Mixing Drums Part 2 – EQ

After yesterday’s brief overview of mixing drums, let’s jump into EQ.

Intro to EQ

Before we get too far, if you haven’t already watched my Intro to EQ video, you should. It’s a great overview of what EQ is and what it does. It’s 16 minutes long, but it’ll be time well spent.

Match the Overheads

In yesterday’s post I encouraged you to listen to the overhead tracks first (often labeled “OH”), before anything else. Why? Because these two little tracks captured the entire kit. They tell you what the kit as a whole sounds like.

In a sense, the overheads set boundaries for you. If the drum kit sounds very bright and happy through the overheads, then that’s how you should mix it. It’ll be near impossible to make that bright-sounding kit sound dark and ominous.

EQ is not meant to change the tone of the instrument, but to enhance it.

That’s why it’s so important to start with the overheads. Once you have a good idea as to what the kit sounds like, you can begin to make changes in the individual components to make it sound even better.

At this point, I would apply EQ to the overheads, oftentimes rolling off some of the low end to make room for the kick drum and the toms.

Dealing With the Rest of the Kit

Now that you’ve dialed in the overheads, it’s time to bring in the individual pieces of the kit one at a time, starting with kick, snare, then high-hat and toms.

As I mentioned yesterday, don’t solo these individual tracks. You need to make your EQ changes while listening to everything else. What sounds great on a solo’d snare may sound awful when blended in with the rest of the kit.

Conversely, when you dial in the perfect snare sound while listening to all the drum tracks together, you may find that if you solo that snare, it doesn’t sound that great at all. This is not a problem. Who cares if it sounds bad by itself? As long as it sounds good in the mix, you’ve done your job.

I leave you with a couple EQ tips.

High-Pass Everything But the Kick

If you read The Best Mixing Tip, then you have heard this once already. One of the best things you can do for your mix is get rid of excess low end. This applies to drums as well, and it bears repeating.

In a drum kit, that means put a high-pass filter on everything except the kick drum (and maybe the floor tom).

How much you roll off depends on the song and, of course, your ears. Sometimes you may want to get rid of all low frequencies in your overhead tracks. Other times, you may want to leave most of them in there. Let the song direct you.

Getting rid of the low frequencies in these tracks will make the kick drum stand out so much more than simply cranking up the kick drum fader.

Cut 400 Hz

I’m not a big fan of giving out hard and fast rules, but this seems to be something that almost all top engineers I read about are saying. Cut 400 Hz out of your drum tracks.

400 Hz is a funny frequency. It’s not super low, but it’s not super high either. It accounts for the “boxy” sound of your drum tracks. Boxy is usually not a good thing.

Besides, every other track in your mix is going to have a ton of information in the 250-500 Hz range. Carving out space in the drums for all that stuff will be very beneficial.

It’s hard to explain, but I would suggest just trying it. Pull up a kick drum in your DAW, and put an EQ on the kick drum and cut 400 Hz. Suddenly the “thud” is more powerful and the “snap” is more clear and defined.

Is it magic? I don’t think so, but it sure is cool.

One final link for you. If you’re still struggling with knowing which frequencies cause which problems, check out my EQ-Learning Trick video. That should help.

What drum EQ tips can you share with us?

If you enjoyed this, you might also like...

1. Mixing Drums Part 1
2. Mixing Drums Part 3 – Compression
3. The Best Mixing Tip
4. Editing Drums – Why You Need to Group ALL Drum Tracks [Ask Joe]
5. Day 22 – Setting Levels for Mixing [31DBR]