I was hanging out with a bunch of standup comedians this weekend and they were telling me about the importance of having a good "tape."
Something that gets a comedy festival booker interested in you.
An iPhone video is usually good enough if it's filmed close enough to the stage.
But the audio has to be good. It can't be muffled. The joke actually has to be intelligible!
It's a weird niche to think about, but if you have a comedy scene in your town, it might be a good specialty to get into!
Being an audio engineer isn't always about doing cool music productions. It's about making a living.
For instance, I do a lot of weird audio work sometimes.
Stuff that's not too glorious.
Today, I'm actually working with my studio partner on helping a Title company make their conference room more acoustically treated and absorptive.
It's echo-y and difficult to work in, and people are having problems with it.
So that's part of the job.
You might do random odd jobs like that too. No amazing pop songs or incredible productions. More like simple audio editing of interviews, fitting audio to video and removing noise and mundane audio mixing like that.
And you know the one thing that usually gets the job 80% of the way done?
The simple EQ.
Interviews of two people talking that's recorded with an iPhone can be improved drastically by just using some EQ.
- Filtering out the rumble in the lows.
- Cutting out the nasal sound of somebody's duckvoice.
- Boosting the presence of the voices so they're easier to understand.
It's all done with EQ baby.
It's the #1 way to get better at mixing, whether you're producing superstars or editing interviews.
And as you might know, I've got Your Ultimate EQ Guide right here.
Here's what Ralph had to say about it just today:
"I really like your teaching style. You're very clear and the use of the Fab Filter [EQ plug-in] made it easy to follow along. I've watched other programs where I felt more confused because they would say, "I go along here like this till I find a frequency/sound that sounds
bad/good without clearly pointing out the sound so I could tell the difference. And while you can't do that on every move without making it into a 3 day seminar, I feel you did enough pointing out the distinction that I know what you and they mean. I will be going over the EQ program again and again because there's a lot of information to absorb. I also enjoy your emails which are alway
insightful...I can confidently say you're among the best and the best I've seen so far."
If you want a kick-ass guide to getting better at EQ, here's where you go next:
www.EQStrategies.net
Talk soon,
Björgvin