hi IV4. very nice stuff. as i told you many times, your drums/perc. are spot on .. how do you get them so clear without overdoing it? good arrangement and flow of the track as well (encouters), i'm sure tony at HR will be interested. imo, 'every body fly' can't quite catch up to the quality of 'encounters'. just my personal taste ... excellent work overall !
Forgive me if my grammar is a bit off, i am halfway into a bottle of Sancerre.
So the two tracks have completely different mixing styles. I made the drums for everybody fly with the absolute intention of getting them as limited and compressed as possible. To do this I first loaded up a limiter on the entire track. I then used a sample I made of a synthetic kick and snare and used envelope shaping, pitched both, and time stretching to get them the way I wanted to. Then I cut out a snare from the amen break and a snare from the think break and repeated the process so that the three layered snare became in tune, and they worked with each other. Then I turned a processed think break into a rex file. I used an envelope controller to control the break's individual hits and a high pass filter to cut out low frequencies. I also, cut out the kick and snare out of the break. I then added another two or three breaks that were complementary and used the same high pass process. The most important thing I did was cut out frequencies that conflicted with the drums from everything else. I also side chained the kick to the bass which cause a click/pop in the bass and when
@miszt went to mix and master this for me, that gave him hell. Hopefully, one day he will put out a tutorial about how he took 8 stems and made them sound so.... well much better imo. If you want I can pm you what my original track sounded like, vs what Miszt did.
For Encounters the drums were much more simple..... kind of.... I used a processed think break that was arranged in a simple pattern. I then layered in, gently other snares and parts of think break re-process or un-processed. I used an envelope shaper to control the hats and then began to rearrange sections of the drums at the end of phrasing. What makes this track completely different from the one above is the volumes and philosophy to make the track. In Everybody Fly I wanted to make as simple as a track as possible using as much as possible. In encounters I wanted to make a track as complicated as possible using as little as possible. One way I achieved this was by setting up the break, turning it to -12db and building an entire track around it. No limiting or compression on the master. All sounds outside of the drums were carefully eqed so the until everything sounded clear to me. A big problem I did have with the drums was the kick. In the break I never properly eqed out the kick, and when I added in a new kick, there was this weird resonance. I could not figure out for the life of me how to fix it until once again
@miszt told me about it and fixed it in the master for me.
I would suggest that maybe you pay Miszt for a mix and master on a song that you are proud of... He has always been more than helpful at explaining how to make my mixes better, YEARS before I became a customer. But even better it gives you an a/b reference to see how a professional would mix your track vs you. It highlights your mistakes as well as solidifies you good qualities.