One reason is to add a bit of energy. Maybe the drums sound too punchy. This allows you to compress them as a whole rather than individually, making it sound more cohesive and “glueing” them together. Compression, when used carefully, can be a great tool to add body to your drums. Then apply a layer of compression across the drum group as a whole. Check out Decapitator — PIB/Decapitator […] Otherwise, the snare drum is usually the least EQ’d of the drums in my sessions. So, the very first thing, and this is a workflow thing that I do. Transient shapers like the one in iZotope’s Neutron 3 are a great way to control the attack and sustain of your drums independently. Grahame Farmer October 22, 2018. It’s a little hard to level match though. Use compression to lift up the overall volume of the drum-kit. We might want to do something that brings out the punch of the snare, adds a bit of grit and tone to it, maybe brings out some of those inside notes a little, or we might want to do some heavy handed compression that brings out the size of the snare and makes it feel really big and really full and really fat. Plus, more counterintuitive ways to get fuller yet controlled low-end in your mix. The initial part of the drum sound (the “transient” itself), is the most important part of the waveform when it comes to the “punchiness” of the drums. Too much compression may bring up the hats so care about this. In this video tutorial, Joshua Casper shows you how to add crispy character to your snares, kicks and other percussion, using Soundtoys Decapitator. I almost always find 2 or 3 snares is enough to do the trick when layering for one particular snare sound. So let’s listen to this in the context of the mix. 250Hz-400Hz is the muddy area of the snare drum. That wouldn’t be much of a tutorial, so let’s talk about why we might want to do some dynamic processing, specifically, compression. Ducking the bass helps as mentioned. You just made a snare! I generally like to roll off the low end of the snare as well, for the same reason as the kick. To help the snare cut through a mix then use an eq to cut other sounds where the snare hits. I’m going to open my mix console and I have my snare drum right here. Also boost to add definition to the sound of acoustic guitars or to add edge to synth sounds or strings or to enhance the sound of a variety of percussion sounds. Right off the bat as an insert, I have a gate and also a compressor. Parallel Compression to Add Punch to a Snare Drum [1-Minute Mix Tip] Parallel Compression to Add Punch to a Snare Drum [1-Minute Mix Tip] - youtube Video Play Video Get Premium Mix Training From Our Most Trusted Contributors. It sort of starts to sound kind of flat. These special dynamics processors can add incredible detail to your drums, or they can make them bigger depending on how you use them. You can also play with the sustain in order to add body to the drums. Here are the EQ curves I like to use on specific drums: On kick drum, I like to roll off everything below around 40 Hz. 808 Type Snare . #Decapitator #SoundToys #PluginBoutique. Remember, the cable will often have a right or left curve along one end as a … It is important that you not over compress your drums, or you will lose all of the transient work that you did. Awesome. Then, I like to boost somewhere between 1 kHz by 2-3 dB if needed. Add edge to a bass drum. Next, I like to boost around 400 Hz in order to add body to the snare (only if needed). So we could actually call it a day here, we’ll just find the level of snare we actually want, set it in the mix, and move on. This is going to be about parallel compression. And it sounds like this with the rest of the drums. SSL comp/EQ (250 hertz area is KEY for punch, and add some around 10k for the high end crack/PSP vintage warmer to make the snare come alive. 16:38 . They both involve using a very fast compressor. Now secure the cable. This helps a lot if you want to add different accents to part of a song, or if you use a more intricate snare technique and need a touch of extra rebound. Bleed Problem? We mostly use 2 microphones on the snare drum. So we could really push this into the compressor here, and maybe back this off a bit. If you’re using samples, you can toy around with the starting point of the clip to make sure you minimize distortion with the sub. Just wanted to control the bleed coming from the high hats and cymbals that the snare mic get caught up. It’s not like a huge change, but sometimes, we don’t necessarily want a huge change. Snare. I keep the ratio very small on these compressors, usually 1.5:1. On the one hand, the tone sort of flattens a little bit, which is one of the tradeoffs that we get, but we get a little bit more of that like, low mid punch coming through, we get a bit of the upper-mid range being stretched, because of the tone of the compressor, and we also get a little bit more of the ghost notes, so we get a little bit more of the groove. 1. I generally like to roll off the low end of the snare as well, for the same reason as the kick. First, let me start by mentioning some of the crucial frequency ranges of the snare, so if you come across a problem and want to fix it, you’ll get there easier. This will allow you to turn them up in the mix while still keeping a nice clean sound. Drums are transient instruments.