Boogiesnakes 'It's My Right'

[MClarkson]

Hello!

My first time posting on here. This is my mix for the upcoming podcast, looking forward to getting some feedback.

Edit - See post below

Matt

[mikej]

Please upload your mixes/masters as audio files if at all possible.

[MClarkson]

Sorry about that. Please find the mp3 attached!

[NotMatt_Matthew]

This is a nice tight mix, good snare sound, which is what I've been struggling with on this one. Makes good use of the great drumming.
Care to tell us how you processed the snare?

[MClarkson]

This is a nice tight mix, good snare sound, which is what I've been struggling with on this one. Makes good use of the great drumming.
Care to tell us how you processed the snare?

Thanks for the kind comment, I was aiming for a punchy tight sound so I'm glad you think I got there. 

To dial in the snare sound I first listened to what sounded good in the Overhead track and compared that to the Drum Room track. I thought the overheads captured a very strong image of the snare, especially in the snappy upper region. The room track had a strong kick sound and I tried to get some more 'body' of the snare from there too. I processed these tracks with those points in mind and tried to bring out those aspects a little more. I actually added a small amount of drive to the overhead channel with decapitator to exaggerate the snare high end once I got further into the mix to help it cut through more.

For the direct snare channel I decided to concentrate more on the low mid thud to compliment the sound from the overheads. I cut quite a lot of mid around 500hz in the snare top track as this area was covered by the room sound and I didn't wish to exaggerate it further in this region once the close mic was added in too. The snare bottom was untouched with eq and just mixed in enough to get some sizzle and sustain and to make it sound how a snare sounds to my ears. I sent these tracks to a single snare folder (reaper user) so I could process them together. Firstly I added a Gate (fabfilter pro G) with a fairly low ratio (1.46:1) and with a range that I thought kept a fairly natural sound while controlling a bit of hi hat and kick bleed. Just enough so that further processing wouldn't make those parts appear too strongly in the snare channel but not so much that it sounded like a snare sample. I then applied a simple leveling compressor using the stock reaper compressor to even out the hits as much as possible without changing the snare envelope. (attack 0.74ms release 409 ratio 6:1). Aiming to grab the snare hit and let it go without changing the tone of the transient or sustain). I followed this with Pro Q3 to bring out more of the low fundamental of the snare around 210hz and a touch of bite around 4k with some dynamic eq bands so they would only kick in when the snare hits so as not to change the hi hat and kick sound. I also used a static high shelf cut around 7k so I could bring the close mic level up but rely more on the highs from the overheads so the hi hat didn't get too loud from the snare channel bleed. I then added a little saturation, I used the Softube Saturation Knob because I had just downloaded it and wanted to test it. It added some percieved pop and that was good enough for me.

Futher along into the mix I thought the snare needed a little bit more of the low fundamental so I created a duplicate of the snare top mic but with a very tight band pass eq around 220hz. This was then gated to control the sustain of the track so it is a subtle pop of transient without a ring. This is an idea I learnt from a Dan Worrall YouTube video on parallel filtering tricks, very much worth a watch. I only blended this track in a little bit and it helped boost that low fundamental. I also created a track to create a sustain for the snare using white noise convolution. This was a Mike Senior trick I watched a video about and it's really useful to get a bit of high end sustain that you can blend in if required. You load a mono sample of white noise into a impulse based reverb plugin and adjust the envelope to get the right timing you need for your track the eq it to get the tone profile you want.

For the snare reverb I made a send to a plate reverb but went through a gate first to cut the attack of the snare and therefore exaggerate the sustain more. I eq'd to get the tone profile I wanted, more highs less lows.

There will be other moves that affect the snare tone in the drum buss and master buss too but that's a lot to go into here considering I've already gone on for quite a bit and its probably more information than anyone needs to hear from a rank amateur about snare tone :')

[Roy]

Note that the bottom snare mic is out of phase with the top so it will be a bit thinner sounding. Flipping the polarity on the bottom mic will bring back some of the 'body' of the snare. Also, if I remember correctly, the kick is out of phase with the overheads.