RON COOK NAMM 2020 BROADCAST MIX
© YAMAHA
Hi my name is Ron Cook and I had the joy of mixing the Livestream for Yamaha's Night of Worship at NAMM this year. It was such an amazing opportunity as I grew up on Michael's music and the fact that he was doing old stuff was such a blast for me.
I appreciate all the comments regarding the drum sound so I thought I'd give a short description my workflow for you.
There's four main things I'll address:
Prep
Source
Bussing
Room
PREP
This event was mixed backstage on a Yamaha CL-5. I also brought my Waves Superrack rig with an Extreme-C server and 3 my-wsg cards. I used JH Audio JH-13 in ear monitors to mix on.
My approach to events like this is to setup the console in a way that gives me the best control and flexibility in a very quick way. Normally I'd have one or at most 2 drum verbs and just use scenes for each song but since I was only going to get a soundcheck of a couple songs I needed to have everything I need without setting up scenes so I setup 3 reverbs. A non linear gated verb, a medium plate, and a longer hall. This way I can mix between the 3 as needed whether it's a fast pop tune or a worship ballad. I do a very similar thing for my vocal verbs as well.
For this show I had an input list in advance (I actually sometimes don't get one before) so thanks to my friends at T.C. Furlong, INC in Lake Forest, IL, I was able to spend a day at their shop prepping the rig.
BUSSING
I'm a huge believer in using mix busses to route instruments thru before your stereo bus. The summing of the channels thru a bus that you put processing on (eq & compression) is what makes the sound. Also it helps with control and gets you to a great sounds quicker than without it.
For drums I do a normal drum buss that has everything in it and then a crush buss that has just the skins but usually not snare bottom.
For this show I used Waves H-Comp on both busses. Typically I set a slow attack and fast release and I only want to see a couple db of compression. On the crush it's a high ratio with a much faster attack. I time the release while listening to find a good massive sound with a little bit of pumping. I then bring that buss up to where it’s just filling out the drum sound but not dominating it.
SOURCE
I'm sure everyone gets tired of hearing that it's all about the source, but it's all about the source.
The drummer had the kit sounding amazing and that's the most important part.
As far as input channels I used the Waves CLA-76 on the kick and snare mics with the slowest attack and fastest release at a 4:1 ratio as a starting point. I throw the Waves MV-2 on the toms because it’s so easy to use and impactful on the drum sound, and then I use the Yamaha CL5 ch strip for most of the rest.
ROOM
I'm only bringing this up because in this situation the room was a huge factor in the drum sound. We were in a hotel ballroom with at most a 20' high ceiling. There was a lot of bleed into the vocal mics that just sounded really great, mostly from the sound of the drums bouncing off the ceiling and coming back down. At first I tried to minimize it but eventually just went with it because that sound created such a great vibe.
That's it in a nutshell but if you'd like a more detailed explanation about my approach at FOH, which is very similar, consider joining us at the Road Crew event February 21-22 at Rock Lititz. I will have a session on running FOH that will be much more in depth and cover all aspects from Drums to Vocals.
If you have any questions please comment below!