As a drummer, this is one of the first things i did when I started mixing myself (like 8/9 years ago). I've always loved punchy, fat low end snare drum and i'm still very disappointed when i see a sound engineer cutting all the lows of a snare... I've always done this technique even before watching a video tutorial. My favorite thing (learn from Jordan Valeriote) is to put a bit of saturation (decapitator) on the low frequencies area just to enhance even more this HUMMMPF effect cutting bass and low guitars. I've never leaved a comment but i follow your channel for years now, it's one of my favorite ever. Because you know what you're talking about, you're funny, have good explanations and for a non-drummer... you know a lot of things about drums ! Cheers from Strasbourg (hey i'm not so far hehe)
Perfect timing that you dropped the full video inside the Kohle Audio Kult. My shitty snare sound, was bugging the hell out of me. Now it sounds absolutely massive, after spending a short time following your process on the close snare mic. Blend it in with the overheads and holy shit! 😱😱
Tight bottom head makes any snare sound better. Mic choice, placement, I mic top, bottom AND side of snare and blend to taste. Eq, compression, bit of verb. Nice preamp like api also helps. I use UAD unison going in. Black Beauty is an excellent snare! I have the Ludwig LM402 Supraphonic 6.5" deep. I also have the Pearl free floating like you do. It came with my Pearl kit I got new in the 80s. Try a side mic (I use a condenser) on the shell for shots and giggles. Placed right, it gets some top, some bottom, and the shell. Use alone or mix with the top and bottom mics.
I just donated 5$ for Sabella's Studios (link in the description). It ain't much for someone who lost his whole studio due to a fire, but the sum of all small changes make a big change. Great of you to sometimes show us who needs our help the most @Kohle! Cheers, Luke
Love this! If you do low cut, especially with that extreme of a Q make sure you check your phase. That is a sneaky thing that can happen with high pass filters. It will be shifted, when in doubt check your phase :)
Oh yeah. You should always check. I’m showing how to do that in the drum courses in the academy. Linear phase EQs are great for low cuts, but don’t work for narrow bands like in this video
This is great, I rather use the dynamic feature of Pro Q so that I can dynamically boost to accentuate the transients of the punch of the snare briefly, rather than just permanently boosting the freq which also boosts the sustain/ring from those frequencies too
You can use a dynamic EQ of course. I don’t see much of a problem with permanently boosting the fundamental. DEQs are great for reducing ringing without losing punch though.
@@KohleAudioKult Me neither, I wouldn't say 'problem' but just an alternative approach. I think if you're going on to use something like a transient shaper after the EQ to further shape the punch, then you might find it easier to control if you DEQ'd the fundamental rather than permanently boosting it because the transient shaper won't have to work as hard to shape the punch. At the end of the day, the DEQ can be used as another layer of control to help shape the transient. Cheers you mighty wealth of information!
a little late to the party but isnt this similar to the pultec trick? love the channel. now that i finally have a good job i will probaly enroll in the academy!
It's the same principle, the Pultec trick is just a lot wider. This is way more surgical. And of course you're welcome in the Kult! Let me know once you have entered.
What did people do before we had these kinds of computer-controllable parametric EQs? Like how would you turn that snare from a ska snare into a punchy metal snare back in the 90s? Would you do it via the recording capture? Would you adjust the actual drum (head/tuning/muffling)?
We simply did not have this amount of precision which is one of the reasons why productions sound like they sound. But even the Pultec low end "trick" goes into the same direction which means: You could do the same thing, just less precise.
Kohle...do you use multiple snare tracks routing to a snare buss when maybe treating toontrack recorded drums ? should I bounce the midi drums down to a wave ?
Amazing playlist! Will you make another and throw in some October ends songs? Try Dark which is the newest one, then Call Me Before I'm Dead, Play Time, Of Stars all SLAP!
I manage to get that fat beer belly ! I'm glad to learn a few tricks to get the snare as fat as me. Beer is not working for a good snare, I'm still trying with beer, but I'll give this trick a try! Thanks Kohle!
Pulled up some of that Andy Sneap, Testament "The Gathering" mix for a reference on this rate my mix contest. Let's see if I can compete with it.... I like this trick. I typically go to my Black Beauty samples in Trigger2. There are a couple room samples that are great for shaping the lower punch and tone needed for a snare that has been cranked or just lacks luster. Any one here try out the newer AXI DSP drum plugins? Thinking about that gate they have.....seems very legit. Great video! Awesome bit of knowledge as usual! Thank you Sir! Prost!
