Scribd
Upload
348 views5 pages

Mixing Conga

The document discusses techniques for mixing conga drums in a track, including analyzing the frequency spectrum of conga sounds, applying EQ, panning, compression, and reverb effects. Specific settings and examples are provided for each technique.

Uploaded by

JonsJJJ
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
348 views5 pages

Mixing Conga

The document discusses techniques for mixing conga drums in a track, including analyzing the frequency spectrum of conga sounds, applying EQ, panning, compression, and reverb effects. Specific settings and examples are provided for each technique.

Uploaded by

JonsJJJ
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

Mixing Conga – EQ, Panning,

Compression and Reverb


By Emerson Maningo on March 19, 2012

Categories: Recording and Mixing Drums.


Tags: Snare drum production techniques.

Conga is a wonderful piece of percussion instrument with its unique tribal sound. In this tutorial
you will learn the methods on how to mix conga and apply EQ, panning, compression and
reverb.

Analyzing the frequencies of Conga


Before formulating the conga best EQ and compression settings, you need to analyze the
underlying sound characteristics of a conga sound. I do not have a conga. So I download a
sample clip of conga sound here (Conga beat 2 and the last audio sample)

The downloaded conga audio was a mp3 file in 11025Hz sample rate and 16-bits for the bit
depth. So I did some audio upsampling to 48 KHz, 24-bits using Voxengo R8brain. See the
result below for the conga musical instrument frequency analysis:

Congra spectrum view

This is the raw conga sound (no effects applied):

Some interesting results:

1.) The fundamental frequency of conga can be found around 200Hz.


2.) It has some harmonics; notably at 400Hz and 700Hz.

To better analyze conga sound, you need to isolate the lower and higher frequency component of
a conga. For example this is the lower frequency component:

And this is the frequency spectrum:


Congra spectrum confirmed

It confirms that the center low frequency component of a conga sound is around 200Hz.

Now let’s take a look at its higher frequency component, this is the sample MP3:

And this is the spectrum:

Frequency analysis of conga high-end

It confirms that harmonics of 400Hz and 700Hz are important higher frequencies to conga.

Panning Conga in the Mix – Example Application


Supposing you are including conga in your percussion mix with bass drum and cymbals; this is
how the mix would look like in Reaper:

Applying EQ on Conga
To EQ conga, it must be based on its frequency characteristics. The simplest method is to give
some boost on its fundamental frequencies to make them sound more prominent in the mix.
These are example settings (set using Waves Q3 Paragraphic EQ):

Boost +3dB 400Hz Q=7.0


Cut -6dB 50Hz low shelf – remove conflicting frequencies with bass drum
Boost +3dB 200Hz Q=5.0
Boost +3dB 700Hz Q=5.0
Conga EQ

If you have vocals in your mix that is played along with conga, I would consider cutting at
2000Hz -6dB provided the vocals are also boosted at this frequency (2 KHz).

Compressing Conga in the Mix


EQ is the first of the series of effects in the Conga FX chain, the next one is the compressor and
the last one is the reverb (more details later).

Conga FX chain

Compression settings for conga vary with the material. If you want more dynamics from your
conga music, then you need to apply less or no compression.

In this example, it uses the Waves Rcomp compressor to even out the conga volume. To properly
set the compressor settings for Conga, the first thing you need to set is the threshold. Solo conga
track in your DAW and watch out for the maximum peak. For example, in the screenshot below
the maximum peak is -18dB.
Conga Peak amplitude

The threshold can be set lower than -18dB so that the compressor should be working all the time
to even out the volume. In this example a threshold of -20dB has been used.

The attack time of conga should be to very fast like 1ms because conga by nature has a very
sharp transient sound (much like a snare). Setting this at 1ms, assures that the compressor is
working immediately for those fast transients.

Release time can be determined using the formula: 30,000/bpm of conga music

You can determine the BPM of the material by following the tips in this tutorial: How to set
recording BPM

The BPM of the conga music is around 89.11 BPM so the release time would be: 30,000/89.11
or 337ms. A reasonable compression ratio of 2.5:1 would be used in most cases.

Take note that audio compression would reduce the volume of your conga sound because of
reduced peaks to even out the volume. You can bring back the lost volume brought about by
compression by setting the compensation gain. In this example, a compensation gain of 3.5dB is
used.

Therefore this is the final compression settings for conga using Waves Rcomp:
Compression settings on Waves Rcomp

Adding Reverb on Conga


Reverb on conga should just be enough for it to have some ambiance in the mix. In this example,
I use Focusrite reverb small bright room presets. You can use any reverb plug-in you like as long
as the result sounds good.

Focusrite reverb plugin

Below is an example Conga, bass drum and cymbal percussion mix implemented with the above
audio mixing settings.

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy