Drums that hit, from zero

On guitar and bass you keep the DI so you can change the tone without playing again. On drums, MIDI plays that role: as long as you have it, you can change the entire kit, the internal balance and the routing without redoing anything.

Never delete the MIDI. Audio is a result; MIDI is the source, and it’s also where you’ll fix, for free, things that would cost a re-record on a real kit.

• The kit: a genre preset, chosen with the riff playing, in 15 minutes. The kick should have a click and the snare should cut over the guitars.
• The groove: kick and snare first, with the kick landing where the riff’s accents land. That coincidence is what makes the song heavy.
• The velocities: hi-hat with accents (±15 to 25) and 2–3 snare ghost notes per section. It’s 80% of sounding played rather than programmed.
• The transitions: a fill in the bar before each section change, with a crash together with the kick on the way in.

• Humanized timing: in rock/metal, square is fine. Moving notes at random sounds badly played, not human.
• The ambience and size: those are mixing.
• The fine balance between pieces: also mixing.
• How many outputs to open: it gets decided when mixing, and changing it is free.

Kick · snare · toms · hi-hat · overheads · room, all to a DRUM bus.

And a rule that matters: leave the bleed as it comes. The leakage between mics is what makes six channels sound like a kit played in a room. Gating everything is the most common mistake when mixing virtual drums.

Kick and snare up front, overheads dosed, room from zero going up. A lot gets fixed with this alone, and many “EQ problems” were balance problems.

• Wide cut of 3–6 dB at 200–400 Hz: the adjustment that most cleans up the foundation.
• Boost of 2–5 dB at 2–5 kHz: the click that cuts through the guitars.
• Sharing with the bass, decided with kick and bass alone.
• Compressor with a medium attack (10–20 ms) and fast release.

• Gentle high-pass at 80–100 Hz.
• Snap at 4–8 kHz, but first try cutting that zone on the guitars: the snare often doesn’t need more brightness, it needs room.
• The compressor’s release decides whether the snare is dry or long. That’s the character decision.

• Overheads: high-pass at 300–500 Hz (the most cost-effective adjustment of this part).
• Hi-hat: high-pass at 200–300 Hz and level. Nothing more.
• Toms: only if they sound like cardboard or ring too much.
• If the kit lacks brightness, raise the overheads before boosting highs piece by piece.

• SD3’s room first (it’s real ambience, recorded in the room). Bring it up little by little.
• If it’s not enough: reverb on an aux with a pre-delay of 20–40 ms (keeps the attack sharp) and a high-pass at 300–400 Hz.
• Parallel compression: send to an aux, high-pass at 100 Hz, ratio 8:1, 10 dB or more of reduction, fast attack. Blend it in underneath: density without losing attack.

• DRUM bus: 2–4 dB of glue, ratio 2:1, medium-slow attack.
• Check kick + bass alone: a single hit, each in its zone.
• If the drums can’t be heard over the guitars, the problem is usually the density of the guitars (high-pass at 80–120 Hz), not the drum level.

• No stray hits sticking out: fixed by lowering their velocity in the MIDI. Free.
• 2–4 dB of bus compression, and whatever parallel you used (it helps loudness without touching the peaks).
• Just right on cymbal brightness: mastering brings it out.
• Main bus peaks at −6 dBFS, no limiter, WAV 24/48.

1. The groove and how it locks with the riff (programming). The only irreparable thing.
2. The velocities (programming). They define whether it sounds played or like a machine.
3. Kick and snare (mixing). 80% of what the listener hears.
4. Kick/bass sharing (mixing). It conditions the whole foundation.
5. Room and parallel (mixing). What makes it big.
6. Everything else: toms, hi-hat, gates, rhythm bus, stereo width. Optional.