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Drum Mixing - Subtractive EQ

Lesson 63 from: Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A Bootcamp

Eyal Levi

Drum Mixing - Subtractive EQ

Lesson 63 from: Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A Bootcamp

Eyal Levi

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Lesson Info

63. Drum Mixing - Subtractive EQ

Next Lesson: Drum Mixing - Snare

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Intro to Bootcamp

13:44
2

Purpose of Pre-Production

15:54
3

Technical Side of Preproduction

11:32
4

Pre-Production: Setting Up the Tempo Map

12:05
5

Pre-Production: Importing Stems

10:10
6

Pre-Production: Click Track

15:26
7

Creating Tracking Templates

17:03
8

Intro and the Tone Pie

04:51
9

Drums - Lay of the Land

10:44
10

Bearing Edges

03:09
11

Wood Types

10:36
12

Depths and Sizes

04:00
13

Hoops

02:38
14

Sticks and Beaters

07:38
15

Drum Heads

07:30
16

Drum Tuning

1:03:54
17

Drum Mic Placement Intro

10:37
18

Basic Drum Mic Setup

53:36
19

Cymbal Mic Setup

35:24
20

Touch Up Tuning

46:55
21

Microphone Choice and Placement

40:34
22

Drum Tracking Intro

01:01
23

Getting Tones and Final Placement

34:51
24

Primary Tracking

31:54
25

Punching In and Comping Takes

20:11
26

Guitar Setup and Rhythm Tone Tracking

01:59
27

Amplifiers - Lay of the Land

10:00
28

Amplifiers & Cab Shoot Out

27:12
29

Guitar Cab Mic Choice and Placement

03:56
30

Guitar Tracking and Signal Chain

29:07
31

Finalizing Amplifier Tone

51:24
32

Guitar Mic Shootout Round Robin

05:21
33

Intro to Rhythm Tracking

07:46
34

Setting Up Guitars

15:02
35

Working with a Guitarist

05:04
36

Final Guitar Tone and Recap

04:10
37

Guitar Tracking with John

15:19
38

Guitar Tracking with Ollie

32:03
39

Final Tracking

22:08
40

Tracking Quads

33:44
41

Intro to Bass Tone

01:26
42

Bass Tone Setup

07:35
43

Bass Tone Mic Placement

16:42
44

Bass Tracking

45:08
45

Intro to Clean and Lead Tones

02:15
46

Clean Guitar Tones

34:04
47

Lead Tones

10:58
48

Vocal Setup for Tracking

11:26
49

Vocal Mic Selection and Setup

02:38
50

Vocal Mic Shootout

09:13
51

Lead Vocal Tracking

38:09
52

Writing Harmonies

07:44
53

Harmony Vocal Tracking

23:25
54

Vocal Warm Ups

11:39
55

Scream Vocal Tracking

18:56
56

Vocal Tuning and Editing Introduction

01:35
57

Vocal Tuning and Editing

29:26
58

Routing and Bussing

25:16
59

Color Coding, Labeling and Arranging Channels

17:54
60

Setting Up Parallel Compression

30:50
61

Setting Up Drum Triggers

10:41
62

Gain Staging and Trim

1:00:54
63

Drum Mixing - Subtractive EQ

25:38
64

Drum Mixing - Snare

23:00
65

Drum Mixing - Kick

11:39
66

Drum Mixing - Toms

24:47
67

Drum Mixing - Cymbals and Rooms

17:23
68

Drum Mixing Recap

08:57
69

Mixing Bass Guitar

16:26
70

Mixing Rhythm Guitars

1:16:07
71

Basic Vocal Mix

1:08:59
72

Mixing Clean and Lead Guitars

58:55
73

Mixing - Automation

43:35
74

Mastering - Interview with Joel Wanasek

31:01

Lesson Info

Drum Mixing - Subtractive EQ

Welcome to day 15 of my metal recording bootcamp with monuments, at Creative Live. I hope that you guys have been following along this whole time because today we're gonna start getting really into this mix. If you don't even know what I'm talking about, or haven't been following along, there's been 14 days ahead of this, hence why I said welcome to day 15. And you can purchase the beginning and binge watch it all the way up to here so that you know what's going on. If that's not important to you, just let's talk some mixing. So, where we left off was I had routed everything, did some gain staging. As you can see it's a pretty big session. I got everything routed. I gain staged it so that it's quiet and there's plenty of headroom. I have all the different instruments coming in on the seven AUX's before they go to the master bus. Okay, for master bus processing. And I kinda want to do as much on these AUX's as possible, before I really start to go crazy with the individual tracks. Numbe...

