3 Ways to Add “Air” to Your Mix?

I got a comment from a reader who asked me how to add some “air” to percussion because they were sounding a “bit dark.”

So I brainstormed three ways on how I would approach adding air and “brightening up” the percussion and drum section.

If any of the following tips look interesting you could also try them on different elements of your mix that are in need of a high-energy boost.

1.Air With EQ

The simplest way to add air is to just boost the highs with a high-shelf above 10 – 14 kHz, depending on how much brightness you’d like.

Try it on:

• Percussion
• Overheads
• Snare drum
• Submixes

2. Air With Reverb

Another way to brighten up the percussion is to use a really short, bright reverb with a bunch of early reflections. This’ll thicken up the initial transient of the instrument, which is important when you’re working with percussion instruments that are mostly initial transients, while not adding too much reverb tail to the sound.

3. Air With a Fast, EQ’d Delay

If you wanted to beef up your percussion without adding a reverb tail then use a very short delay with a high-pass filter and a high-frequency boost.

This will both thicken up the percussion sound while giving it extra highs. Just be careful to really dial in the delay setting for the song so that it doesn’t clutter up the rhythm.

Funny side-note, the “Cowbell” setting on the CLA Signature Drums Plug-ins from Waves is basically just a percussion setting with some delay on it!

Mostly Variations on EQ

In general, air is simply a high-frequency boost. I just wanted to give you some ideas to get a little creative when you’re looking to add some brightness to your mix.

If you’ve tried any of those out in the past leave a comment and let me know how it went.

If you’re looking for more simple and practical EQ tips then look no further than my EQ Strategies – Ultimate Guide to EQ:

www.EQStrategies.net

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