02-12-2014, 01:40 AM
Hey, no problem. I used a parallel delay on the drums rather than reverb, since reverb has a very strong tendency to cloud up a fast mix, but I can see how the snare could use a bit more.. maybe a super short reverb to give it some more body. The snare in general is probably not as strong as it needs to be as a result of my mix compression, which is far, far heavier than I'd usually do... a lot of the times a little bump at 5000 hZ will give a snare a lot of snap.
However, I'm not too sure that more wideness on the snare is a good idea, and there's a reason for that. I'm not one for hard panning most of the time, but hard/heavy rock is a genre that needs to be loud to be taken seriously next to the competition, and that means tight gain staging and oftentimes pretty heavy compression. Personally, I love to fill the entire spectrum, from left to right, as much as I can... MOST of the time... but when you need tight gain staging and hard compression, lots of subtle panning can make it really hard to get the averages levels as high as you need them without taking it too far. For hard rock, I like to keep the pan positions pretty far apart from one another (especially distorted guitars) and a very, very symmetrical stereo image. Clarity comes at premium when you've got kick rolls and distorted guitars running at high speed through most of the mix, so keeping the instruments at least 25% from one another in the stereo image is a must in my opinion, and keeping things dynamically symmetrical is going to make mix buss compression a lot easier, since you can rely on the compressor to reduce the gain on both sides fairly evenly. I'm sure someone out there more skilled than I am can make single channel stereo widening work in that context, but I've yet to figure out how
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But you're absolutely right, the drums could be a bit more live, and the snare needs to cut through the mix a bit more. Thanks for the feedback!
However, I'm not too sure that more wideness on the snare is a good idea, and there's a reason for that. I'm not one for hard panning most of the time, but hard/heavy rock is a genre that needs to be loud to be taken seriously next to the competition, and that means tight gain staging and oftentimes pretty heavy compression. Personally, I love to fill the entire spectrum, from left to right, as much as I can... MOST of the time... but when you need tight gain staging and hard compression, lots of subtle panning can make it really hard to get the averages levels as high as you need them without taking it too far. For hard rock, I like to keep the pan positions pretty far apart from one another (especially distorted guitars) and a very, very symmetrical stereo image. Clarity comes at premium when you've got kick rolls and distorted guitars running at high speed through most of the mix, so keeping the instruments at least 25% from one another in the stereo image is a must in my opinion, and keeping things dynamically symmetrical is going to make mix buss compression a lot easier, since you can rely on the compressor to reduce the gain on both sides fairly evenly. I'm sure someone out there more skilled than I am can make single channel stereo widening work in that context, but I've yet to figure out how
.But you're absolutely right, the drums could be a bit more live, and the snare needs to cut through the mix a bit more. Thanks for the feedback!
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!