Your experience with bottom up is the exact reason people fail while doing bottom up, you just started mutilating the kick track without listening to it. When I work this way, I always keep AT LEAST the overheads and maybe even the room mics active the entire time while I'm working on the kick, snare and toms. This way I can hear how my moves are effective the overall picture of the kit. Style is also important to note. Do you want to use the overheads as the foundation of the drum tone, while the close mics support it, or are your overheads mainly for cymbals while the close mics to do heavy lifting? Very important to know when doing bottom up.
This is for the newcomers to recording/mixing: When using the Top Down Drum Bus compression method; Use a side chain on the compressor that is triggered by the low end of the Kick and Bass to remove the pumping effects on the cymbals. Some stereo bus compressors have a built in side chain that can also avoid triggering from the extreme low end. (75% or more of the engergy within audio is just the low end sub and bass frequencies. The last 25% is just the low-ish mids up through the high information. Side chaining the bass and sub frequencies on the stereo compressor allows high frequency information to open up before the compressor has a chance to squash the bass hard. Bass always triggers bass first, but side chaining is the absolute fix.)
I generally have the sidechain filter of my compressor set to around 100 hz. This avoids it being overly triggered by each kick drum hit. The issue though is that the snare drum will still trigger it more than the cymbals because the main frequencies of the snare are higher than 100 hz. What I would personally do is gently compress the drum bus but do heavier compression on the actual kick and snare. Those are the two most important elements of a drum kit anyway.
To be honest - I have a v3 of the Top-Down approach. 1. Route all shells to a SHELLS bus 2. Route OH / Room / etc to BRASS/ROOM/OH bus Bus those buses to a DRUMS bus You can have the top-down effects on *all* elements (eq/soothe/etc) while keeping the pumping Comp on the shells, and adding a different EQ state or comp stage to the cymbals. You can also route the shells to a SMASH aux that has parallel compression that's way stronger than if you had cymbals in there. Mix to taste. Works GREAT.
What I found myself doing a lot of times is to route the overheads to a buss inside the drum buss, I also route the remaining drums to another buss inside the drum buss. Both busses still go to the drum buss. This approach allows me to treat the drums (toms, snare, ect.) and the overheads (symbols, HH ect.) with individual processing and when the balances are completed I fold everything to the drum buss to where I can tweak the volume or whatever else that may be necessary on the overall drum mix. This works well for me.
Love your REAL approach to everything you do. Thanks for the honesty! As far as I’m concerned, you are the best fir for the RR. Glad to see you taking over the home studio RU-vids. 😊 On a side note. I’ve noticed the Strat acoustisonic in the background the last few videos. I hope you didn’t trade off your sweet J45. God Bless!
Well, if you do buttom-up mixing, see what it as a preparation for the bus processing. Cleaning up the frequencies and adding some energy by compression and saturation, can be done before the bus processing. It don't has to be perferct: you can always do bus (and parallel) processing. If you want to apply a lot of compression on the main drum bus, you can try if mid/side compression works for you. This way, the compression of the kick and snare has less (to no) impact on the cymbals. So you will get a more natural sound and a tone of vibe.
Hey Joe. If bottom-up then I would focus on the Overheads ang get the main vibe from then in this recording and mix in context while tweaking individual channels. Looking forward to your thoughts on that.
I used both bottom-up and top down. In short, bottom-up work way better for me. Especially when I got "bad" or "not great" recording to mix. In this exemple your drums is well recorded and it work great. When you got a live recording with not so good sound, I need to work on the track. Moreover, nowadays I use a system with a mix of bottom up and top down, all depending on my songs needs. I realise that it is way more effective to deal with low end bottom up than top down. Again, it is just a personal way. Both techniques are amazing.
You could also high pass the overheads and low pass the room mics to shift the focus of one away from the other. That way you can route the cymbals to the mains and keep the room headed to the drum bus and reduce the cymbal pumping to a nearly inaudible level.
Hey Joe ! Thanks a lot something I am still struggling is to get drum mix to sound live , I am gonna a give it a go with the top down missing system , it make sense in a way
My method should probably just be called Everything Everywhere All At Once, because I sort of jump around at random based on what pops out to me and what I think the best way to solve it is. I will often start with a rough balance. That will be followed by a little compression and EQ on the drum bus, but I won't spend a ton of time on it. Then I'll work on individual elements. Then I'll come back to the drum bus and add more plugins or make adjustments. I guess this is sort of top-down, but it's more haphazard than the way other people usually describe it.
Haven't watched this channel, or Joe's, for a few years and this is a good reminder why. Graham and Joe are good guys when it comes to learning a few basic things for the beginners, but for actually getting properly good at it, not so much. And the top--down mixing stuff is just nonsense , Top-down mixing is a great way of not learning what actuallly makes an effective and really good drum mix - and only works if your source tracks are recorded in a pro studio with both eq and compression on the way in - which isn't what most of us do. Well, unless all you do is indie-rock that is.
Top down mixing can be tough unless you have really great tracks to start with. In my experience mixing drums recorded in a project studio you gotta get a balance first and then EQ the individual tracks. For me starting with the drum buss is just too broad. I might throw a little EQ and compression on the drum buss, but that's after I have a balance and have cleaned up any boxiness. I use parallel compression and drum buss processing for a little salt and pepper when needed.
speaking of drums, do you play drums or use VSTs with your music? I have a difficult time with drums, I'm a very newbie and can't even get started because of getting a drum beat! Good video, Thanks!
I think the framing of this is all wrong. It's not a matter of bottom up vs top down. The better way to think of it imo is that your buss comp and channel comps do 2 very different things. Your buss comp, in general should be gluing your kit together as a single instrument. Your channel comps should be customizing the shape and dynamic range of the individual tracks, which will change the way your drums interact with the buss comp and the mix buss comp. Then, if desired, we can send elements of the kit like kick and snare to more extreme compression and top and bottom EQ boosts, then fold that return in to your over all drum mix. Remember though, you might have a softer attack kick like in this video, with a stronger attack snare. You'll need different attack and release times to excite the kick and tame the snare. You can't do that with a buss comp.
Is anyone else having problem with the link to get the FREE Radio Ready Guide? I've tried it more than 5 times already and the site can't be reached. Or I'm blocked
Great information. When mixing top down, could you consider taking the symbols off the bus track and inserting them on their own bus and mixing that way?….. just finished watching the end of the video. Duh.
I tend to use buses inside my drum bus. For example, a shells bus, an overheads bus, a room mics bus... You get the idea. That way I can run bus processing on the different groups that make up the kit, as well as control the overall width of each subgroup, but still have ultimate control of the drums as a whole at the top level folder. I definitely like being able to compress my drum shells independent of the cymbals, let the room mics have their own processing, and so on
I just wish RU-vidrs would stop with the faces on the thumb. So doesn't make me want to watch it. Everyone is doing it. Sheesh. Love Joe's videos, tho.
