How to EQ Drums to Actually Make Them Sound Better

November 8th, 2018 by Mike Major

Here’s how to avoid spinning your wheels when EQing drums and get positive results, fast. (Image credit: PlayTheTunes)

A drum kit is a diverse conglomeration of sounds and textures that can be very difficult to capture and mix. No other instrument presents the audio engineer with as many potential sonic landmines as a multi-mic’d drum kit does.

Because a drum kit consists of so many separate components, it often requires placing a bunch of mics to make sure we hear everything in balance and can manipulate them to suit modern tastes.   The problem is that once you start to use a bunch of mics in close proximity to each other, the probability of destructive phase cancellation goes way, way up.

Destructive phase cancellation is never good for the health of a drum sound and will make your job EQing them much more difficult.   To get the best drum mix possible, and make your EQs more effective, you should always start by ensuring the tracks you’ve got have the best phase relationships you can get out of them. In general, the goal is to get all of the waveforms from each microphone moving in the same direction at the same time so they are additive, rather than destructive.

You’ll want to have a good system that allows you to quickly figure out whether you have phase cancellation problems, determine where they are coming from, and address them quickly and with as little second-guessing as you can get away with. I go into this process in great detail here.

Assuming you’ve already addressed phase issues in your kit (which I want to stress is the very best EQ you’ll have access to at this point) you can proceed more quickly and effectively with your conventional equalizers, knowing that the whole drum package fits together well.

Everything Affects EQ

Applying EQ is where the rubber meets the road during a mix. Every good drum mix starts with establishing good balances and getting the phase response right, but EQ is the primary tool we use to shoehorn and shape our drums into a cohesive unit that works with the rest of the track.

EQ, in the most basic terms, is a tone control. But it’s not the only thing that affects tone. Every other choice in the mix can have an effect on the tone as well. Changes in the balance between each drum, and between the drum kit and the rest of the instruments causes tonal changes that can’t always be anticipated.   Instruments mask each other, harmonics can blend or beat against each other, and random instruments can pop out or disappear unexpectedly. Because of this, I tend to wait to commit to EQ until I have a good balance working already.

First, Determine What’s Actually Wrong

We often describe tonal problems in the drums by defining what’s lacking, rather than what there may be too much of.   ”The kick has no body” or “the snare isn’t bright enough” are common complaints. But, if you think about the root cause of these ailments, you can arrive at a much more effective solutions than a haphazard series of boosts.

For instance, if a kick seems to be lacking body, it may actually have an abundance of low midrange that is dominating and overshadowing the lower bass frequencies. The “lack of bottom” could be more a problem of masking rather than an actual low frequency deficiency. A hefty cut in the low midrange will often reveal the powerful low end that’s been hiding while giving the drum more clarity and definition as well.   The same concept holds with a dull snare: a prominent midrange resonance may be obscuring the high end detail. This can be easily fixed with a midrange cut at the point of resonance instead of boosting the treble.

Cutting an EQ will often be more transparent and more musical than an aggressive boost, so it’s usually a better place to start. Boosting is fine too, but it’s probably better to wait to do this until you’ve identified problem areas within the source and worked to contain them.

As with anything in mixing, these are guidelines more than rules. Sometimes, wide boosts can work as well. Ultimately, as long as you get the result you’re looking for, it doesn’t matter how you get there.

Try a Little Less

There’s a tendency when using EQ to cut, boost, and shape sounds excessively in an attempt to force a drum kit into submission. (“I’ll show them who’s boss!”).  This may seem effective when you’re going through individual tracks, but it can create a different reality when you combine all of the drum tracks together.

Often the very act of listening to solo’d drums will cause you to overwork them. Close mics will always have more obvious resonances simply because the mics are so close to the drums—and we basically never listen to drums from that close up. Expect them to sound unnatural.  These peaks and rings can feel out of balance and inappropriate in solo. But more often than not, these problems disappear into the din of the full drum kit once the mix is built. I can’t count how many times I’ve diligently worked on an unruly resonance problem with the toms, only to find that I can’t hear the offending resonance in the full mix anyway.

In general, removing these idiosyncrasies from the close mics will inadvertently neuter the tone, character and power of the drums. Clarity is important, but it should never supersede the power of the performance. With drums, I prefer to stick to the “bigger is better” approach. Most drummers like this too.