r one, because it will if I do some processing on these AUX's it will reveal problems in the other tracks, it will show me things I need to fix as well as say that there's a build up of a certain frequency or something, if I just take care of it in the AUX, I won't have to do as much processing to the individual tracks. The other reason is that we recorded this at Clear Lake Studios in California, and we thought it sounded pretty cool leaving there, so, I don't wanna just zero it all out and start from scratch. So I'm trying to kind of mix around it before I have to start redoing the things from California, or ditching them completely. And I'm totally open to ditching things completely, but this is the way I'm doing it. I'm trying to simplify it and go with broad strokes first. And as problems are revealed I will solve them and this will start sounding amazing. So, I'll show you guys where the drums were yesterday. (drumming) Okay, so, I added a few things. I added an EQ to kinda roll off some lows and very highs, to give it a little bit of high end extension around 10 as well. I found that there were some nasties between four and six, so I with a wide Q, I knocked some of that out. I also noticed that I can't even read what that says, but I think that that's 500. With a pretty wide Q I knocked a little bit of that out too, that's just like a garbage frequency area, and the room that we recorded in had just this bump in the garbage frequency areas anyways, so, it's always nice to remove when possible. And then I bumped 60, just a little. So I rolled it off up to 50, and then bumped it at 60 just a little bit. So. (drumming) If anything, you can just hear that the low end got a little bigger, and, it got a little less harsh. But it still, when I turn it up loud, let me scoot forward. I put a limiter on here to get it loud. So check out what happens. You'll notice that the high end and the low end are just out of control. (drumming) So I put a multi-band on here to control both the low end and the high end. (drumming) Hear that difference? Like, without the multi-band, the low end is just going insane. Check that out again. (drumming) Of course, I'll adjust that over time to make perfect sense of the base, but. (drumming) I still felt like the cymbals were a little pokey, and shrilly and whistly, instead of doing some EQ, I just thought that maybe Virtual Tape Machine could smooth it out a little. And it has a little. (drumming) Okay, but all that work and I still feel like the kicks are out of control, like I'm hearing a lot more than just the kick in the low end, and it's really annoying me, and it's been annoying me. So I went and I actually isolated the kick bus, and I added this EQ. And I rolled off some more extreme lows, and it didn't make any difference at all. And so I figured to myself that's gotta be coming from somewhere else. And here you go, we recorded Anup Sastry in that big live room and he's one of the most powerful creators I've ever worked with. He played a natural kick, and there's a ton of kick in the room mics. And he hits his kicks really, really hard, so you've got bass drum all over the place, and, looking through the processing that I had done on the rooms, it doesn't look like it doesn't look like I attempted to completely get rid of every shred of kick evidence in all these tracks. And let me just show you what happens when you take the rooms out of the equation. They're kinda loud now, but they're gonna need some work, as well, check it out. I'm gonna play it with and without the rooms. (drumming) Massive difference, those rooms need a lot of work. When you take them out, there's still work to do on the drums, but, but damn. They're way way closer without those rooms. So, I'm gonna mute them for the time being. Let's take a look at what else we've got going on here. (drumming) Okay, I am going to remove the low end from these cymbals. Looks like I already did it on the spot mics, but I didn't really do it on the overheads. So I'm gonna do that on the overheads, 'cause the kicks that we've got are more than big enough, like don't need any help in the low end department, especially uncontrolled low end department. So, let me just check my overhead group and see what is in it. Perfect. So you can see plugins, volume, mute, do sends as well. Cool, so, got a Q1 happening. And then I'm just gonna listen for when the kick, or the low end stops being kind of annoying. (drumming) I feel like there's some whistly, some whistly frequencies that I could probably get rid of on these cymbals. The reason I'm saying that is because I already tried doing a general dip on the EQ that was on the AUX, and I still hear some of these whistlys. So I'm going to zero in on them and get them taken care of now. Every set of cymbals tends to have these, and they're so annoying. They make things painful. So. (drumming) I need a section where he's hitting the crashes or something. (drumming) It's better, I still hear a few. I'm going to take care of them as well. Just gotta find them. Now you wanna make sure to not go overboard, 'cause you don't to completely neuter what you're working on. And just like with guitars, it's the same thing. There's a lot of whistly frequencies in guitars, and you just wanna be really careful not to go too far and completely EQ the life out of it. But, it is good to remove this painful stuff. (drumming) Still hear some. Gotta get rid of it. (drumming) That is awful. (drumming) It's much better. Listen to the difference. (drumming) Cool. (drumming) So that's a lot more pleasant to listen to. Let's hear what else we've got going on. (drumming) Snare's a little pointy. Let's examine. (drumming) Okay. (drumming) There, again, those garbage frequencies just suck. And I am EQing along the bus, seeing what I can get away with. But pretty soon I'm gonna start removing samples and changing them out and getting a few balances different. (drumming) You can use a different plugin to add a little bit of high end back end, 'cause I'm not crazy about the way Q10 does high end. (drumming) Okay, I feel like there's a little too much bottom snare. I'm going to take a look at just the bottom snare real quick. (drumming) I'll see if I can actually get some lows out of that, give it some body. I don't want to, I don't wanna emphasize the highs too much, or it's gonna start to sound really really weird. Papery, almost. (drumming) Kinda kills the low end too much when I have that engaged, wow. (drumming) Alright, so this is a fine, delicate balance here. What I'm trying to do is make the snare bottom a little bit longer, while simultaneously gaining some of those kicks out, so that I don't really bring them out too much. (drumming) There, bottom snare is now not as annoying. (drumming) Gonna add just that gate onto here. Bypass the EQ. No dynamics. (drumming)

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Eyal Levi Bootcamp Bonuses
Drum Editing - HD

Ratings and Reviews

Ron
 

I'm on lesson 19! Already worth every dollar!!! Priceless insight! I have already incorporated some of the ideas (preproduction common sense stuff that I never thought of, but damn). VERY HAPPY with this course! ALWAYS LEARNING and looking forward to the next 50 (or whatever) lessons!!! Excellent course! GREAT PRODUCER/ENGINEER, GREAT DRUM TECH, and GREAT BAND!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

ceeleeme
 

I'm just part way though and I'm blown away by the quality approach Eyal takes to getting the best out of the sessions. I love how well everything is explained and Eyals calm manner is just awesome it really makes you want to listen to the gems of wisdom he offers.

Will
 

Wow is all I can say. This bootcamp goes in so much depth from tuning drums, setting up guitars, to recording and mixing. I have learned so much by participating in this bootcamp. It has taught me some new recording techniques and signal routing for my mixes. I just want to thank Eyal, Monuments, and Creative Live for taking the time to do this. It has been amazing and I will keep going back to these videos.

Student Work

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