But they’ll never sound real if they don’t feel reel. We all want to make the drums sound more real. If you try to compress and EQ each drum, you may find it sounds worse more often than it sounds better. Yet EQ and compression have been salting and peppering the drums long before they got to you, so more of the same won’t help. You must make these drums-drums not recorded with your song in mind-fit the tune. Making matters worse, they can also arrive overly-processed from the artist or producer.Īs the mixer, you’re in an unenviable position here. But sometimes your producer has skipped the human element entirely, providing you with lifeless, stuck-to-the-grid stems. In other words, all that’s missing is the human element. Many products advertise a mix-ready sound, having utilized console preamps, outboard EQ, and compression on the way in. Most drum-sampling engines offer well-balanced, well-EQd, and well-compressed samples right out of the gate. Avoid heaps of EQ and compression on the drum tracks themselves We’ll cover these moves below so you’ve got a better shot at achieving a more lifelike drum sound in the mix. A lot of little moves add up to sampled drums that look and feel real. Perhaps they arrive with a directive attached: please make these drums sound as real as possible. But what about if some seriously fake drums come to you for mixing? When it comes to programming drums, we’ve got some great tutorials on how to make them feel more human, and how to build a sampler drumkit from scratch.

Superior drummer 3 electronic drums