EQing Drums ?

[Tiger Blood]

Hey guys,

Ive been learning dubstep production for around a week and have got to grips with ableton and am looking at creating a good drum line.

I was wondering are there any good guides on how to setup each part of the sequence and also how to EQ individual elements of the kit.

Thanks for any help !

[efence]

heres a good video to get started with
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxlOaYJG ... ure=relmfu

[Tiger Blood]

heres a good video to get started with
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxlOaYJG ... ure=relmfu

thanks ill take a look. Im using ableton though and havent learnt how to eq drums before so not sure how to do separate parts of the rack ! thanks again

[hasezwei]

hi-pass everything except the kick at about 200-500 Hz (about 200 for the snare, 500 or even more for the rest). lots of hi-hat samples and other percussion have useless low-end content that will muddy up your frequencies.
also highpass your kick so it doesn't interfere with your subbass. for house music and other kick-driven styles it's ok to have them hit as low as you want, but for dubstep and drum n bass the lowend pressure comes from the bassline so as a general guideline let your kicks hit at about 110 Hz.

also feel free to ignore any of the above advice if it fits your track. the most important thing about rules in production is knowing when you break them. if you do something 'wrong', do it on purpose and everything's fine.

[Tiger Blood]

hi-pass everything except the kick at about 200-500 Hz (about 200 for the snare, 500 or even more for the rest). lots of hi-hat samples and other percussion have useless low-end content that will muddy up your frequencies.
also highpass your kick so it doesn't interfere with your subbass. for house music and other kick-driven styles it's ok to have them hit as low as you want, but for dubstep and drum n bass the lowend pressure comes from the bassline so as a general guideline let your kicks hit at about 110 Hz.

also feel free to ignore any of the above advice if it fits your track. the most important thing about rules in production is knowing when you break them. if you do something 'wrong', do it on purpose and everything's fine.

ok thanks ill bear this in mind, anyone know how to do all this in ableton ? thanks!

[Sinisterbeats]

also feel free to ignore any of the above advice if it fits your track. the most important thing about rules in production is knowing when you break them. if you do something 'wrong', do it on purpose and everything's fine.

well said

[youthful_implants]

EQ, like any processing in audio, is all about knowing when to use it.

You're better off not using any, than using it if you dont need to.

Bearing that in mind, learn to analyse your sounds and be surgical in their application.

There are guidelines for EQing drums but it totally depends on the source material. If you've got good samples (Vengeance sample packs for example) then they're already well engineered and won't require a lot of EQ. If you've sampled your drums from an old record then they'll need a lot of cleaning up.

I would experiment with hi passing and lo passing your sounds so you can hear whats happening and from there ensure you're using the EQ to get rid of noise in the sample (subtractive) so that its cleaner and punchier.

You can also boost the EQ at certain frequencies but I think its more important to make them gel using levels first and then start thinking about using EQ to make that fit even more snug.

This is a very general guide, but again, it totally depends on the sounds you're using.

Kick Drum

Any apparent muddiness can be rolled off around 300Hz. Try a small boost around 5-7kHz to add some high end.

50-100Hz ~ Adds bottom to the sound
100-250Hz ~ Adds roundness
250-800Hz ~ Muddiness Area
5-8kHz ~ Adds high end prescence
8-12kHz ~ Adds Hiss

Snare

Try a small boost around 60-120Hz if the sound is a little too wimpy. Try boosting around 6kHz for that 'snappy' sound.

100-250Hz ~ Fills out the sound
6-8kHz ~ Adds prescence

Hi hats or cymbals

Any apparent muddiness can be rolled off around 300Hz. To add some brightness try a small boost around 3kHz.

250-800Hz ~ Muddiness area
1-6kHz ~ Adds presence
6-8kHz ~ Adds clarity
8-12kHz ~ Adds brightness

[Tiger Blood]

thanks for the detailed help.

Again though is anyone able to tell me how to get to this information in ableton? when i apply an EQ8 or something to the drum it does it for all of them : (

[jaws]

how are your drums setup in ableton? are they on individual tracks for each (ie, kick, snare, hat etc.) or is it just a stereo loop?

[david nicol]

You can go into the Drum Rack and apply an individual EQ8 to any sample within the drum rack. Usually I keep my drum tracks separate though for ease of applying FX and then bounce them down to audio once I get a sound that i like, because MIDI uses more processor anyways.

[Tiger Blood]

how are your drums setup in ableton? are they on individual tracks for each (ie, kick, snare, hat etc.) or is it just a stereo loop?

my drums are all in one kit recorded into one midi clip setup if that answers the question?

