- With the bass drum, there's almost always a problem

at around 300 hertz, between 300 and 600 hertz.

So you need to roll that area out, generally,

you have to subtract EQ there.

These are some of my favorite mic pres in the world,

Neve 1073s, they sound really good.

They're all the superlatives, warm, punchy, et cetera.

And so their low mid frequency is 360 hertz.

So I roll a lot of that out.

I'm not afraid of EQing stuff,

'cuz I'm committing to my sounds as it goes into the DAW.

And I'm making myself happy on speakers that I know

in a room that I know fairly well.

So I'm not afraid to dig in pretty hard on that EQ.

On the snare drum, with a 57,

you typically have to add top end.

That's just the way it is.

So the 1073 has a 12k top shelf,

so I'm dialing a little bit of that in,

and a little bit of 3k, and on the bottom snares,

some 220 hertz, and a little bit of top end,

a little bit of 3k.

I generally don't use use filters when I record,

'cuz that can trick you a little bit.

But every once in a while,

you need something on the outside kick drum mic.

Maybe you want to boost a whole bunch of 60 hertz,

but then it's getting too woofy,

and you can just click that filter in

and get rid of the ultra low stuff.

And sometimes it actually helps the phase relationship

between the two microphones.

Cause of course, when you stick an equalizer in,

you're changing the phase relationship

of everything about that signal to everything else,

particularly with low cut filters.

I spend probably the most amount of time

on the kick and snare.

They're they're the center of the record.

They're the most finicky,

the most changed by mic position and EQ.

So they have to be great.

I don't subscribe to the thing of like,

"Oh, we'll make it sound okay, and we'll use samples later".

We may use samples later,

if we find we need that to cut through the record.

But I like to get as close to being a record as we can

at the initial outset.

One other thing I should mention

is that when I'm getting my drum sounds,

I have all my faders at the same level,

so whatever the, that is minus five or minus 10.

If I'm working within Pro Tools or any other DAW,

I'll have them at minus five

to give me some headroom across that bus,

but I try to make it

so that when you push all those faders up to the same level,

you have a drum sound.

Maybe it's not perfect,

but it's within a couple dB of where you need to be.

And that sort of comes from working on tape back in the day,

when you have to put up a tape,

get a quick rough mix going,

and then start whatever work you're going to do.

When you can put up those drum faders,

which on tape, would be eight to 12 faders.

In Pro Tools, sometimes you'd branch things out

a little bit more,

so it can be up to 16 faders with 16 microphones.

But if you can put all those faders up to the same level

and get a great drum sound,

you're doing a really, really great job.

So we'll see if we can achieve that today.

It'd be nice.

(upbeat music)