How To Mix Toms – A Simple Guide

Joey shows you how to get awesome sounding toms in any mix. What's your approach to mixing toms? Let us know in the comments!

0:00 Introduction
0:27 Intent
0:57 Clean up
2:47 EQ
6:03 Dynamics
7:09 Ambience
7:55 Recap

Tags:home recording,audio production,mixing tutorials
#homerecording #audioproduction #mixingtutorials

[samukaguitar]

Amazing video. Well-mixed toms make all the difference in a song, and few people talk about them.

[martinherrera]

Man just did the best tom mixing video on yt so casually, great

[michaelmilano]

My favorite trick is I always record single shots of the kit for each song I record. Short tom fills in my experience have the most cymbal bleed, so replacing the close mic sign with the single shot allows me more control, without worrying about cymbal bleed, and still sounding natural!

[NikolajChristensen]

This video is easily as good as Nolly's Toms masterclass, and pretty much says the same things which is comforting. They are both amazing. The greatest impact for my mixes is the tom bus clipping/limiting. Really allows you to hear the body without the attack getting too prevalent. My tip would be to not mix the toms too wide. Often never pan beyond -20/20 - even for 5 toms.

[snapascrew]

I honestly find that using the fundamental for the gate key sidechain not to be the best idea because the Tom’s usually sing constantly at that note even when other Tom’s or snare is hit. I came up with the idea of using the boxy 400hz ish area as the gate key instead since there’s plenty of that in the Tom’s but it doesn’t really “sing” there and false trigger the gate. It’s been working good for me but I guess if your toms are super dead the fundamental works well too.

[christopherbrown]

I've watched so many mix trick/tutorial videos over the years and this was so we'll done, to the point and easy to follow. Great job!

[arnodesogus]

Good stuff! What I like about these videos is that they are condensed and you still explain the topics so well. It is always a great guide with the most important things and with some cool tips. Keep up the great work. You make mixing easier than it's supposed to be.

[immanuelhunte]

I have been using Slate Digital Trigger just for the gate and leakage suppression features....it really works! But I also edit manually as well.

[thomaskeyte]

I usually like to cut the toms and fade the cymbals out with an audiosweet eq at 1k. Then a typical chain might be fabfilter eq3 to cut, Sound toys EQ to boost, 160 or whatever @4:1, fab filter Saturn saturating everything above 1k, decapitator if you wanna f them up a bit, fab filter eq again coz why not. Send to reverb and the ride the faders
Great video!!

[MartinvonBargen]

I'll be coming back to this for sure. I always struggle with the gulf between how my own SD3 toms sound and what the 'perfect' death metal toms should sound like.

[brooksbohmbach]

Tuning to match the OH’s. I love these eye openers!

[FilipeCanadas]

golden tips with JST 🤩 You're the best

[Innerslaught]

My recent favorite approach for toms was to use pan. Putting one left and the other to the right

[immanuelhunte]

This video cleared up some stuff for me. Thanks!

[aleksandarmatovic]

Hey JST! BIG thanks for sharing this useful mixing stuff. I've learned a lot from your videos.🤘🤘🤘

[suniso]

Here's my trick for cleaning up live toms that suffer from cymbal bleed: Since the only high frequency information is in the transient of the tom hit, it's safe to severely low pass the tail part. I also use Reaper and I split the tail part and use take fx with eq on it, then crossfade just after the transient.

[XRaym]

My go to for drum is Drumflex :) I also like Saturate as clipper as it nicely preserve details.
For gating, there is more advanced stuff like Oxford Drum Gate.

[worstenbroodjes]

I use dynamic eq to boost the high freqs on the shell hits without boosting the cymbals after

[Silverfox.J]

All the groove be in the good old Tom's

[ghul.nin]

could you do something like this for programmed drums one day maybe?