So, the Testament tracks were not working out. I ended up listening to several Suffocation tracks. They all had a different vibe and mix for sure. I listened to the overall outcomes and went from there. Bout to make some final adjustments today and upload the mix.
One thing I noticed with this snare and some of my own samples is a dissonant hum or ring in the upper frequencies. Would you recommend a slight high-cut for these also? Great video BTW! I never knew that about shell/head resonances. Thanks for the great information! \m/
I have also noticed this in some snare samples. I prefer to locate and reduce that resonance with a notch. Usually no more than a few dB because I like to have a bit of that energy ring through rather than annihilate it completely.
Dude, don’t wanna be offensive, but looks like it’s the first time you hear a proper recording then! 😇 This is 100% real. People can download the tracks inside the academy to check them out! And of course there’s cymbal bleed on the track. Proper mic placement (shown in another course in the academy) and debleeder go a long way though!
@@jonnyoh4731 It’s not a matter of semantics. It’s just about being honest. This is not the first time I’ve seen an audio TH-camr present a snare track as “unprocessed” that is clearly heavily gated. I sit there wondering, what is this a snare sample? Also, why would someone gate something so hard that there is no possible way for a ghost note to come through?
One correction: a drum is not a one dimensional sound source like a string or air tube. It's harmonics are in general not whole intergers of the fundamental note. A drum head is 2D and can swing in complex forms and complex upper "harmonics". A bell, a real 3D sound source, also has not the harmonic spectrum of a 1D soundsource. Indeed it has no fundamental note at all. A bell is strange. See: th-cam.com/video/v4ELxKKT5Rw/w-d-xo.html
I'm not very smart here but I'm under the impression that digital drums are one dimensional. They start with a punch/click, followed by a short sine wave (the body) and a fade-out (tail). I only know this from sound design videos, etc. Still learning... 😕 Cool video BTW. Bells are neat sounding. I pulled one up in audacity and they have a waveform that is kinda wavy (mid, high mid on upper range, followed by mid, high, mid on lower range). Zoomed out it looks kind of like triangles zig-zagging.
@@electropocalypse5877 I was refering to the actual tone production of a drum. Or membrane how you can see a drum head. Digtial drums or samples are usually highly processed so they have eliminted all unwanted frequencies.
You know what my main issue (within all the others ;) ) is about toms and floor toms. I really have an hard time to keep them massive and punchy. I improve a little everytime but still. It sound more like somebody is knocking at the door instead of sounding like an Mike Tyson uppercut. I'm using the fundamental note too as you explained here, it helps me a lot. Thanks for your help and advices.
To this i can only say this: tune the drums so that they resonate good and to the tuning of the song fundamental atmosphere - I mean seriously, after they are tuned as you want them to sound, rest is quite really simple shit - mic them up, listen how the mic sounds, and mix with very little effort in the end
🎶Don't know what you got, till it's gone...🎶 Resonances/harmonics are usually something I don't notice until I cut them and let them back in. Finding and removing them is actually something I figured out recently though and my drum productions have improved significantly as the same can be applied to kicks and toms
That is almost opposite of how I would EQ that snare.. Each their taste. I would not boost the low. As you see in the spectrum, there is plenty proximity low. I would cut 3db at 350 and 5 db at 700-800 and boost 5 db 6K-8K. 4db compression at 30ms attack and 4 db limiting.
To DULL Far to many snares missing that key energy ingredient that drives the energy transfer "Crack" Raping the transient always removes it tho. UNLESS the tune does not want the snare bringing the energy or carrying the energy, many don't these days....biased old school Hardcore drummer.
Have you tried this? How do you make your snare track fatter?
Been doing it for ten years, but for me it only works if I boost frequencies that decay quickly. Otherwise the snare starts to sound annoying.
As a drummer, this is one of the first things i did when I started mixing myself (like 8/9 years ago). I've always loved punchy, fat low end snare drum and i'm still very disappointed when i see a sound engineer cutting all the lows of a snare...
