Snare EQ Tips For Mixing A Snare Drum In Audio Post-Production

One of the most important elements in any good mix is the snare drum. Now, of course that isn't to say that if you don't have a snare drum in your song it isn't good music, but when the snare drum is present and playing in the mix, then it has to be carefully controlled or it can easily overpower some of the other instruments at certain frequencies.

For this reason, the importance of tuning your snare drum, and then using a good EQ process to boost the right points in the sound of the snare drum, and dip the ones that would "muddy" the mix and cover up the other instruments is extremely important.

Just the other day, I was playing the drums with my friend on keyboard, and every time I hit my snare drum I stopped being able to hear his mid-range tone almost completely.

More often than not, you don't need a whole lot of middle frequencies from your snare drum, and you usually won't miss these when you hear a snare drum live either. This is because, in general, frequencies between 300 and 800 Hz or so are best saved for melodic instruments, as this is a very important range in the overtone series for these instruments. But for a snare drum, you don't need to hear this range, because these fundamental harmonics almost make the snare drum sound a little too "melodic" and not quite "percussive" enough.

To start with then, whenever I'm mixing a snare drum I will more often than not hear that the mids need to be cut in order to clean up the mix. Start with a fairly wide Q value, from say, 350 to 800 Hz, and just bring all of that down by about 8 Db at its highest point. This should get you the clarity of the track that you are looking for, and will help you to feel the warmth of the vocals, keyboards and horns much better than you could before.

One of the trends in professional studios right now is to go for a little bit more of an "airy" tone with the snare drum than was common in recent decades. Although much of this brightening is often done before the track is recorded with a Pre-EQ, it is still possible and effective to do this afterwards, as long as you are recording through clean pre-amps and the signal isn't muddy.

To get this "airy" tone, try adding 3-10 Db to your snare track between 12 and 15 KHz, and perhaps .5-2 Db at 7-9 KHz (your recording should tell you how much of this EQ'ing is necessary in both cases.)

Boosting up the highs on the snare drum gives it a nice "crackle" and presence that is unobtrusive when combined with the mid-cut- use your ears to experiment and find the EQ point that is right for the drum, the room, and the song.

If you are looking for a little bit deeper and fuller of a tone with your snare drum, you may want to consider actually adding some EQ between 75 and 140 Hz. Your ears will of course be the final judge as to how much, but generally no more than 4 Db added will be necessay if the track was recorded properly.

And as far as cleaning up the lower end of the drum mix, and bringing the bass drum a little bit better into phase is concerned, it will benefit you to cut sharply everything below the low EQ point. Doing so will help to reduce cancellations between the bass drum mic and the snare drum mic, and you will notice that the bass drum now sounds much cleaner.

I hope these snare EQ tips are helpful to you- let me know how they work out in your mix!