Much has already been written about mixing drums, so rather than restating the basics, I’ll share with you tips and advice that you’re less likely to have read about elsewhere. Th e focus will be on mixing real trap drums, but much of what I’ll cover applies equally to sampled drums. Th ere are many strategies to mixing (and tracking) drums. I’ll mostly talk about my own approach, in which the close mics in a multi-miked drum kit are used as the foundation of the overall sound, and overhead and room mics are added to achieve the proper balance of cymbals, inter-mic bleed and room ambience. Most of the discussion will assume the kick, snare and individual toms were each recorded to a separate track prior to mixdown. I’ll include DAW techniques everyone can use and reveal my favorite plug-ins for processing the kit. I use these plug-ins on my Mac, but all of them also run on Windows and are available in a variety of formats.

While a healthy amount of drum bleed between the close mics on various kit pieces is key to preventing the drums from sounding like a canned drum machine, too much bleed can lead to unfocused and thin-sounding kick and snare drums. Th e fi rst places to reduce excessive bleed are the tom tracks. In most arrangements, the toms are the least often played parts of the kit, so it makes no sense to have their mics always “open. Some engineers use expanders or noise gates to reduce bleed of other kit pieces into tom mics, but I never use them for that purpose. Expanders don’t provide enough attenuation for my tastes, and gates can chatter or cut off the attack and natural sustain of toms. Th e best solution is to simply erase the tom tracks along your DAW’s timeline wherever they’re not playing. Th e occurrence of tom hits in a track can be readily ascertained by slightly zooming in on the track’s waveform.

Many other articles have detailed how to apply EQ to drums, so I’ll just mention a few special considerations. There are applications where precise digital filters excel, but EQ’ing traps, in particular, is not one of them. You want analog character and color. The Waves Studio Classics bundle provides dynamite models of vintage analog hardware equalizers that are the best I’ve heard yet for beefing up drums. In particular, the Waves SSL G Equalizer has an extended low end that’s great for creating punchy kick tracks. For a raspy snare drum with rocking midrange definition, the Waves API 550A 3-band parametric can’t be beat. And the Waves VEQ4 (which models the vintage Neve 1081) excels at shaping round, colorful toms.

As a mix engineer, I sometimes receive projects in which the drum kit was recorded using only two mics set up as a stereo spaced pair. In this case, the kick drum usually doesn’t have enough low-end punch. Boosting the low end with a static equalizer (one that is continuously active) can make the entire kit sound rumbly or boomy. The solution is to process the stereo drum track with a dynamic equalizer that briefly triggers a low-frequency boost only when the kick drum hits. The Brainworx bx_boom plug-in is an idiot-proof tool for this purpose. This plugin requires adjustment of just two controls: One sets the threshold at which the effect will kick in, and the other sets the frequency (32, 48 or 64 Hz) for the plug-in’s bandpass filter to boost. In seconds, you can make the kick drum thump without adding rumble to any other elements of the stereo drum track.

I began my explorations with the Diatonic effect, creating full-sounding harmonized lines with two-note harmonies and using subtle amounts of delay and feedback to produce a thicker, more complex sound. You can select from 13 scales and musical modes great for creating diatonic harmonies in some novel settings. Changing keys instantly is as simple as pressing the middle footswitch and playing a new tonic note. Quadravox lets you create full-sounding harmonies and provides terrific opportunities for arpeggiated sounds. I separated PitchFactorgenerated notes into rhythmic subdivisions to produce textures that ranged from techno-robotic randomness to sparkling cascades of diatonic chord tones. When you engageTempo, the time display changes from milliseconds to beat divisions, allowing you to, say, quickly dial up discrete eighth-note-triplet repetitions. This shortcut to producing tempo-synched loops encourages experimentation within a groove, and frequently yields useful results.

I used Synthonizer to create some bizarre synth sounds that were a cross between a Theremin and a Minimoog. Also in the synthetic category is the Crystal algorithm; its dual reverse pitch-shifting lets you build haunting, multi-tiered pads that, while not rhythmic in nature, shimmer with intensity. The HarModulator and HarPeggiator offer the greatest potential for creating stepsequenced patterns of impressive complexity. The PitchFactor also produces equally classic and utilitarian sounds such as filter sweeps and electric bass emulations. Of course, you can also use pitch-shifting for silky chorus-like effects using the MicroPitch algorithm.