When I first started engineering drums, I found either my raw recordings or an unprocessed drum sample needed a lot of work to get the kind of attack and sustain that pleased my ears. And scavenging for processed samples that perfectly fit my goal was both time consuming and really a dead end. Until I learned to EQ and compress drums, I was quite limited.
As a former drummer, which made it even more maddening, I knew what I wanted to hear, but just didn’t have a formula to get me there. I was missing some very fundamental engineering techniques.
My preference regarding drums is a very solid attack, with a noticeable low thump and high-mid crack in the transient, followed by a noticeable sustain. I also like a little air in the snare that will allow it to shine through the highs, especially in a dense mix. This is not unlike how Butch Vig, also a drummer, engineers drums. And while we may all engineer drums a little differently, the core principles of managing drums likely do not change much between our styles.
DRUM EQs
When it comes to EQ and drums, I have a preference for a couple different tools. My primary EQ for drums is SSL because the four individual frequency sections, High, Mid-High, Mid-Low, and Low fit with the four areas of drums that I like to manage. Not to mention the SSL console has literally been used on every major album since the 80s.
As you work with the SSL on other instruments, you may find these specific bands to be a very useful tool as well. Especially in comparison to the Channel EQ in Logic.
The problem I have with the Channel or the Linear Phase EQs in Logic is they are too open. They allow you to do whatever you want to a source and at times that can be a problem.
For beginners, a graphic EQ with a spectrum analyzer provides a level of comfort. It allows you to see exactly how broad you are applying your moves, how much gain you are adding or removing, etc. But I would argue EQs like this are both a blessing and a curse. These types of EQs are very powerful, and it is easy to ruin your mix with them. I prefer to follow the success of other engineers, so the SSL is my go to choice.
There are a lot of different SSL EQ versions on the market, unfortunately, none of them come with Logic. The closest you will get to the SSL is the Vintage Console EQ, a Neve clone.
I would not recommend the Vintage Console EQ, however for EQ’ing your drums for a couple reasons. First, there are only three bands, Low, Mid, and High, and a Low cut filter. The changes we will be making require four bands. And second, the low and high bands are shelfs, not curves, so if you add highs, you are adding a lot more than just the frequency band we want to address. This isn’t to say the Vintage Console doesn’t work for drums. It just doesn’t work for this technique.
Instead, I recommend the SSL E Channel EQ from Waves, the Slate FG-S, or any other variation made by SSL themselves and including Universal Audio, or Brainworx.
DRUM FREQUENCIES
There are specific frequencies that are necessary for each type of drum on a kit. For the kick, you need to ensure the bass frequencies are felt, without a lot of mud. You also want some mid and high frequencies to cut the kick through the mix. Depending on the type of song or where the kick is appearing, these frequencies may also be different. The same goes for your toms and snare.
And for each type of drum, these frequencies will vary somewhat, but the core principles are the same.
Lows - First let’s start with the lows. For a kick, the sweet spot is between 50-100hz, but for a snare, this is around 200hz. You may also find not much additional bass is needed on your snare below 100hz as opposed to the kick which would be nearly lifeless without this band.
Low-Mids - Moving into the mids, you will find between 150-900hz the kick may be a little muddy. It starts to sound like a basketball hitting a wood floor. At first you may think this adds presence to the kick; it allows it to cut through the mix. But over time, this frequency can also quickly exhaust the ears. The same goes for the snare between 500-900hz. I find a bump around 200hz for a snare is enough to give it body without adding too much low-midrange.
TIP: The NS-10 EQ
If you need help hearing the impact of midrange frequencies on your mix, put a Channel EQ on your Stereo Out and apply a shelf on each end of the spectrum: 100hz @ -24db & 8khz @ -24db. This emulates the Yamaha NS-10 studio speaker which is a staple in nearly every studio around the world (i.e., the white cone speaker). This can also be a good way to check your mix throughout the entire process. And it’s a heck of a lot less expensive than a pair NS-10 or CLA-10 speakers which will cost you at least a thousand dollars.
