What EQ-ing to make BD/SD stand out in the mix?

[Chill]

My band recorded a 4 song demo, now we're mixing it down. The drums were recorded with 2 overhead condensers, a bass drum mic and a snare mic. The best snare sounds come from the overheads, which also happen to have more cymbal than snare. I'm thinking of 2 potential solutions to get the BD and snare to stand out:

1. Turn down the upper frequencies on the overheads to get less cymbal and more of everything else, and/or

2. Turn up some specific frequencies on the BD/ snare tracks to add them into the mix as reinforcement for the overhead tracks.

So the questions: what frequencies have you added/ cut to get better presence of the BD and snare? Do you prefer adding dB or subtracting dB?

Here are some rough mixes: www.myspace.com/sideofbacon

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

In terms of a rescue operation, your best bet would be to duplicate the overhead track into two separate tracks (one for bass and one for snare), then use multiband compression to draw out the snare and kick separately.

You won't be able to go to far without it getting ugly-sounding, but hopefully it'll be enough that when you blend them back in with the overhead track, it will pull them out a bit more.

Naturally, it's far easier (not to mention getting better results) if you plan your tracking to provide the flexibility you need rather than relying on a rescue operation after the fact!

 

[gumplunger]

To get the kick to stand out a bit more, find a frequency to emphasize on the kick that brings out the "click" of the beater, try around 3k-5k. Then remove some of that frequency from the guitars or whatever tends to bury the kick's click. You can also cut some from the kick in the 500 range to get rid of that "boxy" sound and add a little around 100 to get a little more "thump".

For the snare, you can do essentially the same thing - find the snare's attack and emphasize it and then cut those same frequencies from other instruments in the mix if they walk all over the snare. Some tasteful compression will help it stand out some as well.

 

[Chill]

Thanks for the input. I agree, getting better sounds going in is the best way to do it...

We ended up boosting the snare at about 1K and 5K and cutting it a bit in the 600's. For kick we boosted the low end, cut a bit in the 600's, and rolled off the top end. Cut the guitars a bit at 125Hz and turned the bass up. The overall effect made the snare and kick sit better in the mix.

This article: http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_equal_time/index.html had some good stuff. I think I found it here someplace. Good technique in the article: take a parametric and sweep it once with boost and once with cut to find where you want to boost or cut.

 

[LRosario]

You know I found that the real trick to a good drum sound really wasn't mostly focused on EQ.

Like was mentioned, you do what you can to get the best sound straight from the source.

Make sure all heads are tuned properly, get a good punchy sound out of the snare (avoid piccolos whenever you can) and kick, then get good levels. Make sure you utilize an optiminal choice of mics and place them in the best position.

It also depends on how the drummer plays. I've heard shitty drum sounds and great sounds out of the same kit, then only difference was the drummer.

After that, if you carve out your EQ gaps right in each of your tracks, you shouldn'y really have to boost any one track up too much. Maybe just your kick and snare...being the defining points of the beat.