!

 

Hey it is no problems and always happy to help/share knowledge with fellow musicians, audio engineers, mix engineers, live sound engineers, instrument techs...etc.

Exactly like Von_Steyr said above, Who is a proper stand up dude from what I've seen/read by him along with posting on threads too, Every one of us started somewhere and what are friendly audio forums for if not for sharing knowledge, tips, tricks, experiences, opinions and so on? I can't stand those whom have or gather over time an elitist mentalitiy and attitude like they're better than anyone else and that nobody is worth their time (unless it's someone famous whom they adore and listen to then repeat whatever their idols say). I have way more respect for a young teenager whom has just grabbed a shady copy of FL Studio with passion to learn, ask questions and share/talk about stuff as they will more than likely progress into decent people and also decent forum member's whom will treat other's the way they were treated over anyone whom thinks, acts and posts in the elitist style manner I mentioned, They're always miserable too it seems and appear to not have much fun which to me is completely alien/I can not identify with that sort. Getting to work with/on audio is fun most of the time and even more so if it one's own music

Enjoy freakymofo and all the best as always to you two gents

Dean