If we’re going to do some compression on the drum mix, we really have to start with the most fundamental question in the world, which is why?
Why are we going to do this?
Because if you’ve followed any of my tutorials, if you’ve listened to anything I’ve said, one thing I repeatedly say is we don’t do stuff just for the sake of doing it. We figure out why we want to do it, and we go from there.
So, why might we use compression on drum bus? Well, one reason, and probably the most common reason, is to thicken the sound.
That means that we’re going to create a drum mix with limited dynamic range so that all of the quiet stuff comes up, and that means the tails of the different drum notes, all of the room tones, some of the bleed between the different microphones, all of that stuff is going to become louder and more present, and what that’s going to do is create a thicker sound.
It’s also going to create a more cohesive sound, and sometimes we call that glue. So we might use this for thickness, we might use this for glue, they’re kind of one and the same.
That’s one reason why we might do it…
Matthew Weiss engineers from his private facility in Philadelphia, PA. A list of clients and credits are available at Weiss-Sound.com. To get a taste of The Maio Collection, the debut drum library from Matthew, check out The Maio Sampler Pack by entering your email here and pressing “Download.”
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