How to Mix Drums Better 

I would just like to add my voice to the chorus of fans asking for more content like this - the old videos you did like "How the Pros use EQ" and "How the Pros use Compression" remain saved go-to videos for me to the point where I often have them open in another window while I'm working on a mix. I think all your content is fantastic and understand completely that you need to take your market into account, but for the subset of your subscribers who are burgeoning engineers or producers this stuff is pure gold - thank you for making it and sharing your knowledge with us free of charge, I appreciate it.

Love all the content on both channels but THIS is what I have been missing!! Really miss all the videos you used to do with mixing, compression, EQ, etc.. The production stuff. I bought all the Beato material available and would love to see some production and mixing material offered up in the future. Keep Rockin!!!

i feel like it should be noted that the drums are also well tuned and well performed. the playing is balanced. and the mic technique sounds good as well. I would argue these are more important than any plugins. So with these bases covered, it makes sense all you’d need is a lil compression, a sample, and a reverb if needed.

Rick, your interviews have been really great, and I hope you keep doing them. But I also hope you can find time to keep sharing awesome production/engineering lessons like this. You're such a natural teacher, it's a pleasure to support your work.

Great video. The real takeaway and #1 lesson though is record your source sounds well.

Rick ....please more of this kind of content, your approach is so clear.....no hype, walk through clearly & to the point......love it !!!

Damn, those drums sound fantastic right off the bat!! Amazingly well recorded.

We need more of these types of videos. As much as we appreciate the interviews, this is equally invaluable.

Snare is awesome! The player. The room and the drum tuning are the biggest factors. People don't talk about the player enough Also why samples are used 95% of time. God forbid your drums sound different than the radio for once. Lol. Dude def knows how to record a kit. And it's not easy. Ssoooo many factors to worry about. Awesome advice!! Thank you!

Please do more content like this! Love watching people who know their stuff do mixing in real time while explaining to us mere mortals what it is they’re doing. Great stuff!

LOVE these types of tutorials, please keep them coming

We need you for this Rick! I’ve watched so many RU-vid videos on this but this is the best! Not sure why, but it makes such good sense, plus I get to see the decisions made in real time which is fantastic for learning

Rick, I love your educational content. I've been watching you since your early advanced theory concept videos. You're a wealth of knowledge as well as entertaining while staying classy, but relaxed. Thanks!

Love everything you're doing. Thank you for what you bring to the inter-web

As usual, a video totally crammed with useful information. What would we musicians do without you? Seriously. Thank you for everything, always!

This video shows how important it is to get the source sounding good as the first priority. Your instincts as to what to add is, of course, spot on, and in 10 minutes you had a super professional sound. Thanks !

Thank you very much Rick for this and all of your wonderful videos. I really like the fact that everything you do is for the love of music first trying to bring out the best in all of us so that we may all become better at our craft some day. Again from the bottem of my heart I thank you for all that you do.

Thanks Rick! Love your teaching videos.

I think some of the best drum sounds came before a lot of the technology. Moving a mic away from the drum head will naturally compress the sound, and adding two condenser mics.... one near and another far across the room can do wonderful things in a stereo mix. Joe Morello had some great drum sounds working with Brubeck for example. A good room is one thing... knowing how to utilize a good room is another. I'm on the side of "the more natural they sound the better". That being said, in the virtual age, everyone wants great sounds without great rooms or even great mics. That's understandable, but doing things the right way is still best. Thanks for your great content as always Rick! It's wonderful!

I like what you did by using superior drummer to add in room ambience/reverb

I love your teaching Sir, your skills and well illustrated. Thank you ❤

GREAT TO WATCH YOU WORK!

I love this kind of video! Helps me get better at recording and mixing.

Great stuff here Rick! Thank you! 🙏🏻

So great to see this process

Rick, this is exactly the kind of content I've been looking for. I've been recording drums in a small room experimenting with double mic'ing and stereo room techniques. Now I'll have some things to try in order to make the drums sounds bigger. Thank you. Also, nice beard.

That kick sounded amazing in those room mics! Very well placed, they beef up and glue the whole kit.

When Rick presses play and his raw drum tracks sound better than my fully mixed and edited drums! 😂😢

great content, insight, and techniques for mixing drums very useful

If you see this, Rick. Love the structure of this second channel. Awesome quotes and highlights from the longer form interviews I dont always get to watch plus epic production content. Thanks! 🎉

Rick, you can do everything! More mixing, please!

Wow!. The possibilities are Endless... Awesome vid! Makes me miss recording...

LOVED this.

Love it🤘🤘 Thank you, Rick

It’s awesome watching a master in his craft

Great stuff! Thanks Rick!

One thing that is nice to do with Superior is to trig kick, snare and toms, but only use the room micks in Superior. It give more resonance and tone of real drums then a room reverb 🙂

I’ll just join the crowd in letting Rick know we love ALL of his content… but please more of these tutorials!!

I LOVE using superior as either a snare replacement or for triggering!

Yesss!!! Thank you for this video!

Great content! I would love to see you provide the entire process from song writing, to recording, mixing, and mastering!

The title of this video is amazing 😂. Love ya Rick, I learn something every time I watch your videos

Great video! We need more. I would really like to see this again but with how to use the actual room mics. I’ve recently gotten a session with room mics and I’m not so sure how to make the best use of them.

Thank you for that.... more like this please

Cool. Thanks, Rick.

You gotta love this second channel ! Thanks Rick you are the Mr beast of RnR

Thanks Rick! when you have time... More of this anytime!

More videos like this please!!!

Thanks for this one!

