Keith says EQ Strategies - Your Ultimate Guide to EQ is the "Best investment ever" so if you'd like to create separation between your instruments and balance in your mixes you should definitely check it out.
The post he was commenting on was how I use an analyzer to tell me where the instruments clash and I thought I'd share it with you too if you hadn't read it.
Here's what you do:
Start Strong
When you're EQ'ing a couple of instruments that you know will clash with each other, start with the dominant instrument.
The one that's more present or drives the mix more.
I've done this with competing brass instruments but it also works wonders when you're EQ'ing the kick and bass guitar or a couple of different guitar tracks together.
I think of the analyzer like that old Paperclip Wizard in Office Word. He's mostly useless but when you're stuck he'll usually help you out.
With the analyzer, you can see the waveform of each instrument.
It helps you see a few things:
- You see competing frequencies in both instruments.
- You can see an unnatural buildup of frequencies in each track.
- You can cut and boost to complement both tracks to make them fit together better.
It's really handy when I just can't get a track to fit with another one.
Of course, you shouldn't just EQ with your eyes. Seeing frequencies is useless if you don't know what they sound like.
There's no reason to spend time working on making tracks fit together in the low-end if your problem is boxiness or honkiness. That's in a different part of the frequency spectrum.
Your Ultimate Guide to EQ
That's where EQ Strategies - Your Ultimate EQ Guide comes in. It teaches you how to recognize frequencies so you can pinpoint exactly where your problem areas are. Luckily, Your Ultimate EQ Guide has a frequency breakdown section that details the characteristics of each frequency range, including how to understand the vocabulary behind words such as boxiness, muddiness and the like.
Once you understand the vocabulary and where in the frequency spectrum they can be found, you'll start to EQ like a pro.
Check it out here:
www.EQStrategies.net
P.S.
If EQ Strategies has already helped you get better mixes, please let me know what it helped you achieve, like Jeff did:
"The EQ tips that have helped the most have to do with the bass guitar and kick drum. I'm able to get a clean and tight low end on this song I'm working on. I cut some of the mud out of the kick and bass, then I let the kick have a little extra 50 Hz and added a little bit around 800 Hz on the bass guitar. That made the low end clear and punchy. This song has an acoustic guitar as one of the main instruments
and I decided to put a HPF up to 200 Hz and added a little bit around 3 kHz and and it sounds good so far . This is a great guide to get things moving in the right direction!!!"
Here's the link again if you'd like to try it out:
www.EQStrategies.net