I've always done this technique even before watching a video tutorial. My favorite thing (learn from Jordan Valeriote) is to put a bit of saturation (decapitator) on the low frequencies area just to enhance even more this HUMMMPF effect cutting bass and low guitars.
I've never leaved a comment but i follow your channel for years now, it's one of my favorite ever. Because you know what you're talking about, you're funny, have good explanations and for a non-drummer... you know a lot of things about drums !
Cheers from Strasbourg (hey i'm not so far hehe)
Perfect timing that you dropped the full video inside the Kohle Audio Kult. My shitty snare sound, was bugging the hell out of me. Now it sounds absolutely massive, after spending a short time following your process on the close snare mic. Blend it in with the overheads and holy shit!
😱😱
Tight bottom head makes any snare sound better. Mic choice, placement, I mic top, bottom AND side of snare and blend to taste. Eq, compression, bit of verb. Nice preamp like api also helps. I use UAD unison going in. Black Beauty is an excellent snare! I have the Ludwig LM402 Supraphonic 6.5" deep. I also have the Pearl free floating like you do. It came with my Pearl kit I got new in the 80s. Try a side mic (I use a condenser) on the shell for shots and giggles. Placed right, it gets some top, some bottom, and the shell. Use alone or mix with the top and bottom mics.
Yes. This is pretty much what I do. On toms too.
Never thought of EQ'ing snare like this, but wow what a difference that made. Brilliant!
Nice! That EQ trick instantly made the sound clearer.
I just donated 5$ for Sabella's Studios (link in the description). It ain't much for someone who lost his whole studio due to a fire, but the sum of all small changes make a big change. Great of you to sometimes show us who needs our help the most @Kohle! Cheers, Luke
Thanks!
Thanks for this. The snare really makes or breaks the whole track.
I still learn from you although I'm older ;-). Thank you!
DU DUN DUN DU DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. That transition riff is constantly in my head 😂
It has become my goto lullaby these days! 🤩🤘
That was really cool to see and understand, about those clashing overtones and frequencies that neighbor the fundamental. Thank you, Kohle \m/
Wow this is incredibly useful, I imagine this is the root of many problems I've had in the past but didn't know why
Just saw your video tonight. Very cool. Also the T-shirt is very cool too! I used to work at B.C. Rich.
Wow! What was your job there?
Inside Sales. This was back in '83-'84. My coworker was Gar from Megadeth. Pretty cool place to work back in the day.
similar to the Pultec Eq trick : Boost & Cut on the (same) frequency;
the result is 2 thin boosts in weird curves (lower Q in the boost)
Inside the academy the second chapter of this course will be the Pultec version!
great stuff. perfect timing, too. i´ve been struggling with that a little bit with my current production.
Love this! If you do low cut, especially with that extreme of a Q make sure you check your phase. That is a sneaky thing that can happen with high pass filters. It will be shifted, when in doubt check your phase :)
Oh yeah. You should always check. I’m showing how to do that in the drum courses in the academy.
Linear phase EQs are great for low cuts, but don’t work for narrow bands like in this video
Noted, thank you
This is Gold!
You’re a great teacher!
Check out my academy then! 🤘😇
Kohle Audio Kult
This is great, I rather use the dynamic feature of Pro Q so that I can dynamically boost to accentuate the transients of the punch of the snare briefly, rather than just permanently boosting the freq which also boosts the sustain/ring from those frequencies too
You can use a dynamic EQ of course. I don’t see much of a problem with permanently boosting the fundamental. DEQs are great for reducing ringing without losing punch though.
@@KohleAudioKult Me neither, I wouldn't say 'problem' but just an alternative approach. I think if you're going on to use something like a transient shaper after the EQ to further shape the punch, then you might find it easier to control if you DEQ'd the fundamental rather than permanently boosting it because the transient shaper won't have to work as hard to shape the punch. At the end of the day, the DEQ can be used as another layer of control to help shape the transient. Cheers you mighty wealth of information!
Also a perfect use case of Split EQ in which you boost only the transient of the low end
Super useful and very clear, thanks Kohle!
a little late to the party but isnt this similar to the pultec trick? love the channel. now that i finally have a good job i will probaly enroll in the academy!
It's the same principle, the Pultec trick is just a lot wider. This is way more surgical.
