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Hi there everybody!

Im trying to find some good articles on equalization of drums? Anybody out there that has some good references in their bookmarks or something? Could need a little help, because im a very musical kind of guy, and ive been making tons if sketches for dubstep tracks, and the music is just perfect. But the technical part, could use a little push. Because thats not where my focus is, and i just realized that you cant make dope dubstep tracks without getting the equalization part right!

So would appreciate if any of you guys could help me out with some basic stuff, for example.. at what frequencies hihat, kick, toms, and percussion should be Any tips is welcome!

Thank you in advance!
- Greets from Denmark.

This is what you should think about (just my opinion)

1)Use your Ears
2)Use a Spectrum analyzer
3)A high pass filter is you friend- This will help separate you kicks and sub bass, basses, but will also help you clear the mix from unwanted extra low end on most of your tracks
4)Generally when you layer several samples for kicks and snares make sure they don't have the sound character and make sure you eq them accordingly likewise (also make sure there is not a gap/space at the beginning of your samples)
5)Generally with kicks to get a 'Thump' sound your looking around the 100Hz region give or take and 2-5khz for a 'Click' sound (but it depends on your sample choice)
6)Add a transient designer plugin to your kicks to add more depth, some people even use distortion like the camel crusher vst
7)Snares will be sitting at around 500hz-6khz, a 3db boost at around 1khz will bring out some definition and bite along with some punch.

Hope this helps a little.

Trial and error...and error

boost 200hz as much as you can on snares

Article on EQ

These sorts of charts including, but not limited to, this one.

siperdellyeer wrote:boost 200hz as much as you can on snares

Sinestepper wrote:

siperdellyeer wrote:boost 200hz as much as you can on snares

dat snurr!

rockonin wrote:This is what you should think about (just my opinion)

1)Use your Ears
2)Use a Spectrum analyzer
3)A high pass filter is you friend- This will help separate you kicks and sub bass, basses, but will also help you clear the mix from unwanted extra low end on most of your tracks
4)Generally when you layer several samples for kicks and snares make sure they don't have the sound character and make sure you eq them accordingly likewise (also make sure there is not a gap/space at the beginning of your samples)
5)Generally with kicks to get a 'Thump' sound your looking around the 100Hz region give or take and 2-5khz for a 'Click' sound (but it depends on your sample choice)
6)Add a transient designer plugin to your kicks to add more depth, some people even use distortion like the camel crusher vst
7)Snares will be sitting at around 500hz-6khz, a 3db boost at around 1khz will bring out some definition and bite along with some punch.

Hope this helps a little.

This. Also if your using FL I use a stereo enhancer, makes a HUGE difference in depth

I don't claim to be an expert, but these are some general tips that have helped me.
if your eq doesn't have a spectrum analyzer, get one that does.
demo this: http://www.dmgaudio.com/products_equality.php
seriously. 60 days absolutely free, with no restrictions. changed my life (kinda).
some general eqing tips:
1. Use your spectrum analyzer to see the dominant frequencies of the sound (the peaks)
2. Use auto listen (a feature on equality) with a boosted bell curve shape eq (not sure what its called), and run it through the frequencies, and use your ears to see the regions of the frequency range that are important.
3. cut low end when you don't absolutely absolutely need it (usually only absolutely need it in kick or bass), because even though you might not notice it, its eating up headroom in the bass end, and thus making your bass quieter.
4. keep using auto listen and the spectrum analyzer to find out the important frequencies, and cut the rest. An important part of this is determining a role or a frequency range for each sound, so that you don't have sounds that are all up in each others business, overlapping and such. When this happens its called frequency masking; it makes each sound sound quieter, and is not good.This principle is applicable to all sounds, but its really important in drums. So for drums, you want to divide your drums by frequency range (roughly). There are no hard and fast rules for this, so you're going to have to use your ears. A rough process would be as follows:
1. solo kick. The essential parts of the kick are roughly from 60-120hz. Cut everything above 120 and everything below 60.
2. solo snare. The essential parts of the snare are roughly around 230-250 hz (the crack/punch) and around 500 hz (the "air") Cut everything below 230 and use the Q control on one of the bands on the eq to boost roughly around 230-250 (you don't necessarily need to boost a lot, rely on your ears) Boost around 500 hz, and then experiment cutting above 500, or between 250 and 500; the object is to remove as many unnecessary frequencies as possible, because they are eating your headroom and making your track quiet.
3. repeat for all your higher percussion/hats etc. If the important parts of two sounds are trying to fulfill the same "role" (are in the same frequency range), see if you can eliminate one of them. Again, there is no hard and fast rule; remember to use your ears.
In my experience, when I started using eq to emphasize only the important parts of my drums, it made them like 100000000000000x punchier and more awesome, and I hope that the same will happen to you. Again, I don't claim to be an expert in these matters and this is all IMHO.
Also, +1 on the dnbscene eq article, really good shit. And also layering. So so so so so important. Check out the Q and A with objekt (I think its around here somewhere), someone asks him how he layers and its pretty cool. He like cuts and pastes different parts of different drum samples and mashes em all up, check it out.