High-Mids and Highs - The high-mid to high-end for drums is especially critical because it allows even a kick to be heard over commonly used speaker systems that lack low end. For example, between 500-1khz, an iPhone speaker rolls-off pretty dramatically. This means your Kick which lives predominantly below 100hz may not even be heard unless you have enough gain above 500hz to allow it to cut through the mix. And as we just discussed, this is also the area where kicks start to become muddy. Instead, I will boost my kick around 3.5khz in the high-mids and add another around 8khz in the highs for air.
For a snare, I find a bump around 2k and 7k allows me to achieve a similar cut and keeps me out of the harsh midrange frequencies around 800hz.
APPLYING THE EQ
Remember these frequencies are not prescriptive, they are not exact. You will find variations from drum to drum when applying these boosts and cuts. Which is why I provide ranges for these adjustments.
DO NOT solo the drum when making your adjustments. Apply the changes in the full mix so you can hear the impact. If you don’t hear a noticeable change, chances are the frequency isn’t the right one.
Start by turning-up the gain on the frequency band all the way and then sweep the band with the frequency dial until you hear the range you want to boost or cut. Then dial-back the gain until you achieve the level you desire. If you find yourself boosting or cutting all the bands by more than 4-6dBs, you may be doing more harm than good.
KICK
Boost: 50-100hz / 2.5k-4.5khz / 7k-9khz
Cut: 150-900hz
SNARE
Boost: 100-250hz / 1.5-2.5k / 6k-8khz
Cut: 600-900hz
RACK TOMS
Boost: 100-200hz / 3.5-5.5khz / 7-9khz
Cut: 500-700hz
FLOOR TOMS
Boost: 70-90hz / 3.5-5.5khz / 7-9khz
Cut: 500-700hz
PARALLEL COMPRESSION
Since you just EQ’d the source tracks, all parallel tracks will have the same EQ applied. What occurs in the original track gets sent to any parallel busses. So we are about 75% there already.
If you breakdown a snare, kick, or tom, there are essentially two parts: Transient and Sustain. I cover a lot of this in Transients, Noise, Sustain, and Saturation, so I won’t go into a lot of detail here. Suffice to say, you have to treat both parts of the waveform with different techniques.
Attack - First let’s address attack. If you listen to “Neon Wound” by Silversun Pickups (produced by Butch Vig in 2019), you will hear a very present attack coming from the kick and snare. The song is a good reference because the drums are somewhat isolated throughout much of the recording.
What is happening here is Vig has isolated the transient from the waveform and in parallel, applied compression, EQ, Saturation, and probably samples to the kick and snare that accentuate the attack. I would argue in some cases he literally mutes the original track and uses the parallel tracks as the primary source; I will explain this in a minute.
In Compression Sound Design for Drums, I describe what is called an Attack Bus. Essentially what you accomplish here is to eliminate the sustain from the waveform so just the transient can be mixed back-in with the original track. This can also be performed with a transient tool like Softube’s Transient Shaper, but transient shapers don’t usually also provide compression.
In isolation, this track sounds like a sledge hammer beating a log. Lots of attack, hardly any sustain. And that is the goal!
Sustain - Once you have the transient isolated, you need to do the same, but opposite, for the sustain. We want to remove the transient from a parallel track, thereby only applying processing to the sustain of the drum.
In Compression Sound Design for Drums, I describe what is called a Room Bus. This technique gives you a lot of control over the sustain of your drums, and because the transient is essentially eliminated from the source, you only add sustain, not attack. The basic technique I cover however, does not really get us where we want to be yet, so let’s dive a little deeper.
The Room Bus technique is quite effective as an enhancer, but it does not eliminate enough of the transient to work on a single instrument.
Instead, I will employ an 1176 FET compressor and then add a transient shaping tool after it in the FX chain. The compressor takes-off 80% of the transient and returns the signal very quickly. The transient shaper then shaves-off the rest of the transient and again returns quickly with only pure sustain.
In solo, this track sounds very odd. Due to the compression of the transient, the sustain enters approximately 20-30ms after the drum strike, it sounds delayed. And while it ramps-up in loudness very quickly, it is clear what we have left is not the typical triangular drum waveform, with a wide transient at the start. Instead, if you bounce this aux channel, you will notice the waveform resembles more of a narrow triangle with a less than transient-like start and a blunted end.
