drum buses

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Tone1304

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Jul 25, 2012
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Southend-on-sea
Right so i use ableton and the program does not use buses it uses groups but you can not not have groups in groups-still with me? Well any way i need to use logic in college and have never used buses so im just wondering how do you use them for drums and stuff, do you send all to one bus or multiple buses? What is your bus chain basically?
 
Different people have different methods. Some probably don't use any buses at all.

For me, I like to have a snare bus, a kick bus, percussion/loops bus, and then a main drum bus that everything goes to.

It's extremely easy to do this in FL Studio, you can route anything to anything.
 
Tone1304 said:
Right so i use ableton and the program does not use buses it uses groups but you can not not have groups in groups-still with me? Well any way i need to use logic in college and have never used buses so im just wondering how do you use them for drums and stuff, do you send all to one bus or multiple buses? What is your bus chain basically?
Click to expand...


There is no set rules for how you should do stuff, obviously. Think of it as a tool. You don't need to use the tool all the time, on every thing you do.
Tiink about busses when you want to apply something to several tracks at once. A very common example would be to take multiple drum channels (kick channel, snare channel, breaks, hats, cymbals, perc, misc, etc etc) to the same bus (calling it Drum Bus) so when you are mixing your track, you can raise and lower the volume of all the drums with a single fader. You could also apply a compressor, or an EQ to the Drum Bus to change the drums as a whole. This is what busses are for. So, dont start by thinking that you need busses, but when you notice that you want to do the same thing to several channels, then a bus is usually the appropriate tool for that job. It probably doesnt matter if they are called busses or groups, but Im not so familiar with the different DAWs
 
Oh okay thanks guys i guess it would help save some cpu aswell, i know there's no rules to it but coming from a program with no buses i just thought there might be some specific ways to use it and because i only have 3 hours a week on logic ini can't really do a lot of experimenting, most of what i know is from you guys and YouTube tutorials :lol:
 
I tend to change the output of my drum tracks and set like my kicks to go out from bus 1, snares from bus 2, etc... and then have the output of those buses sent to another bus witch is all of the drum components. It makes it a lot easier when doing the mixdown.
 
yeah use the template above to see how we use/set up our busses. however, everyone does things a bit different, so feel free to change things up to suit your workflow better. but it should give you a basic idea...
 
its our complete starting point for a dnb tune in logic. it is probably still saved as a regular logic file, not as a template though.
 
Tone1304 said:
Right so i use ableton and the program does not use buses it uses groups but you can not not have groups in groups-still with me?
Click to expand...

You can route a Group to a new audio track in Ableton, and use that new track as a group for any tracks/Groups you send there. You can even send that newly created group onto another empty audio track, and make a further group, and keep repeating if you so wished.

All you need to do is create a track, call it 'All Drums Group' or whatever, then go to the mixer channel for the tracks you want to send to the 'All Drums Group' track, and select 'audio to' as 'All Drums Group' for the tracks you want to go to that group.

Also, set the channel 'Monitor' setting for each re-routed track to 'off' because you will be monitoring it from the new Group now. And on the 'All Drums Group', set the 'Monitor' to 'In' So that you can hear all the newly re-routed tracks.

It's easy to set up, and gets around ableton's group limitations.

PS: You need to have the In's/Out's box visible on the mixer tracks to do any routing, if it's not visible, then click on the I/O button (bottom right). If the button is yellow it's visible, if it's greyed out it's hidden.
 
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Drum Bus stereo, everything sent here, using PSP Vintage Warmer and Fabfilter limiter
Kick mono
Snare mono
Hats mono
Breaks mono
Cymbals mono
Percussion stereo
Cymbals stereo
Live drums stereo
 
Each layer of my main kick and snare stays on it's own channel and EQ.
I have all of my hi hat, percussion and hi passed loops feeding into a bus with some minor compression to muddy it up so it doesn't sound too clean. With a fabfilter EQ to make sure nothing crosses into snare territory.
I then have an effects chain with sends from the main kick and snare for parallel compression (cause parallel compression is totally awesome)
Occasionally I use another effects chain with a send from the sub layer of the kick to side chain with the bassline and sub

All channels use a fabfilter EQ and fabfilter limiter at a minimum
 
equilibrium said:
Drum Bus stereo, everything sent here, using PSP Vintage Warmer and Fabfilter limiter
Kick mono
Snare mono
Hats mono
Breaks mono
Cymbals mono
Percussion stereo
Cymbals stereo
Live drums stereo
Click to expand...

Hmm I think that's a bit too rigid if you ask me. By all means have the frequencies below 250hz mono but there is no harm in giving your snare, breaks, and cymbals a bit of stereo spread in the higher frequency range, IMO. I even sometimes automate the spread on breaks towards the end of bars etc to make stuff spill out across the speakers, really keeps things interesting!

Also what I highlighted, Cymbals mono/Cymbals stereo - Don't confuse people buddy ;)
 
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