Lessons
Day 1
1Class Introduction
21:53 2The Tone Pie and Process Overview
13:35 3Getting the Lay of the Land and Q&A
32:58 4Assemble Your Gear
14:34 5Drum Tuning Part 1
33:56 6Drum Tuning Part 2
39:49 7Fine Tuning Tones Part 1
35:29Fine Tuning Tones Part 2
54:24 9General Guidelines of Tracking Drums
32:27 10Tracking with Sean Reinert
32:50 11Pop Quiz
17:57 12Basics of Superior Drummer
30:00 13EZDrummer vs Superior Drummer
25:32 14Constructing a Metal Drum Kit Part 1
41:09 15Constructing a Metal Drum Kit Part 2
26:14 16Constructing a Rock Drum Kit
38:03 17Grooves and Programming
14:33 18General Q&A
18:31 19Prepping Virtual Drums for the Mix
37:16 20Superior Review with Q&A
22:01 21Intro to Mixing and Drum Clean Up
33:13 22Interview with John Douglass
25:00 23Intro to Drum Editing
21:32 24Manual Editing Approach
15:30 25Editing with Beat Detective
16:46 26Editing with Elastic Audio
29:16 27Sample Layering
20:14 28Replacements
23:13 29Gain Staging and Bussing
15:45 30Mixing Essentials
32:06 31Compression and Parallel Compression
13:22 32Reverb and Automation
28:18 33Mixing Tips and Tricks
26:53Day 2
Day 3
34Bonus: EZDrummer - Introduction
17:38 35Bonus: EZDrummer - Intro to EZDrummer
14:47 36Bonus: EZDrummer - EZDrummer Foundations
29:30 37Bonus: EZDrummer - How a Drummer Plays
19:51 38Bonus: EZDrummer - Part Writing Part 1
32:54 39Bonus: EZDrummer - Part Writing Part 2
29:35 40Bonus: EZDrummer - Part Writing Q&A
10:21 41Bonus: EZDrummer - Intro to Grooves
13:48 42Bonus: EZDrummer - Writing from Scratch
26:49 43Bonus: EZDrummer - Intro to Fills
20:51 44Bonus: EZDrummer - Writing Fills
27:20 45Bonus: EZDrummer - Mixing in Your DAW
14:13 46Bonus: EZDrummer - Bussing and EQ
25:36 47Bonus: EZDrummer - Compression and Reverb
18:26 48Bonus: EZDrummer - Conclusion with Q&A
12:30 49Bonus Video: Editing
1:07:00 50Bonus Video: Toms and Cymbals
29:02 51Bonus Video: Snare Midi
32:26 52Bonus Video: Kick Midi
20:35Lesson Info
Compression and Parallel Compression
OK, there's two reasons why you'd want to compress something. A. You like the tone that a compressor gives you. You want something, be fatter. A compressor can do it without a queue. You want something to punch through. A mix compressor couldn't do it without a queue. Wherever you need to solve some problems like you've got dynamic range issues, compressors, the way to go, it's there's not one thing that it does great and, ah, let's go back to that snare that was working with. I had made it a little bit fatter and have, ah, a little bit more of a crack, but I feel like it could still, I don't know, could still have a little more something. So let's check it out. It could jump out a little more. So open a compressor that you guys all have. And here's a, uh, here's a good one. Basically, you want a quick attack, and thats so that the compressor kicks in immediately. A quick release. So your threshold to about where it's kicking at minus six db of gain reduction and then turn the makeup g...
