Blend Your Percussion in the Mix

In almost every style of music, percussion plays a pivotal role. This also goes for various electronic music genres, especially House or Techno, where percussion is often produced and mixed tight with other elements. Having that in mind, we have decided to show you one of the ways you can mix and position percussion to sit right in the mix.

Mixing Percussions

In order to process percussion and drum elements in your mix, you would often need more than one effect. This can be a time-consuming process. Instead of that, nowadays, we have multi-effect processors at our disposal. We have chosen one of those processors, which we consider it's up to the task. As usual, we will begin with the opening of our SoundBridge: DAW. Here is a previously made pattern that contains all the essential elements of the whole mix. You will notice from the picture below that all percussion and hi-hat channels are under one group channel.

Let's hear how it sounds.

~Full Mix - Unprocessed

JJP Cymbals & Percussion by Waves Audio

From the audio example above, we can hear that the mix is somewhat decent, but the percussion and hi-hats sound way too thin, and this could be better for sure. Therefore, we will introduce you to a choice of multi-effects specially designed for this task called JJP Cymbals & Percussion, designed by Waves Audio.

There's so much you can do with JJP Cymbals and Percussion. You can use some lo-fi effect to fatten up shakers. You can take out the mid-range on tambourines to make them sound brighter, or you can add some dirt and distortion to make them sound grittier. What's more, you can boost the high end to enhance the shimmer of the cymbals or compress them to bring out other aspects of their sound. Let's go over its interface.

The Interface

Sensitivity- Controls how much of the overall processed signal is added.

Main Section- Gives you control over essential dynamics and EQ.

Main Fader- Controls the main section at the direct level.

Center Section Faders- The Center Section faders represent auxiliary returns with additional processing, sent from the Main Section, pre-fader. Above each fader, there is a dedicated mute button. It may help to think of each plugin as a mini-mixing console.

Master Fader- Controls the master output signal level.

Meter Section- Toggles meter monitoring between input and output modes. The Clip LED lights up when levels reach 0 dBFS; click to reset.

Audio Examples

After a brief introduction to the interface of JJP Cymbals & Percussion and its functions, let's hear it in action applied to our Percussion & Hi-Hat group within the SoundBridge: DAW project. First, we will listen to the unprocessed and then the version processed with the plugin.

~Percussion & Hi-Hat Group - Unprocessed

~Percussion & Hi-Hat Group - Processed With JJP C&P

There is a difference in the stereo image, clarity, and overall color of the percussion & hi-hat drum group. To conclude, we can say that percussion & hi-hats processed with JJP C&P became "Live" sounding. In the end, let's once more heart the full mix unprocessed and then process it with JJP C&P on the percussion & hi-hat group.