Let’s dive in and mix heavy snare and kick drum.
As we all know, mixing drums can sometimes be overwhelming.
It’s difficult to know where to even start or where you should be focusing most of your attention.
I recently had the pleasure of hanging out and doing an entire drum mix LIVE (and from absolute scratch) with members of the Frightbox Mix Crypt.
While mixing these drum tracks with everyone in realtime, I was reminded just how much of the overall drum sound comes down to how well you dial in your kick and snare tracks.
I’ve found that most of us get caught up in small details that matter very little at the end of the day.
The plugins you decide to use on your drums can make a subtle difference.
Where you pan your overheads can, maybe, make a 5% difference.
Yes, parallel compression and advanced mix tricks can add another layer of punch to your drum tracks.
But the truth is, when it comes to heavy music production, your kick and snare mix is the large majority of your overall drum sound.
Because of this, I’ve decided to go back into that live stream replay and highlight the main key moments where I mix heavy snare and kick drum from scratch.