Today’s Experiments

[⚖musicalmemoriesuk]

Today I thought I would do some experimenting with the Drum Editor on the Korg Pa700.

Having listened to a lot of music recently and paying more attention to the tracks that stand out in the mix.

Right up until 90s the focus on the drum track is mostly on the snare which is always up front, the kick / bass drum is there but definitely not up front, more noticeable is then is the bass guitar track in some 60s music it sounds even more upfront than the snare. A lot of percussion is also up front in the mix.

So my experimenting involved making the snare more up front which I boosted the high gain on the snare, I also did this for the hats, and percussion tracks. 

Did I use reverb on the drum / percussion tracks no, I kept them dry but I did use some ambience on the snare and the other tracks which I wanted to bring forward. 

Next to bring the bass track forward, I did this by boosting the low gain for the bass.

Anyhow more work to follow in this my next step in my musical journey.

[♔Chello]

Welcome to my world.
I see you follow the same setup as me.

I almost never use reverb on drums/perc that have the ability to use ambience.
Drum Editor is the ultimate tool for getting drums/perc to sound as desired, and a little boost fixes the bass.

PS:
I only use Drum Editor's MID EQ for all drum elements, except for only LOW EQ for the bass drum (and LOW+MID on SFX if this is active).

[⚖musicalmemoriesuk]

It’s amazing how flat the drum tracks actually sound with out using the editor. 

I was also as previously mentioned experimenting with delay on other tracks for creating ambience. 

I was testing both the stereo and cross delay. 

But using a small amount of delay not 300ms as in the preset.

The stereo delay is something I’ve seen in quite a lot of music production for widening sounds in the mix.

---

It’s definitely the mid gain that brings a sound forwards and backwards in a mix.

[♔Chello]

It’s amazing how flat the drum tracks actually sound with out using the editor. 

I was also as previously mentioned experimenting with delay on other tracks for creating ambience. 

I was testing both the stereo and cross delay. 

But using a small amount of delay not 300ms as in the preset.

The stereo delay is something I’ve seen in quite a lot of music production for widening sounds in the mix.

---

It’s definitely the mid gain that brings a sound forwards and backwards in a mix.

Precisely.
Korg has zeroed the ambience for all their drum kits/perc on Pa5X, and often a value of +10 is enough to make a big difference.

And the Korg Pa5X often uses Stereo Delay as the Master 2 effect.

I always use a little less (of everything) than I feel is right.

[⚖musicalmemoriesuk]

This is true of most sounds when boosting / cutting the eq frequencies of other sounds. 

Quite a bit is needed to make a difference.

But always do this in relation to the whole mix never in solo.

[⚖Robinez]

My advise would be to start with some basic EQ guides, Boosting the gain as a method is not really the way to go, boosting is used to emphasise specific frequencies. You will get better results by cutting frequencies and solve the frequency masking issues.

Some basic tutorials can be found here, there is a lot more to it like for instance lineair phase eq-ing or mid-side eq-ing but techniques like that (and there are many more) have no meaning without understanding the basics.

https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/princip...ation.html

and some guidelines for drums only
https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/how-to-eq-drums.html

[⚖musicalmemoriesuk]

The use of panning can also resolve issues with masking

---

Unfortunately when using the 3 band eq in the mixer tuning we don’t actually know what frequencies we’re boosting or cutting.

[♔Chello]

⚖Qui gave a good reminder here:

"You will get better results by cutting frequencies and solve the frequency masking issues".