Snare Drum EQ - Mixing Tips - Live Sound & Recording Tutorial

hello and welcome back to the channel for this episode i thought we would focus on snare drum eq we've already talked about kick drum eq in a previous episode and i'll leave a link for that later in this video and right there with the kick drum as part of the bedrock of any mix is the snare drum the snare drum is loud and takes up a lot of sonic space and it can really make or break your mix for this video we'll focus on a top mic snare in a future video we'll discuss adding a bottom mic some popular mics you might see on a snare are the sure beta 56 or beta 57 the sennheiser 604 and the ever popular shure sm57 i'll leave some amazon links in the text below for those snare drums come in a lot of flavors and tunings so there's no real one-size-fits-all way to approach the snare but there are some general rules that will apply use your high-pass filter bottom end fullness is around 160-250 hertz muddiness is around 250 hertz to 500 hertz there's a lot of energy in the 900 hertz to 2k range the attack and the snare buzz is around 2k the sizzle in the air comes in around 6k and upward so let's get our robo drummer going and try some real world examples first we want to engage our high pass filter also known as the low cut there are two approaches we can take with the high pass filter one is to simply bring it up just below where the snare has any real sonic energy so that we aren't picking up any of the stage watch from the low end that our snare mic just doesn't need to hear in that case we're probably going to be in the 80 to 100 hertz range the other approach is to go beyond that to thin the snare drum a bit if we don't want to hear some of that fatness in our snare basically you can bring the high pass filter up until you hear it have a negative effect on the snare and then just back it off a bit i'll bring it up here and be aggressive so that you can hear it take low end away from the snare and hear how this filter is working now i'm going to back it off a bit to about 100 hertz i like the fullness of the snare and i'm more interested in the snare mic not picking up low end stage wash than using it to thin the sound of the snare in this case i always want to listen to see what i might want to take away before i think about boosting anything [Music] this cutting will allow what's left to naturally be enhanced for example if we take away low mids we're naturally left with more low end and upper mids and highs that minimalist approach might be plenty don't get caught in the trap of thinking that you always have to do a lot of eq for a good sound let your ears be your guide for these examples i'm going to leave the default cue settings in place on the eq but i am going to change the low filter to be a low shelving eq and the high filter to be a high shelving eq as i'm showing here if you understand what these do then you might want to make these changes on a case-by-case basis but for our general baseline for a snare a high and a low shelf is fine for this snare i hear something in the low mids that i think i can cut if you don't instinctively know where it is that you want to make that cut that you just hear something in the low mids then you can go ahead and boost in the low mids a bit and then sweep that area left and right until you hear the really annoying part stand out to you by bringing that area up and sweeping it'll exaggerate the problem and really make it stand out when you sweep to that point so here it is what i'm hearing and i'll cut it some right at this point [Music] and here it is with the eq after comparison and now the eq back on [Music] one point i'd like to make about this boost and sweet method i don't really advocate doing it unless you hear something that you want to change and you really just need to hone in on that area if you don't hear anything you want to change in the first place there's nothing wrong with leaving well enough alone if you boost and sweep without hearing any real issues before you do then just by the nature of exaggerating the frequency response you might find something you don't like but if you didn't hear that already before you did the boost and sweep then it likely was fine to begin with you only made it a problem area when you boosted that area and presented that area out of context alright back to our snare i don't hear any other areas of the snare that i want to cut so now it's a question if there's anything i want to bring out and enhance [Music] i think i want to bring up the bottom that low mid cut smoothed out the snare sound but it also might have thinned it a bit i'll boost it at 250 hertz and sweep a bit to the left to see where it sounds good to me in roughly that 160 to 250 hertz window just a few db of boost here a little goes a long way okay about here that sounds pretty good to me let's listen with the eq off [Music] and now the eq back on [Music] now i want to address the attack and i want to hear the snares cut through better so i'll boost to 2k and sweep a bit left and right at that to find the sweet spot keep in mind on some snare drums there might be plenty already or this could be an area where you might want to even cut this we're looking to enhance the natural sound of the snare we don't want to make it piercing okay that sounds about right let's turn the eq off for comparison and the eq back engaged [Music] now maybe add some air in it a little sizzle i'll boost our highs at about 6k and sweep some going higher to try and find a sweet spot for that i just want to give the snare a little lift i don't want to make it piercing and i don't want it to pick up too much of the hi-hat or the surrounding symbols i think that's close to what i'm looking for let's compare eq off and now the eq back on now we can add some reverb to that i did a video about the behringer vintage rebirth and the behringer plugins and i'll leave a link here if you want to delve into that video and study some more about the vintage reverb and in particular how it's used on snare i also want to put up the kick drum eq video link please like and subscribe to the channel and click the affiliate links to support the channel i hope you found this info useful please leave any comments and video suggestions below they really help me to know what videos you want to see and i will see you next time you

Channel: Alan Hamilton Audio

Views: 16,841

Keywords: snare drum EQ live sound, XR18 snare, M32 snare, X32 snare, snare drum eq, eq snare, snare EQ tips, snare drum equalizer settings, snare EQ, drum eq, XR18 drums, snare mixing, x32 drums, drum mixing tutorial, sound reinforcement, beringer x32, live audio, behringer X32 setup, berhingerX32, Snare drum sound, live drums, rock drums, church audio, audio mixing, snare drum mic, church sound, drum microphone, drum mixing, how to eq drums, behringer x32, midas M32

Id: J_WC68vyht4

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021