How to Sweep and Silence Frustrating Frequencies

Published: Thu, 04/11/19

David Marais, a student of mine, sent me an email recently, saying, "I recently purchased your EQ Strategies e-book and am loving your explanations. I am finally learning so much - at last- about eq!!"

He did ask me a clarifying question about EQ as well, and I thought I'd share it with you in case you had the same problem.

He asks,

"I have one question, though, and that is when you mention “sweeping around” to find annoying frequencies on page 44, but I do not understand what you mean by “sweep around”. Can you help me out by explaining that process a little better? I want to know how to find and kill those annoying frequencies, but correctly."

My quick and dirty method for subtractive EQ’ing is really simple. Take a bell curve EQ with a high-Q and boost it up high and then sweep it around the spectrum (moving the boost up or down the frequency spectrum) while listening to the frequencies as they pop out.

Like I say in EQ Strategies - Your Ultimate Guide to EQ, "simply sweep around with your boost until those resonances pop out of your speakers. Then take that boost and flip it over, cutting that frequency range until you’ve eliminated that frequency problem."

Here's a quick screenshot from the book to demonstrate:

Sander was also a subscriber to my emails for a year before he decided that he was ready to purchase my training.

He had been learning music production on his own time for 4 years but thought I could bring some light to some of the things he is still struggling with, such as EQ.

He was absolutely positive that this was a great purchase because as he states, my “emails made [him] confident.”

Elliott is another student of mine, told us:

"I've bought a few of your classes and books (EQ Strategies, Step by Step Mixing, along with some other bundles). They were VERY helpful... I wish I had found them years ago. Your coverage of EQ is so helpful...For EQ, you really cover a lot more specifics that I found so helpful...all in all, great material."

If you want to join these fine fellows in their journey to improve their productions by learning everything you need to know about EQ, head on over and grab EQ Strategies - Your Ultimate Guide to EQ here.