Sometimes it's frustrating to hear Grammy winning engineers talk about their sessions. They have such great gear, and they can record in amazing studios.

It makes you feel inadequate, because it's obviously much easier to get great tracks going if you're working with top of the line equipment and performers. 

But at the same time you can really learn from their perspectives, even if you'll have a much harder time achieving the same sounds.

How to EQ Like the Pros

One time I was attending a panel of Grammy award-winning engineers and they were asked about how to EQ

I forget who it was, but someone uttered:

"Don't. Just Don't."

That made the crowd laugh. 

As much as it's a valid point, it's also a frustrating perspective for us lowly home studio musicians.

There's a ton of EQ'ing you can do by simply changing the microphone or moving the player around. 

Getting the sound as good as possible at the source will give you more experience with mic technique.

However, you still need to know how to to EQ after recording.

And although I don't really care whether you "cut rather than boost" like some of the subjective EQ zealots out there preach, it's still a valid technique.

Subtractive EQ helps you avoid adding unnecessary gain to your signal.

Just make sure you increase the volume of the instrument after cutting out frequencies because you are essentially lowering the gain of the instrument in certain areas. 

That's why instruments sometimes sound weaker after you've cut out problematic frequencies. It's just because it's quieter, not weaker.

At that point you gotta push the fader up! You gotta fill your frackin' speakers! (notice how I didn't use the real F-word here? I don't know if it's my age or my love of BSG...)

Anyhoo....just make sure you compensate the volume of your fader if you're doing subtractive EQ'ing so you don't automatically think it sounds worse just because it sounds weaker. 

It might just be your speakers.

I know you wish you could just give those grammy-winning experts a call whenever you had a question right?

But honestly, what if they aren't that useful? What if all they tell you is what NOT to do? That's not very practical is it?

Well, I've got something even better. It's your Ultimate Guide to EQ that teaches you exactly WHAT to do when you're having problems creating separation between in your instruments and balance in your mixes.

Check it out here:

www.EQStrategies.net