And of course you're welcome in the Kult! Let me know once you have entered.
finally a good and USEFUL snare Q tutorial.
Very nice
What did people do before we had these kinds of computer-controllable parametric EQs? Like how would you turn that snare from a ska snare into a punchy metal snare back in the 90s? Would you do it via the recording capture? Would you adjust the actual drum (head/tuning/muffling)?
We simply did not have this amount of precision which is one of the reasons why productions sound like they sound. But even the Pultec low end "trick" goes into the same direction which means: You could do the same thing, just less precise.
Thank you, dude! You are a fountain of knowledge!
Kohle...do you use multiple snare tracks routing to a snare buss when maybe treating toontrack recorded drums ? should I bounce the midi drums down to a wave ?
Once again, so good knowledge!!! You are a treasure.
gotta install telegram then!
PLEASE SEND ME THAT T-SHIRT, HOLY SHIT. Actually nevermind it's probably too small for me. Damn it. Oh, awesome snare trick of course!
Brutal, as always. Thanks
Amazing playlist! Will you make another and throw in some October ends songs? Try Dark which is the newest one, then Call Me Before I'm Dead, Play Time, Of Stars all SLAP!
Make Believe’s and Metric Halo’s MBEQ and their parallel process plugins
I manage to get that fat beer belly ! I'm glad to learn a few tricks to get the snare as fat as me. Beer is not working for a good snare, I'm still trying with beer, but I'll give this trick a try! Thanks Kohle!
Haha! Great comment! 🥳
Your comment made my day !!! haha (posting this while drinking a beer...)
@@xavkoston16 🤣🤣😂😂🍻🍻
Very good tip
This is interesting for sure! Although I use digital samples instead of a real kit, I look forward to applying this knowledge soon! Thanks!
Pulled up some of that Andy Sneap, Testament "The Gathering" mix for a reference on this rate my mix contest. Let's see if I can compete with it.... I like this trick. I typically go to my Black Beauty samples in Trigger2. There are a couple room samples that are great for shaping the lower punch and tone needed for a snare that has been cranked or just lacks luster. Any one here try out the newer AXI DSP drum plugins? Thinking about that gate they have.....seems very legit. Great video! Awesome bit of knowledge as usual! Thank you Sir! Prost!
So, the Testament tracks were not working out. I ended up listening to several Suffocation tracks. They all had a different vibe and mix for sure. I listened to the overall outcomes and went from there. Bout to make some final adjustments today and upload the mix.
Watch out, your TH-cam Channel might get blocked by suggesting EQ moves like that to society 🤣 Jokes aside: Killer trick, thanks for sharing!
That shirt!
I tried it and it sounds great!
Original vintage shirt from the 90s!
@@KohleAudioKult lucky!! Mine have more holes than Nikki sixx arm!
COOL
This is gold!
Rock on man 🤘🤘
Metal kick drums sound like a basketball bouncing on smooth cold concrete. :)
This is good. I have no clue how to eq drums
You better check out the Kult then!
Lotsa courses that explain it in detail
great but the first thing i heard and was waiting for you to cut was that awful tail a little above 600Hz. or does it only sound awful to me?
It’s only a part of the course. Inside the academy it goes on through all the higher frequencies
Great video. And now make a video on how to hammer this knowledge into my guitarists head so he doesn't boost all the wrong frequencies for once.
Tell them to join the Kult. Then they also learn how to EQ their guitars!
One thing I noticed with this snare and some of my own samples is a dissonant hum or ring in the upper frequencies. Would you recommend a slight high-cut for these also?
Great video BTW! I never knew that about shell/head resonances. Thanks for the great information! \m/
I have also noticed this in some snare samples. I prefer to locate and reduce that resonance with a notch. Usually no more than a few dB because I like to have a bit of that energy ring through rather than annihilate it completely.
When someone says: this is an unprocessed snare and then plays something with zero cymbal bleed, I kind of tune out.
Dude, don’t wanna be offensive, but looks like it’s the first time you hear a proper recording then! 😇
This is 100% real. People can download the tracks inside the academy to check them out!
And of course there’s cymbal bleed on the track. Proper mic placement (shown in another course in the academy) and debleeder go a long way though!
@@KohleAudioKult
Debleeder is processing. That means you lied.
@@danielwiebe2123 we’ve found him! Mr. Semantics himself!
