Title says it all. It seems like such a challenge to get these to work together. Any advice would be appreciated.
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really why? I love the combination of both
A click track in headphones for the drummer to keep time to is the obvious route but some drummers prefer to play to a beat rather than a click. Should be fairly easy to set up a monitor mix just for the drummer with even a small mixing desk.
Hey, drummer here 
Drummer must be used to playing to a clicktrack. In-ear monitoring is always the best solution, and if you have something like an SPD-SX you can use it to sync a lot of stuff. I think metronome is a must because maybe you’re not gonna have a beat all the time, so there must be a way for the drummer to sync with the songs without the need of having a constant beat. It depends on what your project needs!
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ah sorry. you mean live… i thought in the mixing process
Fellow (ex) drummer here too! I never minded playing to a click but when I picked up bass our drummer hated click tracks! His preference was for a simple beat with plenty of bass and the vocal in his headphones. Who said we can be a funny bunch?. 
yes, as said above, this involves in-ear monitoring and metronome.
especially if drummer plays in different time signature than machine 
I started playing with a metronome 8 years ago, best thing I ever did!! I actually ask for very little bass on my mix hahaha, I’d rather have some guitars and vocals…we’re weird, man 
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by the way. a very simple Axoloti patch can mix metronome click to monitoring signal. nice thread, thanks everyone for this idea
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Non-drummer here. I’ve worked with several drummers over the years with live situations and click tracks. What’s your setup? I’ve cooked up many solutions.
What about in a recording situation. How would you go about getting live cymbals to mesh well with drum machine kick and snare?
depends what kind of sound you’re after. but this type of thing is done so much any more that you can look anywhere for inspiration. most of the time, it involves heavily processing the live kit as well as keeping them pretty dead sounding (muffled heads, smaller/thinner/darker/trashier cymbals, etc.). large sounding drums are difficult to mix with synthetic sounds and have it sound natural.
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