One useful strategy to reduce the amount of EQ you use is to rely on a more global bus EQ for the drums before attempting to EQ the individual tracks.   If you know you’re going to brighten up most of the drum tracks, then why not use an EQ on the full drum mix that makes everything brighter at the same time?   This requires less processing, sounds more cohesive, and takes less time to set. If CPU resources are a problem (and when aren’t they?), your computer will take a smaller hit with one bus EQ rather than 10 EQs inserted on 10 different tracks. Plus, one great EQ sounds better than a bunch of decent ones. Just ask any mastering engineer!

EQ and Ambient Bleed

Using EQ on the close mics can create another unintended consequence: any time you add EQ an individual track, you are also adding EQ to the ambient bleed that is captured by that mic. This can make the mix much messier in a hurry.

Close mics are always capturing the entire kit to some degree, no matter how good your mic placement is. An EQ curve that is flattering to the sound of a single drum may negatively accentuate a nasty peak in the cymbals bleeding into that particular mic. This is especially common with tom mics and bleed from any cymbals that are nearby.

The ambience in the close mics is rarely very helpful to the overall drum sound (unless you’re only using omnidirectional mics) and it usually becomes more noticeable as you add more EQ. This is even worse with off-axis bleed, because the off-axis response of most mics is not linear or flattering in any way.

When you EQ close mics, the goal is to make the source sound better. But you should also pay attention to how the ambience in each mic is negatively affected by that EQ, and adapt your approach accordingly.

Good EQs vs. Not-as-Good EQs

Deciding “what” and “how” to EQ things is usually determined by what tools you have available. Even in a DAW, few people have an unlimited number of the best EQs possible at their disposal.   When I used to work on a console with outboard gear, I followed a prioritization process at the beginning of every mix, and I still use a modified version of it today in the box.   Back then, I would have to decide which tracks got the really good stuff, and which ones were relegated to the console EQ. My aim was to get the most bang-for-the-buck with the available resources. For example:

My best stereo EQ will be used as an overall drum buss EQ.

The next-best stereo EQ will be used on the overheads.

If there are any vintage or “color” EQs, then they’ll be assigned to the kick and snare.

The console EQ would usually be fine for the toms or room mics, especially if it is a parametric or semi parametric (to deal with specific issues) EQs.

This is really not much different when mixing in the box, even though a DAW affords so many more choices. I still pick the best-sounding, CPU-heavy stuff (which seems to be the case with the best plugins!) for the most important tasks and then use the subjectively “lesser” EQs on the less important tracks.   A nice high frequency boost on the drum bus will have a homogeneously beneficial effect on every track. Same with the OHs. I can then shape individual tracks as needed with something that is more CPU friendly.

Because higher-quality EQs sound better, you are free to use them however you desire without causing damage to your tracks. It doesn’t matter if you boost or cut, or if you go a bit too far; the good stuff usually shines.

When using the middle-of-the-road EQs it is usually better to cut rather than boost. (These EQs will often reveal their weaknesses more plainly when you boost, so cutting is more forgiving of their shortcomings.)

And don’t be lulled into thinking that anything that is EQ’d is always better. Our ears will be tricked into believing that the brighter/fuller/louder sounds the best. To prove this point, you have to level match your before and after settings to make sure that EQ has actually improved what you had before. Set up a fair comparison and use your ears.

Summing it Up

Much like most processes, when it comes to drums we are usually better served to stay out of the way. The pure relationship of the drums and the microphone is one that should only be upset when absolutely necessary. With the abundance of EQ choices in the plugin world and a tendency to want to “make things better”, we often do more harm than good when all is said and done. If you approach EQ from an analytical standpoint, rather than as a wholly creative process, you may find yourself doing less and being happier with the results.

There’s no question that EQ is a powerful creative tool. But knowing when to deploy it for creative uses rather than doing it by rote can lead to bigger, clearer and more powerful drum mixes. Allowing things to breathe and “be” leaves more time to focus on the important parts of the mix: Making everything fit together and ensuring that the mix affects people on an emotional level. This is a much better use of our time, and much more in step with what mixing is supposed to be.

Mike Major is a Mixer/Producer/Recording and Mastering engineer from Dunedin, FL.

He has worked with At The Drive-In, Coheed and Cambria, Sparta, Gone is Gone, As Tall as Lions, and hundreds of other artists over the last 30 years.

Major is the author of the book Recording Drums: The Complete Guide.

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