Mixing metal drums: ROOMS & OVERHEADS

Meet your new best friend: rooms & overheads

I’ll be honest: when I first started out (and for an embarrassingly long time afterward) I didn’t get why people cared about drum rooms. I thought it was one of those things that only blues-rock dads cared about, because metal drums are all about punch and power, so who cares about those crappy-sounding, washy room mics, right?? WRONG!

As you’ll see in this video from our friend Robin Leijon, rooms and overheads are actually one of the most important tools in giving your drums the size, saturation and sustain that makes them cut through a dense metal mix– and yet few people are really working with them the right way.

He walks through simple but super effective approaches for EQ, compression and effects for a full range of room and overhead mics: mono room, near room, far room, overheads and more. Many people (including me when I was starting out) don’t understand the important but critical differences between all these so pay careful attention to make sure you get a grasp on the nuances of each one (trust me, it matters).

So there you go – never let your rooms and overheads go unloved again!

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