@@jonnyoh4731
It’s not a matter of semantics. It’s just about being honest. This is not the first time I’ve seen an audio TH-camr present a snare track as “unprocessed” that is clearly heavily gated. I sit there wondering, what is this a snare sample?
Also, why would someone gate something so hard that there is no possible way for a ghost note to come through?
@@danielwiebe2123 the ghost notes come thru the overheads….
Love the shirt! 😍 I own a Bc Rich Eagle myself!
The shirt is an original from the 90s by the way
Something to try on a mix where I recorded a Cajon and had issues with clarity!
I usually do that with Volcano and its saturation 😁
Kiitos perkeleesti / danke schön / thank you 🤘🤘🤘
One correction: a drum is not a one dimensional sound source like a string or air tube. It's harmonics are in general not whole intergers of the fundamental note.
A drum head is 2D and can swing in complex forms and complex upper "harmonics".
A bell, a real 3D sound source, also has not the harmonic spectrum of a 1D soundsource. Indeed it has no fundamental note at all. A bell is strange.
See:
th-cam.com/video/v4ELxKKT5Rw/w-d-xo.html
I'm not very smart here but I'm under the impression that digital drums are one dimensional. They start with a punch/click, followed by a short sine wave (the body) and a fade-out (tail). I only know this from sound design videos, etc. Still learning... 😕 Cool video BTW.
Bells are neat sounding. I pulled one up in audacity and they have a waveform that is kinda wavy (mid, high mid on upper range, followed by mid, high, mid on lower range). Zoomed out it looks kind of like triangles zig-zagging.
@@electropocalypse5877 I was refering to the actual tone production of a drum. Or membrane how you can see a drum head.
Digtial drums or samples are usually highly processed so they have eliminted all unwanted frequencies.
You know what my main issue (within all the others ;) ) is about toms and floor toms. I really have an hard time to keep them massive and punchy. I improve a little everytime but still. It sound more like somebody is knocking at the door instead of sounding like an Mike Tyson uppercut. I'm using the fundamental note too as you explained here, it helps me a lot. Thanks for your help and advices.
To this i can only say this: tune the drums so that they resonate good and to the tuning of the song fundamental atmosphere - I mean seriously, after they are tuned as you want them to sound, rest is quite really simple shit - mic them up, listen how the mic sounds, and mix with very little effort in the end
love it
Geiles shirt
Original Vintage!
Great and absolutely important tutorial!...The half weight of the whole song lies hidden there!
where is the link to sell my soul?
You mean this one?
www.kohleaudiokult.com/
What's the short audio clip at the end? sounds like black metal I would listen to
It’s just the background music of an upcoming, creepy course inside Kohle Audio Kult
@@KohleAudioKult I'm instantly interested
this could've been a 30 sec short
Aw man last week I spent $130 on a plug-in that does this!
🎶Don't know what you got, till it's gone...🎶 Resonances/harmonics are usually something I don't notice until I cut them and let them back in. Finding and removing them is actually something I figured out recently though and my drum productions have improved significantly as the same can be applied to kicks and toms
I try and use a fat drummer. Gene hoglan has a massive sound! Coincidence? No.
Haha!
I just use a huge snare drum
that's a good start!
"...needs a little MMPH! down there."
New pickup line acquired.
5:07 You can't set your punch without hearing how It cuts through the rest of the other trash
That is almost opposite of how I would EQ that snare.. Each their taste. I would not boost the low. As you see in the spectrum, there is plenty proximity low. I would cut 3db at 350 and 5 db at 700-800 and boost 5 db 6K-8K. 4db compression at 30ms attack and 4 db limiting.
Bruh
Mixing with your eyes and in solo... not sure this is the right approach for me. Ears for me are more reliable.
He’s demonstrating the sound of frequency ranges with the analyzer.
Lars has never been there.
😇😝
@@KohleAudioKult Dude literally gives zero effs about how his snare sounds.
To DULL Far to many snares missing that key energy ingredient that drives the energy transfer "Crack" Raping the transient always removes it tho. UNLESS the tune does not want the snare bringing the energy or carrying the energy, many don't these days....biased old school Hardcore drummer.
Not gonna lie, I don't like your processed souns.
boring tones and mixes in my opinion
use your ears not this guys advice