Week 142: What Is the Sound of Two Hands Clapping? Probably not all that great, if you’ve tried to add handclaps from actual humanoid bipeds (not the handclap sound from a drum machine) to a project. It might
seem that recording handclaps would be easy…actually, it’s not. However, handclaps can add some really useful percussive accents or even reinforce the backbeat, and they also seem to have some kind of Pavlovian response that makes listeners clap along. Listener involvement is good! So here are some tips on how to improve the sound of recorded handclaps.
SET LEVELS CONSERVATIVELY Even if you think you’re clapping with a consistent level, you’re not. If you’ve enlisted another person in your clapological endeavors, the levels will be even more inconsistent, depending on whether the claps hit at exactly the same time. Set levels so that what you think are the loudest claps hit at -12 dB or so and you’ll probably be okay. You'll end up mixing them fairly low anyway.
FOUR HANDS ARE BETTER THAN TWO Everybody can clap hands—so grab a spouse, kid, or even the neighbor next door who will be thrilled to be part of an actual recording session, to thicken up the sound. Even if the claps are off, hey, you have SONAR—split the claps, and adjust the timing as desired.
ACOUSTICS CAN BE A PROBLEM…OR NOT A sharp impulse noise like a clap is going to bounce off walls and give a lot of ambience. This may be a good thing, but if it’s a problem, I find using something like Primacoustic’s VoxGuard (an acoustic treatment that wraps around a mic to minimize room reflect pickup) really helps.
TRANSPOSE DOWNWARD 
Claps often end up sounding thin on playback, but transposing down a few semitones can give a more corpulent sound, as well as tame the transient a bit. I’ve done as much a -5 semitones, but ewven a semitone or two can help. Also, if you need to overdub several passes of claps to make it sound like you’re really a big group of people instead of just someone sitting a studio, doing different transpositions for the different overdubs can really help.
MORE MEAT 
Boosting in the lower mids can add “meat” to the sound of a clap so it doesn’t sound as thin.
INCREASE REVERB DIFFUSION 
Because handclaps are so percussive, you need a lot of diffusion to create a smooth reverb sound (assuming that’s what you want). Lesser amounts of diffusion can give the “marbles bounding on a steel plate” effect.
So now that I’ve handed over these six tips ("handed"—get it?), go forth and practice better clapology!