Kick Drum EQ For Live Sound & Recording - How to EQ a Kick Drum - Mixing Tips - Tutorial

[Music] hello and welcome back to the channel getting a good kick drum sound seems to be a popular topic on the forums and so for this episode i thought we would talk about show and listen to some kick drum eq examples and concepts today we're going to be doing this on a behringer xr18 but with the newer edit software for the x32 and the midas m32 and with the v4 firmware for those not only are these concepts and settings the same but they will also look the same and for that matter the concepts we'll talk about will work for any mixer or platform live or recording this applies to your daw eq as well so let's talk about a couple of things before we hear the kick when it comes to your kick drum sound it's important to start with a well-tuned kick and hopefully you have a drummer that plays consistently within the dynamics of the music it's also important to consider the genre of music you're mixing and what the drum itself actually sounds like make sure your concept of what you want the kick to sound like fits the music and beyond that what the kick drum itself sounds like acoustically if the kick drum by itself sounds like mud don't expect you're going to be able to create a super clicky kick it's also important to consider what your pa is capable of if you're not using subs then don't expect to be getting a low end heavy kick in the pants kick drum sound big low end takes subs and takes amp power if you hang around until the end of this video after we've worked on some kick drum eq i'm going to open up a sure beta 52 and show you something that might surprise you so let's take a listen to our robo drummer here and at this point you should flatten your eq or reset your eq and make sure your eq is engaged you should make sure your gain on the behringer digital desk is hitting -18 db fs on the input meter i discussed this in my five mistakes videos and i'll put a link to those at the end of this video don't forget to make sure that your eq is engaged and that it's not grayed out the first thing we want to do is make sure to engage the low cut also known as the high pass builder since we're talking about a kick drum it's going to be set low because the kick drum is a deep instrument with lots of low end energy if nothing else put it at 20 hertz to better set this you have to consider what sounds good to you and what your system is capable of 20 hertz could be lower than it needs to be we could slide it on up to 30 hertz and probably be fine realistically 40 hertz is probably a safe conservative number between 20 hertz and 40 hertz is a likely window and for this example i'm just going to use 40 hertz because for the vast majority listening to this video and without really getting too far in the weeds explaining this i think you'll be well served by that setting now that we've set our low cut we need to make the first eq setting on the kick for modern music we want the kick drum to sound big and deep we also know there will be a lot of low mid energy in the band's music itself cutting that from our kick will not only make it sound bigger but it will leave some space in the low mids for other instruments and not clutter the low mids of the music so much so our first move is to make a low mid cut as a rule of thumb i figured the cut will be centered around 160 hertz i'll move that a little lower or a little higher depending on the natural depth of the kick drum but 160s is a good place to start as we go along i'm going to engage and disengage the eq here and there so you can hear the difference in the eq kick versus the natural kick when the eq is disengaged it will gray out when it's engaged it will be orange on the screen so now we've made our low mid cut listened and even swept the center frequency a bit to the left and right to see what sounds like the sweet spot for our kick now we're going to add some low end to give the kick some more body i recommend changing the eq type from peq parametric to a low shelf type eq as shown here that changes just for our lows i usually boost the lows on the kick with the knee in the 60 to 80 hertz range a couple of things to think about here is how much low end is your system capable of and what sounds best for your kick i definitely don't want to boost too much you can sweep your eq point within that 60 to 80 hertz window to see what works for you you might also notice as you lift that area up maybe you need to retweak your low mid cut a bit maybe a little more cut or maybe slide the eq point left or to the right a little bit the key is to work slowly and listen to your changes now i want to move to the high end of the kick drum i'll skip over that 30 cue point for now i'd also recommend making sure that the high end is set for a peq parametric peaking eq rather than high shelving that's done in the drop down menu just like we did on the low end before what you're looking for in the high end is to accentuate the attack of the kick this is where we try and emphasize the beater depending on the drum drummer and style of music we're probably going to want to boost in the 2k to 6k range we can go ahead and boost in that range right here now we can sweep that eq point left and right and listen for our sweet spot we know we're mainly sweeping in that 2k to 6k window once you've found that sweet spot go ahead and use your ear and think about whether you really need quite as much boost there or not you might be able to actually reduce that a smidge some people like to make a cut in the 300 to 500 hertz range of a kick that's what i save that 30 cue point for you can make a cut in that 300 to 500 hertz range and just like we did before sweep it a little to the left and the right within that area and see what you hear and see if you like it after you're overall happy with your kick sound you might take a final listen just to check the amount of boost and cut and your points and see if you can be a little more conservative maybe in the context of the band playing you notice that some of that low mid cut could be returned to give your kick a little more feel or maybe it's the other way and you need to cut the low mids even more if you're dealing with a metal band with a lot of fast kicks and double kicks you're almost certainly going to want to have a lot of low mid cut in the kick drum once you've found a workable kick setting you can save that to your library as your kick setting and use that as a baseline to start your sound checks from here on out even though you still will make changes to the kick you're still likely to be working in the same basic areas also once you're comfortable with these concepts for setting your kick drum sound in your kick drum eq you can start experimenting with the q you might find for example that a wider q setting on the high end helps you get a better attack on the kick okay so now we're going to take a look at the inside of a sure beta 52 kick mic people assume a kick mic has to be huge well this shows you that you can't always judge a mic by its cover the mic itself isn't big at all it's just the housing that is big the main thing about dedicated kick mics is they basically have built-in eq curves in their frequency response to start you out a little closer to where you're already going to go with your settings essentially some scoop mids and some accentuated high mids so if you're working with a dedicated kick mic maybe you do a couple of db less boost or cut here or there but the basic routine remains the same i hope this was helpful please like and subscribe and i'll see you next time

Channel: Alan Hamilton Audio

Views: 28,745

Keywords: kick drum EQ live sound, MR18 kick drum, XR18 kick drum, kick drum eq, X32 kick drum, bass drum eq, M32 kick drum, X air, how to EQ kick drum, drum mixing, Live Sound, live audio, sound reinforcement, cover band, sound system, kick drum sound, live drums, church audio, audio mixing, Kick drum mic, drummer, church sound, Shure B52, drum mic, drum microphone, sound mixing, Shure, Beta 52, drum mix, Big kick sound, kick drum tutorial, metallica kick drum, bass drum sound

Id: CQg1_-ZJ4MU

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020