Snare drum mixing of the music by Led Zeppelin, The Outfield, Spin Doctors and Nirvana are my personal favorites because they sound loud, crispy, heavy and well mixed. Modern pop beat sadly puts less importance in drums particularly snare. But a well mixed snare drums can make the song worth remembering, so what are the EQ, compression and panning mixing tips for snare drums?

This tutorial puts more emphasis on rock music more than other genre like pop, jazz and country. The objective is to give the snare drums a great and loud sound.

Let’s start with the most important, the EQ. It is important to know that EQ settings for snare drum mixing are treated differently between each song. There is no set of standard for EQ settings; however you can categorize them as follows (you can select on the following settings depending on your mixing application):

Heavy snare with crispy snare string sound:

Boost +3dB 100Hz, Q= 1.0
Cut -6dB 2000Hz Q= 1.4
Boost +3dB 8000 Hz Q = 1.0

Dominant and crispy snare sound

Cut -3dB 200Hz Q= 1.0
Boost 3dB 8000Hz Q=1.0

Since the following settings uses Q, you need a parametric equalizer to implement those settings. Bear in mind that the “dominant and crispy snare sound” is recommended only for instrumental rock music since 2000Hz – 3000Hz frequency range are not cut. If these are used in music with vocals, the snare drum may drowned the vocal frequencies affecting vocal clarity.

The second are the compression settings which I already mentioned in this tutorial: “Audio compression tips for mixing”.

Attack: 20ms
Release: 40ms
Threshold: -12dB
Compression ratio: 5:1

Feel free to experiment the attack and release settings. The compression ratio can also be set to 4:1 depending on your flavor.

Lastly the panning settings; most engineers can pan the snare drums at the center. But in reality the snare drums are not perfectly located in the center of the mix. When you visualize the real drums, it is bit off-center. So I recommend to use 6.25 units to the right. In your mixing software, an instrument panned to the right will have a positive sign while panned to the left is negative, so it will be +6.25.

More details are discussed in this tutorial: “How to pan drum instruments”

Final recommendation: The settings above are not meant to be the final solution, I recommend to highly rely on your ear to tweak the settings further to create a great snare sound in your mix starting with the settings provided above.

If you have other great tips in mixing snare drums, feel free to share. Thanks.

As a start, the kick drum equalizer settings and compression depends on the song genre. For example, your kick drum sounds different in rock versus jazz or country music. It is because of the way it has been approached in the audio mixing process.

This short guide emphasis the mixing of kick drum with strong perspective to modern pop and rock music. The suggestions below does not apply to country or jazz music, however you are free to experiment the settings in order to come up with the sound you need.

Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chidorian/

Suggested EQ Settings for Kick drums (targeting rock and pop music genre)

You need to have a parametric equalizer in order to use the following settings below:

Cut -9dB Q=3 Center Frequency=400Hz
Boost 9dB Q=1.4 Center Frequency= 100Hz
Cut -6dB Q=1.4 Center Frequency = 50Hz

The purpose of having to cut -9dB on 400Hz is reduce the cardboard sound of the drum and to make the drum sounds more bass. Of course since you are mixing for rock and pop music, the heavy bass guitar sound should occupy the sub bass frequencies (less than 100Hz), so to make the bass guitar sound prominent (avoid muddy sounds with kick), the kick drum is cut at -6dB , Q=1.4 at a frequency of 50Hz.

Now to make the kick drum sound prominent among all instruments including the bass guitar, is to boost it at 100Hz.

Suggested Compression Settings for Kick

Personally in own music production projects, I do not compress kick in the mix because compressing it can reduce its power during the mastering stage. However if you are needing compression settings for kick drums, below are the suggestions:

1.) Set compression ratio to around 4:1
2.) Set release time to 100ms.

If you need to read more details on compressing drums, read some suggestions here: http://www.recordproducer.com/?a=13.

Using Adobe Audition multi-track software, you can assigned each of those drum samples its own specific track so that you can mix them better. For example, assign track 1 to kick drum sample, track 2 to snare drum sample and finally track 3 for hi hat drum sample.

So when the time comes for mixing, it will be very easy to apply EQ/Compression/effects to each of those drum sample tracks.

What if you asked the question, how do I create drum samples??? There are a lot of ways to do this and it depends on your drum sequencer/software. I am using hot stepper and you can read the procedure here for creating drum samples:

Create drum samples using Hotstepper and Adobe Audition

Producing drum samples in Adobe Audition using sequencer

The main objective of your drum sample is just to create one complete loop. You will have no problem once one loop has been loaded into the multi-track as shown in the screen shot above. You can easily use the Adobe audition clip duplication feature to replicate one loop to create many.

After clip duplication of the drum samples, you track will now looks like:

Second, launch the program and it should look like below:

Third, experiment with your favorite drum loops right directly in the hot stepper; you can use the mouse to create your own nice musical arrangements.

In my own example:

Fourth, do not forget to save your file. Click File – Save as –, then type the file name; in my example I name it as mylooops.hpa. The file extension should be there: *.hpa

Fifth, is to export EACH track to WAV. For example if I will export “Bass Fat” track, I will remove all of the tracks first (by right clicking on red buttons on the hot stepper sequencer) EXCEPT Bass fat, DO NOT SAVE THE FILE AFTER THIS or else your original arrangement will be overwritten. See screenshot (exporting Bass Fat):

To export, click File – Write pattern wav – {name of your wav file}

To export another track (example Banana Bass), go to File – Open, and in the warning: “Do you want to save before continuing?” select NO. Then find your original mix/arrangement that you have saved, and then open it again. Remove all red buttons except for Banana bass:

Do the same procedure above for exporting to wav file for the rest of the tracks.
Until all tracks are exported as wav. Open Adobe Audition (you can use any); then load up the tracks EACH in the multi-track session (one track for each wav file). See screenshot:

http://www.audiorecording.me/wordpress/postimages/hotstepper5.jpg

You can then use your mixing software clip duplication feature to make several copies of your original loop.

http://www.audiorecording.me/wordpress/postimages/hotstepper6.jpg

Listen to this sample demo produced using the steps above:

In recording production of drums, you need to know that there are actually 4 parts of cymbals and hi hats used. They are:

1. Crash cymbal – this is the cymbal that will be hit very hard by the drummer.See picture below:

(photo by: Stephan Czuratis)

Important Mixing definition for crash cymbal:
Panning: Right, 9.375 units
Details: How to pan drum instruments

Frequency:
High pass filter at 500 Hz (means allowing only above 500 Hz to pass, cutting below).
Cut 3dB at 3000Hz, Q = 1.4
Boost 3dB at 12500Hz Q=1.0

Note: Some drum kits have only one cymbals, so in this case, it functions as both ride and crash cymbals. For mixing of this type of configuration, refer to ride cymbal tips below.

2. Ride cymbal – this is the soft sound of the cymbal, as opposed to crash cymbal this is located to the left of the drummer instead to the right.

Panning definitions: Left, 12.5
Frequency: Same with crash cymbal

3. Open hi hat – this gives a crashy sound of the hi hats, typically used for rock alternative choruses.

Panning definitions: Right, 12.5
Frequency: Same with crash cymbal

Picture of pedal and open hi hat:

(photo by: Stephan Czuratis)

4. Pedal hi hat- this is the soft equivalent of open hi hat. Typically employed in song stanzas.

Panning definitions: Right, 12.5 (the same with open hi hat, since they are same structure, played in different style – open or closed)
Frequency: Same with crash cymbals

Overall note: These are not strict rules, and this is more inclined to rock and pop mix. So I suggest to start with these settings and then tweak your sound to perfection.