On individual hits
Varies quite significantly from track to track, but, in no particular order,
- Usually some bits of volume shaping/gating to tighten things up on individual elements as needed
- Overdrive/distortion, usually parallel processed in if i do use it at all
- EQ/compression, as needed. Usually roll my snares off somewhere between 8khz-12khz to avoid that brutal high end hit.. this really depends on the sample chosen/sound created though, sometimes its not necessary.
- Sometimes i'll sidechain breaks so they dip when kick/snares hit to get some pumping action going on. very fast attack and release times if i do this, but slowing down release can give you cool pumping effects on occasion.
on the bus
- BusDriver compressor can help bring things to life sometimes, has a decent tube drive feature. Sometimes it downright sucks though, depends on whats going through it.
- Some very light limiting compression to address peaking so I can get some more volume out of em. Too much and it destroys the drum's tone real quick.
- Usually reverb mixed in at 5-10%, sometimes significantly more if i'm going for weird spacey drum things. Reverb always has the low end cut from it, at least below 100hz, sometimes higher.
usually i leave my main drum bus pretty clean tbh, i like to do most of my processing on a per-hit-type basis (all snares together, all kicks together, bongos, hats, cymbal hits, etc) then send them to a master drum bus afterwards