Ask any drum n bass producer what’s the hardest part of drum n bass production and 9 out of 10 will tell you its the mixdown. So with that in mind I thought I’d share a few mixing tips I’ve managed to pick up along the way.
1. Compression, now before everyone gets their knickers in a knot. I’m not talking about squeezing the life out of your
drums. I’m talking about using a compressor on your drum buss to help glue all your drum sounds together. Its important to make your drums sound like one uniform cohesive sound and compression will do the trick quite well.
2. Try to separate all your drums onto their own tracks. This makes it nice and easy for level changes but also if something needs replacing later in the mix as well.
3. Try adding a touch of reverb to your drums to bring them to life and to make them sound more natural.
4. Try adding an envelope shaper to hits to bring out more attack or to round out the sound more. Works great with snares and kicks and you can even use it on your master buss!
5. If your having trouble with your kick and snare getting lost in the mix try bussing them to their own group first with a separate compressor/eq etc then sending them to the drum buss.
6. Try adding a little distortion to your drums, bass, fx etc. Distortion is awesome and can add that bit of dirt your tune might be lacking. Try using it as a send and insert effect.
7. Take a break every 2 hours or so. You need to give your ears a chance to rest especially if you’re monitoring at loud volumes. Always check your mixes the NEXT morning with a fresh set of ears.
8. Try to cut with EQ first before boost.
9. Generally EQ after compression. This way you don’t undo what the compression has done! If you’re applying EQ on a surgical level ( like removing rumble from a vocal) then place the EQ before compression.
10. When compressing a sound make to use the bypass button to check on what compression your applying.
11. Play around with your fx/vst plugins chains. A reverb after a delay sounds different to a delay after reverb.
12. Layering isn’t always about putting 9 basslines on top of each other. Sometimes it can be subtle like duplicating a drum track, added compression and blending that back in with the original.
13. However, layering in drum n bass is critical in getting that “sound” for your drums and bass. If your drums or bass are sounding weak, its time to layer up!
14. Make sure to apply bass cut to a channel when you can. Its so important to freeing up some headroom and making space in your mix. You an analyzer if you can as well to check if you have any rogue frequencies down in the sub area you don’t need.
15. If your unsure what a certain know or switch or fader does on a plugin or fx or synth test the extreme settings on it and listen to whats happening to the sound. When you’ve worked out what’s going on bring it down to a sensible level.
16. Sidechaining is becoming popular in drum n bass production as well so if your having trouble getting your kick and bass to punch through together try sidechaining them.
17. Sidechaining is not only reserved for the your kick and bass you can get excellent results sidechaing some pads with your kick etc.
18. Don’t be afraid to go into the red a little when your mixing down your track. 3db should be okay but use your ears when you do so.
19. If 2 sounds or more are fighting for the same frequency range try panning them a little left and right. This will help with the separation a lot.
20. Don’t be afraid to use a limiter on your master buss to squeeze out some more db. I’d say 98% of drum n bass producers use limiters in one way or another. So you might as start learning about what they do and how they sound now!
21. When using EQ first sweep the frequency bands slowly and listen out for any horrible resonant frequencies that jump out at you. Then use EQ cut to remove those frequencies. A little here and there can make a huge difference to the overall sound.
Okay then, 21 drum n bass production mixing tips as promised. However, most of these tips can be applied to any genre of music you might make so get cracking!
see you on the dancefloor.
Dauntless
thanks SO much, adding distortion to the drums really helped 😀 and all of these worked a treat so thanks!
Hey Sam, no problem. Glad you got that sorted! 🙂
Thanks for leaving me comment!
Dauntless
Doing a sound engineering course right now… number 9 strikes me as odd, I have always been told to EQ before compression, that way you remove unwanted frequencies before they’re compressed and made louder. You’re not making the compressor work as hard that way.
Hi mate, its “generally” EQ after compression but I’ll have to explain myself more clearly here.
1. It all really depends on what “kind” of role the EQ is playing. If you want to get rid of some low rumble in a vocal then yeah EQ before compression.
2. If after compressing something you feel like bringing out some sort of element in the sample/instrument/vocal etc EQ after it.
Thanks for bringing it up.
Dauntless
hi mate, thanks so much i’ve been looking for some tips for my mixes for sooo long now. it’s so horribly hard to get a satisfying mix…..
Hey Jonah, I feel ya bro. Getting the mix just right is slow process but with enough patience and persistence you can get there. I think ABing your stuff on a lot of different systems/cd players/car/living room is crucial if you want the mix to translate well.
Just keep going… you’ll get there!
Dauntless
Great tips man, very helpful
Thanks man a lot of this cleared up my misconception, of the use of distortion on my drums, as iv done this for some time now instead of compressing. I send all my drum parts mono to a bus then lower volume and use overdrive distortion. (basic logic plug in )I also parallel compress the single elements like snrs and kicks to add more punch. I might try envelopes now though and see if that gets good results?
i find making the mid bass stand out over the lower parts of your bass my main problem iv tried envelope cuts on the lower end helps the clashing peaks but iv never thought about panning them away from each other 🙂
just started to sidechain my drums to sub and snare to mid bass this helped too.
thx for the insight bro
peace joe
No problems Joe.
Glad I could help some.
Using EQ cuts is generally your friend.
In DnB (probably most music) you really have to get the MUD out of your tracks. (EQ 300-750hz Zone)
For the Mid Bass you are correct. You MS Technique to get your mid away from the centre/Mono.
I’ve been using Ozone5 and Voxengo Elephant and for older projects Sonnox Limiter and Limiting about 5/6db.(catching peaks)
What i’ve found is different limiters just work on different tracks.
Can’t explain why they just do.
Good luck.
Dj Dauntless
nice 1 bro i will try slight compression my drum buss too and maybe sidechain to kick n snare to see if that free’s up some more room in my lower regions?
im still a novice but got this signed the other week
see what you think?
thanks for the help bro
http://soundcloud.com/dnarexs/joe-virus-zander
i ment side chain to sub and mid bass lol my bad