ained back up to where it was before and the way to check that is to bypass it. And on by facets. So All right, let's go back a little. All right, Now I want to check the volume. Make sure we're not getting tricked by volume, which I think we are right now trying to gain back down. Now I'm going Teoh up the output of this que to drive the compressor a little harder to where I don't have to have the threshold as low. I still want to be coming in at around minus three to minus six. A little nastier now subtle, but it's got a little bit more attitude. The rial deal is in peril compression. She'll talk about next. But one thing that I want to know is ah, you guys should look at compression is something that you do in stages, just like gain staging. You don't want to compress very much on one track because just like in gain staging you can end up ruining it completely ruined the dynamic range. What you want to do is compress a little bit on the track itself, compress a little bit on the snare bus, compress a little bit on the drum bus, and then compress a little bit on the master bus, not compressed hell on the snare bus, compressed a hell on the snare track. And then what's left? Your snares destroyed. So just a little bit minus six might be a little much, but this compressor isn't the most powerful one. Now, I just moved the attack back, Have you noticed? And it got punchier. So the slower your attack, the more transient that's going to get through and the fatter it's going to sound Well, the more punchy it's gonna sound. So just remember that slower attack punch, ear drums. You can see how it would be easy to go overboard with this. You just want me to do parallel compression. Which about two dio All right, so let's just say that that compressions, okay, but it's still not quite as aggressive as I'd like it to be now, in turn, turned down the gain a little bit because I noticed that the gain staging was clipping a little bit. Now I'm gonna show you what parallel compression is. Basically, if you want to make it really simple peril, compression is when you duplicated track. You leave one process. However you have it and you do a separate chain completely, Uh, and then you blend them together and one of them is compressed like squashed as much as you possibly can, or close to that, so that actually makes things jump out so much. It's not even funny. So let's duplicate this ox. Everything about it the same. So for this, see snare Top star bottom coming out both oxes. We call this snare parallel calm. I just trust me on this. This is basically one of the things that will make a difference in every single mix. So stew SSL comp now trying to pin the meter, have a quick release and a medium attack so that there is a good amount of transient and it's ready for the next one. Immediately you listen to it by itself, super compressed. It's without compression that's with, and that's kind of what you want. You want it to sound. You want to sound overboard. Then next step, turn all the way down and press play. Here, you will hear your regular snare and then slowly fade up the parallel comp. Now parallel comp is something that you should be experimenting with on all of your tracks. In my opinion, I would do apparel Come for the kick Sapele com for the snare apparel Come for the toms. Parallel everything and be experimenting with different accuse into the peril conflict. Maybe you try a kick. That's Onley low end and compress that. Who knows? Sometimes compressors don't like low end. Some do, uh, sometimes maybe Onley high, pass the snare up to or high pass the kicks up to five K and then peril compressed the hell out of that blended in. No sound really, really punchy that way. Uh, just try it. I do at the bust through this really fast. I'm going to see if anyone has any questions about peril compression, because it seems to mystify some people, and it really is pretty simple anyone. So those that the auxiliary, the bus track that you duplicated? Yes. OK, so we got the snare bus right here. The original one. All I did was duplicated, and we got snare parallel. And then I just added the compression to the snare parallel track and, you know, squash the hell out of it and then blended them together real quick. Could you do the same thing with the return. Could you send it to ah, compressed return? Uh, that's what I just did. Yeah, uh, that's what I just I mean, I didn't do it technically, on Ascend, I routed the outputs to there. But, I mean, it's the same thing set up ascend to go to go to, uh which what buses it. Bus five. Yeah, I would just set the snare to go to bus five and same thing. Yeah, that's totally valid. And, ah, I didn't play it for a second so that we can listen with slightly fresher years, because when you're listening compression over and over and over and over again for a long time things will start to get a little screwy. So meaning your ears will fatigue and you'll stop knowing what's what. So I noticed a few red lights here, so I'm going to check out the game structure real quick. Once you start adding a Q and adding compression, you'll notice that things go to the red in a heartbeat. So you need to just always be keeping an eye on this and re balancing and rebalancing until you're good and a good trick for that is to have your input and your output match at all times. So if you add e Q and it turns up the volume turned on the output to where it was exactly where it was before, then you won't have any of these problems. So I just turned on the output and turning up the fader and tearing off the drums group now overall, feeling the snares or just a little bit too loud now that they're punching through that much, so turning them both down about 1. all right, I think that's better.
Class Materials
bonus material with purchase
Ratings and Reviews
El Bulbo Studio
This class will give you confidence when tracking drums. Eyal's interaction with the drummer will help you communicate better with the artist to get the best performance and tone. The added bonus on drum replacement is very valuable and will improve your mixes.
a Creativelive Student
My drum sound has improved by 150% and counting. I'm grateful that Eyal would share this information with us. Not every technique is for every situation, but they all work. It's up to you to have the vision and to use the right tools for the job. Thank you guys!!
Michael Nolasco
To the guy that said buyer beware: this is an advanced production class, it's not meant for beginners who are learning to mic up a kit. I'm a beginner, but i'm using superior drummer, so this class was perfect for me to learn how to process drums post recording. I refer to it constantly. The editing videos are also prime information.
Student Work
Related Classes
Recording Drums