Great Way of Mixing Drums and Routing Techniques

What we'll do to our drums:

First we will blend the dry signal with Parallel Compression signal , add a transient VST in order to give some "click" and precision and finally add Reverb.

How to do all the above in our drums:

With folder-groups. Folder names will be in [ ], track names without [ ], and we'll seperate the tracks with commas (,)

We'll have 5 groups:
- Folder 1: Includes all the seperate drum tracks (kick, snare, toms etc). No inserts. What gives: Dry Signal.
- Folder 2: Folder 1 is attached to it. Insert: Compressor. What gives: Parallel Compression, Dry Signal
- Folder 3: Folder 2 is attached to it (and of course folder 1 too, cause it's attached to folder 2 and so on). Insert: Transient modifier. What gives: "Clicky" and harsh, dry signal
- Folder 4: Folder 3 is attached to it. Insert: Reverb. What gives: Wet Reverb Signal
- Folder 5: Folder 4 is attached to it. No inserts. What Gives: Overall Drum Sound

The routing should be like this:

[Group 5] , [Group 4] , [Group 3] , [Group 2] , [Group 1] , Kick , Snare , Toms , Hi-Hat , OH , Room (end of all Grouping)

How to approach this Mix:

1) Leave the volume faders of Folder 5 and 1 to default. Set the volume faders of Group 4, 3 and 2 to -inf.
2) Get a nice sound from the seperate tracks (that are connected to Group 1)
3) Bring up the volume of Folder 2 (Parallel Compression) till the drums start sounding fat. Adjust to taste.
4) Bring up the volume of Folder 3 till you get enough "click".
5) Bring up the volume of Folder 4 till you are satisfied with Reverb.
6) Make any adjustements needed.

At first glance, seems too difficult but when you get used to it, i think you'll love it.
Makes you mixing style much easier

Any response appreciated

wow, this is hard to digest, for now... will try that

question:
transient modifier? which one, what settings and what do you want to achieve?

and how would you suggest compensating for missing room mics?
i am currently running ungated dry tracks in a reverbed track (studio reverb) compressing this one very hard.

I mean to get a more "spiked' kick, snare, hat etc. I dont blend a lot of this group. But it helps the drum kit to stand out if you know what I mean.
Compressing the track reverb is not a bad idea but make sure you bring some db up. I like this technique it brings some power to the drums.

You can modify the seperate tracks as you want of course. Instead of toms you can have , tom1, tom2, tom3, for example.

Try sending your snare to a different reverb (usually plate is good for snares) and after that add a gate. The gate should eliminate the noise after the hit of the snare. What you have? Snare with its reverb and no reverb tail!!

At the studio reverb add an eq after that. Hi pass at about 500hz or so. That helps to avoid mud.

Its not as hard as it seems if you know how to route tracks and folders in your daw. Give it a try

as for what transient to use. This one is plain simple. 2 knobs , great sound

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I'll try this later today, thank you.

i have never thought of this technique thanks sender! this keeps my tracks nice and tidy