Once I have finished recording all the tracks, you might think all my work is done, but yet, there is still a long ways to go. Unless your drum set is completely perfect, there will always be something that you want to change before exporting your final product, and the best way to fix your audio is to use eq'ing, or equalizing. "The appropriate treatment of the drums in a mix with EQ and compression can make the difference between a lifeless, vague sound and an exciting, textured and genuinely rhythmic drum track." (Major 170). Equalizing will allow you take get rid of any unwanted tones and bring out the sounds from the kit that you will want to hear, which is why it is such an important part of audio mixing.
To get started I need to know the what sounds I need to bring out in each piece of the drum kit. "80Hz-100Hz – If there isn’t enough bass in the kick drum, boost between these frequencies to give the kick a more rich sound.
200Hz-250Hz – Cut around
200-250Hz in order to add clarity and decrease any boomy noise that can be picked up on on the kick 300Hz-600Hz – If your kick is sounding particularly ‘boxy’, it’s a good idea to EQ around these frequencies. See what works best for you by having a play around, as every kick drum sounds slightly different.
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| To make my bass sound "clickey" I boosted higher frequencies |
2kHz-4kHz – If your kick sounds too ‘thumpy’, EQ between these frequencies in order to give it some extra kick and more snap"(Major 178). Here is an example of somethings I am looking for when eq'ing the drums. For this example you can see that Mike is talking about the bass drum. Hz referrers to Hertz, which is the frequency of a sound(i.e. the pitch), altering which pitches (or Hz's) are heard is basically the point of Equalizing. I basically have to do this for all the drums. And of course because each drum kit sounds different, and every person's taste is different, there is no perfect way to eq, and so it took me a lot of messing around to create presets for each part of my kit that I think sound good.
Now that the drum is finally eq I am pretty much finished and ready to finalize that track. I have created a recording for you to hear. One is eq'd and one isn't so that you can hear the different between equalizing and not. Unfortunately one of the cables for my tom drum was broken and so one of the toms do sound off, but hopefully you can still here to the rest of the kit well enough!
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