APPLYING PARALLEL COMPRESSION
Snare - I will typically create an Attack and Room bus for my snares. Attack is so important to a snare, but sustain is just as critical. If you listen to “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins, around the 3:30 mark, the drums enter with a huge amount of gated sustain. Similarly, “When the Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin is another example of drum sustain. While it is also accentuated by reverb and perfectly times delays, it cannot be overlooked that drum sustain is a huge part of the success of these songs.
Kick - I will also build the same Attack and Room busses for my kicks. Regarding sustain, I prefer something that resembles an “oof” sound, like quickly exhaling all of your breath through your mouth. When you do this your vocal cords want to vibrate. Keep the note as low as you can. This is what my preferred kick sustain sounds like.
Toms - You are welcome to experiment here as well, but you may find an Attack and Room bus will benefit your toms.
Again, these parallel busses are made specifically for each drum. On the snare and kick you will have at least two sends. This means you will now need to mix them with the source track to achieve the final sound. I usually set my Attack Bus at unity gain: the peak dB is equal to the source track. Doing this allows me duplicate the punch of the original transient without adding much overall gain.
For my Room Bus, I may keep it at unity or push it even harder to achieve that “oof” effect which works well for snares and kicks.
Just remember, mixing-back all of your parallel compression channels should not only be done within the full mix, it is not an exact science. Unity may not be appropriate for the song, so use your ears and go with your instincts. You can always add more or less gain later, but get a good starting place and adjust as needed when the time comes.
ADVANCED PARALLEL TRICKERY
So now that we covered a foundation of engineering drums, there are some additional techniques you can employ on drums that will achieve an other-worldly sound.
Gated Reverb - First let’s start with sustain. I may also add a parallel reverb bus to the kick and snare if I am going for that Phil Collins effect. But this is a special kind of reverb.
If you imagine natural reverb, like what you would hear in a concrete stairwell or a shower, you get the image of a sustain that saturates the original source; uncontrolled and luscious. But reverb is dangerous, and it must be controlled if it is going to be employed musically.
With a gated reverb, what you want to hear is a very distinct start and end to the reverb, with very little interruption, delay, or feedback. There is no pre-delay, just a broad band of reverb.
I find many reverb presets listed as “gate” to be somewhat of a disappointment. Instead I prefer to make my own. The Logic Space Designer is an excellent toolkit for creating lush reverbs.
Mega-Attack - When we created the Attack Bus, we mixed it back to taste. It is likely you wanted to push this bus even louder than the original source. Which is not such a bad thing. In fact, some kicks and snares actually sound really good when their attack far exceeds their sustain. Just be careful of your Attack Bus frequencies, many times when I push the Attack Bus, I need to surgically edit the EQ in order to remove frequencies that will potentially exhaust the listener.
For a snare, you should be carful of the mid and high frequencies. Since you already EQ’d the snare on the original source, add an EQ to the Attack Bus and sweep for frequencies that may be offending now that you have boosted the Attack Bus.
If you use an SSL EQ, start at the high frequency band. Turn-up the gain 100% and sweep the frequency band (1.5k to 16k). You may find a frequency that is offensive. If not, move to the next frequency band. Be aware, volume may make all frequencies sound offensive, so be very discretionary here. After you have targeted the frequency, back-off the gain to taste.
Mega-Sustain - As with a mega attack, you can also push your Room Bus further and achieve a larger than life sustain. Some may say, why not just do this with reverb? Well, reverb tends to bring-out frequencies that don’t sound like the original source. When you build a room bus, you are only using frequencies from the primary source. Of course compressors and EQs also add distortion and saturation, but that is unavoidable. Reverbs have a tendency to be very powerful and less natural. Pushing your room bus harder primarily expands the sustain of the original source.
I use this technique quite a bit to expand and extend sustain. Like with any enhanced technique here, always mix back in to taste. There are no rules here.
Missing Source!?! - You may also find your kick or snare sounds even better when the source is backed-off and the parallel busses dominate. To do this, change the send from your source track to Pre-Fader (right-click on the send instance), so you can pull-back the source fader and allow the parallel bus to be unaffected. Dial-in the Attack and Room bus faders to taste. You might find this results in a massive, albeit “very produced” difference.
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