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Drum EQ
Now it’s time to play with the grownups. We’ve learned to mic the drum
set properly. We’ve recorded beautiful, solid tracks of well tuned and well
played drums (right?) Now it’s time to make ‘em shine.
Because of the rich frequency content of most drum sounds, we have a
lot of leeway in sculpting the sound with EQ. From full and tubby to thin
and papery and everything in between, drums take very well to EQ
manipulation.
In a jazz, blues, or orchestral setting a natural unaltered sound is often
the most fitting. So, don’t do ‘too much’.
For rock and pop we want bigger than life, and ‘too much’ can be great...
Let’s take the kit one piece at a time:
Snare
The snare plays a central role in pop and rock – cracking out that
infectious backbeat – and needs to sound as good as it can to insure a
happenin’ mix.
The tricky thing with a snare sound is getting a balance between the low
end ‘thud’ and impact, enough midrange ‘body’, and some crispy high
end for definition. To tell the truth, most major recordings use layered
samples of snare drums (also other pieces of the kit) to get a biggerthan-life sound (as discussed earlier) This is done by finding each snare
hit in your DAW’s editor window, then creating some new tracks and
lining up other recorded snare drum samples (onto the new tracks) with
your recorded snare track. A friend of mine recently did some work for
Matchbox 20, and used four snare samples in total to get the sound
they wanted.
Typically in such big productions, you get the original snare sounding
nice and full. Then blend in a sample of a snare with a lot of low end
punch, for more impact. Then add some nice crackin’, snappin’ high end
sample for that extra ‘cut’ and brightness. The blend should serve the
mix, not only sound good on it’s own.
Even if you decide to go the sample-layering route, here are some EQ
ideas to get your original snare track sounding as good as it can:
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