I stumbled on a nice bunch of mixing/production tips from modernbeats’s Hitalk

Here is an excerpt:

Widen Your Drum Beats

November 1, 2008

What’s the difference between a solid drum beat, and a flimsy drum beat? Many times, the difference is the mix. A good drum mix requires an evenly balanced stereo field & soundstage. Many amateur productions have narrow, almost mono, drum mixes. These narrow drum mixes throw off a song’s overall balance where instrument tracks sound too wide in comparison. An effective way to remedy the problem is to apply a few widening tricks to the kick & snare mix:

1) Starting with the kick, create a stereo field by layering the main kick with an secondary background kick. The aim here is to create ambience with the newly added background kick. A surefire method for creating ambience is to route the background kick through a short room reverb (stereo). Below, in Ableton Live, the main kick is sequenced on channel 5, with the background kick on channel 4.

Also, you can route the background kick through a low pass filter which can remove unwanted highs created from the reverb, or - depending on the reverb - you can damp the high frequencies using the reverb settings. In the diagram below, in the settings for channel 4, a high cut filter has been enabled within the reverb to knock out the high frequencies. By triggering the ambient background kick in time with the main kick, you’re able to maintain the original timbre & feel while also widening the kick’s field & depth. Take care, when layering bass drum samples, not to cause frequency conflicts. If the layered kick is out of tune or out of phase with the main kick, you produce a beat that’s flat, or attenuated.

[...}

Most tuts are good but some of their tutorials/tips are a bit obvious but great for beginners. Overall ok site but I am always reluctant to catch phrases like Become a Hit Producer with Hit Talk’s Hit Reports…?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Their drums sounds are on point !!!!!!!!

Caught this over at my man Jim Bond’s Be a Better Producer Blog great tips and logic froma pro….when they really had to engineer a record…

This is a must watch video.  Any time a legendary Engineer/Producer sits down and gives you mixing/recording tips, you listen!

“Before his nineteenth birthday, Andy Johns was working as Eddie Kramer’s second engineer on classic recordings by Jimi Hendrix and many others.  In a career spanning more than thirty years, he has engineered or produced records by artists ranging from Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones to Van Halen and Rod Stewart, whose sales total in excess of 160 millions copies.”

I’ve watched this a million times.  There are a whole bunch of good tips in there.  He even tells you how be got the drum sound for the Led Zeppelin drum break classic “When The Levee Breaks”.