If I’m putting eq/effects on each individual drum track (kicks, snares, hats) should I NOT be adding more eq/effects to their group channel if create a group? Will that make it over processed?
Thank you so much!
Do what sounds good, if you want to stick 50 compressors on a drum Bus and it sounds good whats the issue.
When people listen to music they dont wonder how many fx devices where used, they either hear garbage or good music.
Mike Jacksons THRILLER barley had compression on it, most great 90s rock music was dry, very little reverb used.
But the public dont hear what audiophiles know, they just hear garbage song or great song.
it is fine. what works for you can not be judged. there are even people that preach a “top down mixing” workflow, so you start at the end of the chain going from coarse to detailed master bus -> groups -> channels and add / remove what is needed in terms of frequencies and dynamics.
not a stupid question at all… you might want to individually process the sounds and then process them all together to ‘glue’ them together…hell, might as well chuck a few send FX ftracks into the mix too!!
You can do really… it is like an overall mixdown for that group of channels and a quicker way of doing it than tinkering with everything individually.
In an ideal world probably not but I know plenty of producers with releases under their belt that do it.
A lot of people do that, make cuts on individual tracks to create room in the mix, and then the final groups have the boosts and character added.
You have to be careful if you’re boosting individual tracks and then boosting again on the final groups. But it comes down to the sound you want and your ear will tell you what’s good.
Some love a clean sound with plenty of dynamics, others love crushing over-saturated sounds. It’s only if you’re wanting to charge others for mixing should certain rules start to apply (imo), as beyond that it’s good to get creative and move the goalposts, that’s where the fun is for me.
Ah I see… that’s helpful thank you!
It is completely up to you. If it sounds OK then do it. There is absolutely no rule against this.
There is no rule at all. If you think that the drum bus needs an eq, then go for it. For instance, you might feel that the drums sound good, but the highs need to stand out a little more, in which case you could use an eq to accentuate the highs a little bit more. I usually use Splice samples (one shots, not loops), which are already processed, so I don’t always need to process them again. But, 99/100 times, I process them as a group/bus channel. This would usually be, eq - light compression - transient shaping - distortion/saturation - soft clipping. Again, there’s no rule, the goal is to make them sound the way you want them to sound. Now whether you achieve that by not using an eq or using an eq, is totally up to you :)