Any hase issues will instantly become plain as day. This is standard behavior for any engineering process.īut, when EQing, if you want to know what’s really happening, switch to mono and listen. You should be referencing your EQ at regular points, to check on your progress and ward off episodes ‘going down the wormhole’ and losing your way. EQ can carve out a little space in one for the other to fill. Most commonly of all, two groups of instruments sound great on their own but compete when played together. You could also consider using automation to give, say, added presence to a vocal during a breakdown, and then reverting to the ensemble mix when the full instrumentation comes back. For instance, say your snare is drowning out your kick when, you could try adding a dynamic EQ onto the snare bus and sidechain it so that it ducks shared frequencies whenever the kick strikes. This is where you can carry out extra sculpting, and look at the way each sound group interacts with each other. Bus mix EQing is your friend.īy EQing the bus mix of a similar sounding group, such as guitars or synths, you can make the sound cohesive while retaining distinction where it counts. If the sounds don’t sound great together, you’ve still got work to do. But always defer to the ensemble mix as your defining sound. Find a peak around 165-185Hz – that can often be boosted to bring the kick impact up in the mix.ĭo you want to be EQing every sound individually, to get the very best tone you can at every stage of the mix? Of course you do. Bass-drums can have many peaks, since they are usually made up of a single tone and the ensuing harmonics or sub-harmonics. It’s usually quite easy to see a snare’s peak, as it has a dominant spike somewhere between 100-240Hz.īass drums are trickier, and it doesn’t always sound good to boost them. Using the technique in Tip #4, find the natural peak of your snare or kick drum by looking for a pre-existing spike in the EQ range. Boost it as far as it will go, and nasty frequencies should become very appararent! Once you’ve isolated them, either change the filter type to Notch, or drop the gain by as much as you feel does the job. Play the sound, while sweeping a Bell filter with a narrow Q up and down the spectrum. When this happens, you’ll want to use a surgical EQ to find and clear them. Very often, it’s particular harmonics or room resonances that cause the problem. Find troublesome frequencies with a narrow Q boost.Īny given sound can have sweet-sounding parts and not-so-sweet sounding parts. For example, you might only want to send the mid-range through a distortion plugin and keep the lows and highs intact. Taking out low, muddy parts of a reverb can add clarity, while EQing out any nasty frequencies brought in by distortion can be a mix-saver. Whether on a reverb send or after a distortion plugin in your channel’s insert chain, applying retrospective EQ can work wonders. And sometimes, it just sounds better by chance, which is totally fine! 4. Each plugin will shelve in a slightly different way, which can add subtle nuances to the tone of your sound.Īnother good reason to use multiple EQs is that, if you’ve nailed your EQ settings but want to add final touches, an additional EQ can work wonders. For example, rather than aggresively high-shelving with a single plugin, try layering EQ plugins with different characteristics, and applying several softer shelves. Or, perhaps you cut a bunch of muddy frequencies out, but now find the overall sound is a bit thin – maybe boosting low/low-mids here might bring the power back.ĭifferent EQs have subtly different characteristics, so layering different EQ types can have a pleasant effect on the overall tone. Whether you’ve boosted or cut first, go back to the sound and decide if you wanted to boost ALL those frequencies… maybe you need to apply a surgical EQ to remove a narrow range of sour frequencies from that sweet boost. As ever, test different settings and trust your ears. Of course, there’s a chance you might remove too much and leave sounds thin or imbalanced. Furthermore, it has the potential to push the channel volume too far and ruin all your careful gain-staging.īy contrast, cutting can carve space for other sounds, remove unwanted frequencies and accentuate the detail in your mix. But, it also runs the risk of introducing artifacts and distortion to the mix. Using an EQ plugin with a characterful, warm tone to boost broad frequencies can sound wonderful. The following tips are all as important as each other!īoosting can be great for many reasons.
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