The Ugly Duckling of the Frequency Spectrum

Published: Tue, 07/31/18

I hosted a 20-person workshop on mixing a song from start to finish yesterday at a local library.

And I got an interesting question about keyboards and guitars.

This person wanted to know where I would look in the frequency spectrum to make room in a mix that's heavy in both rock guitars and keys.

I told him that one of my favorite tricks was to focus the keyboards in the often neglected part of the mids between 600 - 800 Hz.

That area is like the ugly duckling of the EQ range that nobody wants. We like thickness and power in our mixes around 200 Hz. We want weight and body around 500 Hz. Or attack and edge around 2.5 kHz.

But nobody wants the 600 - 800 Hz range. Sad ugly duckling.

But wait! Let's make the ugly duckling the keyboard player!

The thing is, that frequency range is passed over when we're adding thickness or edge to the guitars. Therefore, there's plenty of room in those middle frequencies to make the keyboards cut through the mix.

So next time you have an instrument that's clashing in the lows or the high-mids, maybe it'll sit nicely in the ugly duckling range instead?

Try that out.

If you'd like more hilarious frequency comparisons (ok, maybe not as ridiculous, but even more helpful), then head on over and grab EQ Strategies - Your Ultimate Guide to EQ.