This is an awesome - and simple - breakdown. Any ideas to slay the following beastie:

• I generally create an entire midi drum track (because I don't have a readily available drum kit or the ability to play one, let alone an entire drum mic kit).
• Once I'm happy with the general idea, I assign the VST
• Would the best route be to separate the individual drum components to individual midi tracks, then assign the VST to all of them and start your mix from there?
• Or should you assign the VST first and then go fiddling with what goes where from there?

Shotto
dh|

P.S. What I really enjoy about this is that it gives you a starting point, with a basic drum kit to play around with. Once you're happy with what you can get just flying by the seat of these ideas, you can start doing things with additional percussion, etc. Well played @ScottyDogg

V8 I'd also keep it 'in the box'

Ah. I missed this. Precisely what my post above was alluding to...

domhatch Any ideas to slay the following beastie:

This.

Thanks, lads!
dh|

ScottyDogg i use MT Power Drum (coz it's free and it's pretty good). What can I say, I'm not much for spending los dineros where i can possibly avoid it.

so the thing you're suggesting is to mess with a multi-out setup? i shall give that a bash. as it were. and reaper is about as system-intensive as using a mouse. perhaps i can use studio one for the drum track and once i'm happy, import that into reaper for messing with the other stuffs. we shall see what we shall see... i'm only just getting begun with this - normally i just make do with a one-track, all the way down the centre vst drum track.

or something. but essentially, it's the basis of the drum mix template i'm really grateful for.

shot man!
dh|

domhatch So Studio One is a DAW just like Reaper is so have a search around for multi-out routing with mt power drum (if you think it's good, it's good - you can do plenty without spending money ) There should be plenty of resources on how to do the multi out routing at least with Reaper, not sure what documentation is out there for it.

Alternatively, does MT Power Drum let you set panning within the VST? If so, you could always set the panning there and then export a stereo track for song purposes (obviously you'd be very limited to mixing later but for demos etc. that'd be more than adequate

I also use MT Drummer, it also sets up the panning of the drums in the stereo picture automatically. It seperates the elements into their own tracks so you can control the volumes and panning individually. You can also set it up the way you want, with EQ, Compressors and reverbs per track and then save it as a Track template.

And it has a huge library of rhythms and fills

On guitar I have two tracks, one panned left and the other right (full or partially panned) . I glue the track contents together so it is a single unit and copy it onto the second track. (i.e. both tracks have the same recording). When you play them they will sound like they are in the middle. I then nudge one of the two recordings forward a bit in 5ms jumps, At about 10 to 15ms suddenly the sound goes wide. It is an awesome effect.

domhatch I'd also keep it 'in the box'

Ah. I missed this. Precisely what my post above was alluding to...

When I was djenting away, and we tracked our album, - we-very briefly- considered tracking live drums. Would have likely quadrupled the cost/time and I don't think we would have finished the album without trying to murder each other. And it let the drummer write 'impossible' parts - sigh - in fairness, he wrote & programmed great midi drums.

I do the simplest of staging, pretty much as ScottyDogg has it :

Vocals : Lead vox centre, backing - it depends.
Bass : Usually centred.
Guitars : No 1 trick (it been mentioned many times) - record two takes, one panned hard left, other hard right.
Drums : Whatever Addictive Drums does - it has a internal panned setup for cymbals, toms, etc... For most things (rock/metal/band music) it's okay. For electronic music it sucks - for some reason I expect kick/snare/hats centrered for trance/techno/etc.

I like the word 'soundstage' - it helped me get the idea of using panning and reverb when mixing a bit clearer in my head. E.g for rock I would (try to) mix a virtual stage (using panning & reverb) and place the instruments in that virtual space. While for electronic stuff - I'd mix it as though you were watching a DJ playing back a track (exceptions do apply!).

ScottyDogg Alternatively, does MT Power Drum let you set panning within the VST?

i'm pretty sure it does; check out what @morph has to say above. i haven't really had much of a go at these things yet; like i said, i've been sticking everything pretty much down the centre, especially when it comes to drums.

but, thanks to your post, will be playing around with stereo panning much more from now on.

thanks again ScottyDog
dh|

Slightly off topic for this forum but I've done a little mixing of barbershop quartets. Amusingly it's quite similar to drums. Barbershop is pretty formulaic and quartets always stand in the same order (bass, lead, tenor, bai). So, like drums, you pan then either from the quartet's point of view or (more usually) from the audiences. You don't tend to pan them too hard though because when you only have 4 instruments, confining two to hard left and hard right would be quite jarring.

morph that’s great - so then I would just figure out how to do routing in your daw so you can export each individual part to wav (or at least split to different tracks) for mixing purposes do you can eq, compress and/or saturate each piece individually

morph I wouldn’t high pass everything at 100Hz - vocals sure, generally guitars (but even then, 100Hz is quite high) but on a context by context basis, most drum parts other than kick but for bass guitar, I wouldn’t high pass any higher than 60Hz

To avoid mud on bass I would generally cut any shitty frequencies obviously (nothing super serious), chuck on a limiter like L1 from Waves to tame it a little, a bit of compression for movement and then if necessary, multiband compression to just cut a dB or two in the low end just when the low end hits hard (so not a permanent dip).

Aha! Magic Voodoo found (and SOOOOOOOOOOOOO easy to implement lol)

So with this, I'll be able to send audio through to OBS to record my daw. Pretty much can have a mic track inputting my voice with monitoring so I'll be able to talk at all points whether DAW is playing or recording or not. Thank goodness for Cockos (even though I use studio one lol)

@ScottyDogg; when mixing/recording acoustic guitar, would you simply apply the same basic principles as you've described for 'rhythm' guitar? I.e. two takes of the same track, one each panned hard left and hard right?

tks
dh|

domhatch I've only really recorded acoustic once and that was intended as just on the left channel while some open chords rung out on the right so not sure what industry best practice is but I'd edge towards yes to two tracks with hard pan left/right

However, I did see this: https://www.audio-issues.com/recording-tips/get-kick-ass-acoustic-guitar-recording/

Here he talks about using two mics at once to record in stereo - so you'd need two inputs, one mic records left, the other right. This way you could get a nice stereo image as there'd be a slight timing offset and frequency differences between the mics.

You'd just need to be extremely careful to have your mics in phase. If you screw up the phase relationship, you'd have a big issue. Here you see a pretty solid example of phase cancellation in a snare - principle is the same anywhere though:

Try this for acoustic guitar
On guitar I have two tracks, one panned left and the other right (full or partially panned) . I glue the track contents together so it is a single unit and copy it onto the second track. (i.e. both tracks have the same recording). When you play them they will sound like they are in the middle. I then nudge one of the two recordings forward a bit in 5ms jumps, At about 10 to 15ms suddenly the sound goes wide. It is an awesome effect.