[Tiger Blood]

You can go into the Drum Rack and apply an individual EQ8 to any sample within the drum rack. Usually I keep my drum tracks separate though for ease of applying FX and then bounce them down to audio once I get a sound that i like, because MIDI uses more processor anyways.

so i drag an EQ8 onto the sample in the drum rack ? is there i way i cna group all the kicks for example if i layer them ?

also im using a i7 desktop so processing isnt an issue if thats what you meant by that.

Thanks !

[Grime Syndicate]

Along the left hand side of the drum rack is a series of buttons. The third button down opens up the simpler that your sample is being played by. Drop an EQ right next to this, NOT outside of it to the extreme right, as that will affect all the hits in the rack. I usually will eq my Kicks and snares, get them playing together and use a spectrum analyzer on them to make sure the frequencies look right, then resample and stick em back into a drum rack. That way, you don't have all that real time effecting going on. It tends to eat up CPU quickly. You can also use the built in filter function on the simpler to good effect. I often use it in place of an eq for ease of use and speed. Though, bear in mind its really only good for single cutoffs, not multipoint effecting like an eq8 will give you. The "R" button, also along the left hand side of the rack at the bottom, is going to open a panel which will let u drop audio effects (vst) by just dragging them in there. Then you can route each sample thru the effect in differing amounts.

Also, go watch a ton of tutorials.

Also, THIS. http://www.htsti.com/?q=Ableton+drum+rack+tutorial

[Tiger Blood]

Along the left hand side of the drum rack is a series of buttons. The third button down opens up the simpler that your sample is being played by. Drop an EQ right next to this, NOT outside of it to the extreme right, as that will affect all the hits in the rack. I usually will eq my Kicks and snares, get them playing together and use a spectrum analyzer on them to make sure the frequencies look right, then resample and stick em back into a drum rack. That way, you don't have all that real time effecting going on. It tends to eat up CPU quickly. You can also use the built in filter function on the simpler to good effect. I often use it in place of an eq for ease of use and speed. Though, bear in mind its really only good for single cutoffs, not multipoint effecting like an eq8 will give you. The "R" button, also along the left hand side of the rack at the bottom, is going to open a panel which will let u drop audio effects (vst) by just dragging them in there. Then you can route each sample thru the effect in differing amounts.

Also, go watch a ton of tutorials.

Also, THIS. http://www.htsti.com/?q=Ableton+drum+rack+tutorial

thanks for the help, i have tried to find good ableton drum tutorials but clearly dont know the right search, is there a way to put all my layered kicks together to EQ it as one then i can resample that as my 1 kick of is it best to EQ every piece of kick.

[Grime Syndicate]

Yes. Watch this tut, it shows you exactly how to layer and then eq individually or simultaneously. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XThorPfG5x4
I do recommend you eq individually, as you should be picking samples which complement eachother, as in a subby bottom end, a nice mid, and a clicky top end. There are no rules, but try to avoid frequency clashes. Do what sounds and feels right.

[Grime Syndicate]

Then you've got reverb and compression to contend with. Look up New York Compression tuts in ableton aka Parallel compression. Lots of merely fucking around with different routing and effects chains will do you a world of good. Once you've figured out the parallel technique, it can be applied to distortion (which is particularly nice for snares and hats), reverb, etc etc and on and on it goes. Further down the rabbit hole Alice.

[societyloser1]

My advice is to use audio tracks... it's simpler & clearer, imo!
But you could group tracks in drum rack/impulse...select the elements you want to group + gtrl g... but if you got a nice i7 machine, just use copy/paste? I think the copy/paste solution is better, especially with layering! (because if you use the same eq settings for all your layered kicks, shit is nog gonna sound tight... but that's a mixing issue!)

[Grime Syndicate]

Oh, and panning. You may wanna pan your hits around the stereo spectrum, particularly hats and rimshots.

[Grime Syndicate]

Another thing about eq8 (and any decent eq) is that you should turn off points that aren't being used in order to conserve cpu. This is especially true and noticeable when you have eq's on each hit, and then on each track of your song.

[Tiger Blood]

Another thing about eq8 (and any decent eq) is that you should turn off points that aren't being used in order to conserve cpu. This is especially true and noticeable when you have eq's on each hit, and then on each track of your song.

wow this is all massively overwhelming, also CPU power is not a concern at all so dont worry about that. Just need the easiest way to learn all this stuff. Theres just so much im not sure where to start !