hope this helped!

Luigi

Holy crap man, way too specific on some of these elements. And cut out everything above 120 on the kick? Then it stops being a kick, just turns into a bassy thomp. The 100 - 200 region is where I usually put a notch but there'll still be a ton of goodness above that. And I'm sure there's snares where I've done the opposite of what you've described.

And I wouldn't wanna rely on a frequency analyizer that much. It helps but ears are way more important. Spectrum analyzers are mostly convenient for sound design or just cleaning things up your ears missed.

Use more subtractive eqing than additive eqing. Mix the snare and kick together then mix everything else around them.

watch ALL of this, its a kryptic minds production masterclass.. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm8XEqg6P2g). PARTICULARLY watch from 20 mins onward. they spend at least 10 mins talking about eq'ing your tunes. AND look up parallel processing/ny compression. itll slay your drums man, makes em so fat. trust me.
hope i was of some help.

i do kicks and subs at around 50hz. i drag the mids down to clear out the muddy freqs at about 500hz, snares go to 4000 or 6000 hz and then the hats at 10 000hz.
basically on a 7 band eq. put band 1 at 50hz, band 5 at 500hz, band 6 at 4000hz and band 7 at 10 000hz.
i dont touch any of the other bands but thats the setup i use, and then you just adjust the volume of where each band is. i hope that made sense.

drums are lows and highs. almost no midrange. for fundamentals, kick is 50hz-100, toms are 80-200, snare is 100-250. harmonics, snare buzz, etc are 2k and above.

then again, the human ear is tuned to 800hz-1.5k. so mix accordingly.

siperdellyeer wrote:boost 200hz as much as you can on snares

really? i boost my snares at 4000hz... to get the TSSCH coming off them really loud and clean.. let the kicks deliver the punch... i personally wouldnt boost snares at 200, just cos i reckon theyd get too much punch on the low end.. unless you layer them at 4000hz AND 200hz? maybe? i dont know.. im not too profesh.

skerrick wrote:

siperdellyeer wrote:boost 200hz as much as you can on snares

really? i boost my snares at 4000hz... to get the TSSCH coming off them really loud and clean.. let the kicks deliver the punch... i personally wouldnt boost snares at 200, just cos i reckon theyd get too much punch on the low end.. unless you layer them at 4000hz AND 200hz? maybe? i dont know.. im not too profesh.

Thing is, dubstep is not 4x4 so you have lots of space for a punchy snare. You can boost 200hz, 500hz, use huge reverb tails, anything, there's plenty of room for that.
Far from being a rule of course.

lol cant stop laughing at your sig! lolol!
yeah man to each his own. if there were strict rules we wouldnt get all the sounds we have anyway. unconvention IS convention.

and in regards to kicks.. just download an 808 kit and layer the 808 bass drum under a really sharp kick. fucking gives an awesome sound.

Sinestepper wrote:

siperdellyeer wrote:boost 200hz as much as you can on snares

dun forget to squash it down with a limter after that skrillzors snaer

This article helped me out a lot with my drums:
http://www.homerecordingconnection.com/ ... ory&id=154 - It's the basics of EQ theory

I also recomend you take a look at this guys tutorials, they are pretty awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y59EhqcERU - EQ Theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjWB8rZD3nQ - Snares
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsgh1dGKkPw - Kicks

Jeg håbe dette hjælper dig, hilsen fra Ísland.

Ja, jeg er slemt i dansk, jeg kender... Men så igen, hver islænding er for