MORE CONTENT LIKE THIS PLEASE :)

Love this kind of content Rick, really helpful for budding producers and musicians...As a lonely analogue dinosaur tracking to tape without computer stuff, some tips on conventional EQ and compression settings for the individual drums (especially bass drum) would be really cool!

Can't wait for you to make a mixing and mastering course.

I learn a few new tricks , so thanks !

Thanks Rick.

This is gold. I'm using EZ Drummer in my compositions but I currently have all tracks going through a LA-2A plug-in. I should try not compressing the cymbals and see I can hear a difference. I really liked what the supplemental snare did as well as the verb on the snare+kick

More of these!!

i remember the first video i ever watched from you, back in 2016. You lined up a bunch of my favorite songs, and pointed out how the snares all sounded basically the same because they all had the same sample replacement/treatment. Eye opening and just awesome. I was a fan right away. I still am. Thanks Rick!

Great useful video. 😎

Rick Beato is a such a gem. Love all the content this guy has put in the world for us music lovers.

This is awesome! More “producer Rick” please!

Great demonstration. Love this kind of stuff... That snare sound great without the sample.. l would just reverb it on it own

one thing I struggle is to have the snare mic without hi-hat bleeding. Your top snare track is very well recorded in that sense. I've tried so many techniques and plugins to get that right but nothing compares to a well recorded sound like this!

superior drums 3 is excellent i love it

Nice one Rick - everything you were doing was exactly what I would do and what you were hearing is what I was hearing - I was saying 'yeah!" a lot lol

For Fake room also i use a mix of the drum and printed into an stereo track and insert the great Ocean Way Studios from UAD or the DVERB Room algorith in full wet, sometimes with the help for rock sounds of the Sountoys Devil Loc

Please do some more of these mix tutorials for different instruments I’d love to see it

Silencer by BlackSalt Audio is a great gate. Doesn't kill too much, and is easy to use, super consistent too. You can sidechain it and clip gain stuff up or down if there are a few hits that are out of range. This combined with good ambience whether from verbs (on recorded tracks or on samples), shell ambient samples, regular samples, compr and parallel compr, clipping, drum/shell bus parallel compr, etc makes driving drums

Good, informative.👍

Put the gate before the comp on the snare Rick!

Another great video Rick. What do you think of doing a video on the top 10 flams! I'm a drummer and I love the flam. I was just listening to Fooled Around and Fell In Love. Great flams! Also pretty much anything by Copeland.

Out of the gate I’d be happy with those basic tracks ❤

great ad for superior drummer

Bonham snare like. I like it. I use the same SD3 lib too.

I liked these as well, almost as much as the whiteboards. 🙂

BAE= Beato Audio Engineering...Your music production vids are some of my favorites right up there with the interviews

Completely blown away by the Master X HD plugin...I don't know if it was just a volume increase, but I was impressed.

Man I'm so glad I found this, didn't know about it and wanted you to make videos just like this one! ☺

I LOVE the fact that you have spare NS-10s for precise monitoring of what you do with your gear on the right :) :P .Nice

Rick ive been watching sonce the end of 2016 the first video i saw of you was breaking down andy wallace mixing style...now that youve announced brendan o brian i would love to see you interview andy wallace he is my favorite engineer

This was so helpful! I'm mixing drums this week on my debut solo release!

As soon as you added the reverb 15:55 I heard: Kick em when they're up, kick when they're down... "Dirty Laundry". Sing along. Sick drum mix Rick!

My mentor showed me to send the kick to the drum reverb, but send it through a high passed bus. Works pretty well, if you don’t want to make another reverb.

Love this! As an ableton user , watching people use protools I’m like … man why haha

Great lesson Rick! People like to over process the drums a lot nowadays. Sometimes less is more.

This is great! Drums didn't need much tho TBH. Great sounding takes. Would love to see one like this but for tracking the kit on a budget. Just plugins and 57s or something of the like

Great drum mixing video, I love your approach and willingness to experiment. The mix sounds fantastic. What were the monitors you were using? In the video you have Yamaha NS10's in the background, was that what we were listening to. When I'm mixing I use Tannoys and sometimes I use my NS 10's but I also use reference tracks to get a balance of vocals and instruments. Thank you!

I use the UAD Neve 33609 compressor on my drum sub, which I call “drum squeeze”😊

I like Rick the mixer ❤

It always surprised me how little mixing / processing things need when they're recorded properly. Killer sounds 👌

Beard is looking great Rick.

Just what I wanted to learn more about. Thanks! Can you show how you've actually mic'd and recorded the drums?

Rick, I swear if you create a third channel of mixing and mastering production tips just like this you'll pretty much run youtube. Great content sir!

Of course 70% of mixing drums is having already recorded them properly and having (at least for me) a GREAT room mic sound (personally I have a booth, so I mic the room next to it and it sounds huge with compression) and then broad strokes of EQ and Compress to taste, I love the Waves Omni Channel for that.

busy watching now, this is so great for us backroom producers :p thank you

Anyone else take a snapshot of Rick's plug-ins?? lol. Rick, we need more of these type of your videos!! 🙂

Loving the content! Just wondering, how come that in the close rooms, the snare drum sounds panned to the right, and the kick panned to the left? 🤔 1:44

i usually mult snare and kick and sometimes toms to separate tracks or auxes and parallell compress that, combine with original tracks and route to drumbus with some transient control. also do tiny amount of mixbuss comp for ”glue”.

SD snare Dw cooper is really good.

Nice Video ..

Rick, how much processing was done on the way in during tracking? did you use any EQ or compression, or were these pretty much raw tracks with excellent mic choices and placement? Your raw tracks sound much more hi-fi than my raw tracks generally do!