4 Magic Frequencies for Mixing Snares

so there are certain magic frequencies that always work when you're mixing snare drums three of them you want to try boosting and the fourth one you want to sometimes cut so in this video I'm going to show you exactly what those frequencies are and let you hear it in action so here's some drum tracks and here's the raw snare [Music] so I'll keep the gate on and some other compression and saturation but I'll leave the EQ off it might go to EQ plugin for snare drums and almost every track is the SSL channel so I'll demonstrate this using this EQ plugin but you could use something else and the same frequencies are going to be fine so magic frequency number one is 8k and this is pretty much where I always start with the snare drum I'll just start by boosting 8K so let's check this out so this provides that bright snap that crack and attack let me just solo so you can hear it better [Music] usually the limit to this 8K boost is just like whatever you can get away with uh with the bleed that exists in the mic so sometimes I wish I could go you know all the way up like that but the bleed's a little crazy so then we can bring in a sample to just add a little more of that brightness on this scenario we'd probably end up somewhere around there and then the next place that I'll boost is around 200 Hertz so that's magic frequency number two so this 200 Hertz boost is for the fatness and 200 works on like pretty much every snare drum it's going to sound good when you boost it at 200. honestly usually a big boost around 8K and a fairly big boost around 200 will get you like 80 there with your snare sound I mean check this out foreign together right so without the low end boost here and we just have the 8K boost this snare is kind of thin right and then we add the 200 to fatten it back up [Music] so keep in mind that sometimes it's not that you need less high end like the snare is thin without that low end boost but it like you don't want to back off that 8K boost because that sounds great what you need to do is just add in some more of that fatness there there's two mistakes that I see a lot of mixers making with this number one that they're too shy right so they just don't ever actually boost it far enough and sometimes that happens because you're mixing in Solo so you know when you're hearing this 8K boost it's like oh my gosh there's so much bleed coming through and it's so bright and I always say you want to push things too far and then pull it back that's really how you find The Sweet Spot and mistake number two that I see a lot of people making is Reinventing the wheel like yes I know every song is different every snare is different but take it from someone who has mixed hundreds of songs professionally like these frequencies the two that I've already showed you and the two I'm going to show you in a second they work pretty much all the time like 98 of the time so you don't need to like put your snare in Solo and start like boosting and sweeping eqs around and stuff and trying to find you know the frequencies to boost and cut like just start with this it's going to get you 80 there in like one minute all right let's keep going the next magic frequency you want to look at boosting is 2.5 k somewhere around there so let's check this out this is kind of more of a throaty mid-range like bite that's going to help the snare cut through a dense mix let me solo it out here so you can hear it better [Music] typically you don't need a lot of this just a little bit this snare too is is quite throaty and mid-rangey anyways but on other snares you might need a little more of this just to help it cut through and this 2.5 k boost also just makes sure the character and body of the snare comes through small speakers right because basically the worse the speakers are probably those really high frequencies and the really low ones they're not going to be translating reliably so having kind of that 2.5 k area it's going to have a nice bite and it's going to translate on a lot of systems by the way if you don't want to forget all of the frequencies I'm mentioning here I've got a free mixing cheat sheet you can download just go to mixcheatsheet.com it's got all these go-to starting point frequencies for a snare but also for kick the rest of the drums and every other track in the mix as well so mixed cheat sheet.com you can print that out and have it in front of you so that you don't forget any of this alright so far I've just shown you three places to boost on the snare drum and about 50 of the time this is all you need to do you sometimes don't even need to cut any frequencies but if you do it's probably going to be in the fourth magic area which is not one specific frequency but it's arranged typically around 600 to 900 Hertz so you can see when I go around 900 it's sounding a little honky you can kind of hear that without the Boost too so I'm going to try dipping some of that out always make sure you do these EQ moves in the context of a mix if you're only doing this in Solo you'll probably either do too much or you won't do enough so here's our snare sound after these EQ move foreign just to prove to you that this always works here's a completely different song with a completely different snare that's the Rosner no EQ boost on here so let's dive in I'll hit the same frequencies foreign [Music] so remember these frequencies when you're mixing snare drum start at 8K then add 200 then look to boost around 2.5 k and then if it's sounding a little honky or muddy or boxy then you want to look around 600 to 900 Hertz and cut that and if you want to remember those frequencies just go and download my mixing cheat sheet I like to EQ the snare into a compressor and the compressor is what's going to give you that punch and attack that you want check out this next video right here where I'll show you the exact settings to use on your compressor to add that smack and punch and attack alright see you later

Channel: Hardcore Music Studio

Views: 250,637

Keywords: jordan valeriote, hardcore music studio, drum mixing techniques, snare drum mixing techniques, drum mixing, snare mixing, snare mixing metal, mixing modern metal snare, mixing snare drum, mixing snare drum rock

Id: yCC3MYf0-yQ

Length: 8min 18sec (498 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2022