EQ, Mixing, Miking

I talked to Christian, a sound engineer and friend of mine, about how the way the drums came out on the recordings were not all that great. He gave me some really good tips on how to better the issues we've been having.

What is EQ? If you didn't know, sound is pretty much moving air. It has a waveform. The longer it is, the lower pitch we hear it. Smaller waveforms have higher pitch. What EQ'in does is manipulating those frequencies, or pitch, in order to boost or cut the frequencies that we'd like to modify.

In our case, the drums had way too much unwanted rings that made the drums sound really dirty and low quality. Christian recommended to cut a specific range of frequencies, and it wasn't a surprise that after doing so, the drums sounded a whole lot better.

The way we had been recording the drums was using 6 different mics. One of the kick drum, one of the snare drum, one mic for toms 1 and 2, another for the floor tom, and two overhead mics, which are hung over the cymbals to get a 'overhead' capture of the drumset. All of those mics were plugged in a mixer, from which we sent a stereo mix out into Pro Tools, the software we use to record. It was critical getting the levels right, and EQ'in each mic in order to capture the best sound. The way we placed the mics also made a difference also.

It was a learning experience for all of us, especially Eddie and I, since we're taking care of all the recording aspects of the album. The best way to learn is to jump in the water and swim.