Today's email will be a three-parter, on EQ, production, and mastering.

EQ

I've been talking about EQ a lot this week to celebrate the launch of Mixing With EQ from The Pro Audio Files.

Remember you'll get my video, "Are You Overlooking These 6 Steps for Better EQ'ing" for free if you purchase Mixing With EQ through the link above.

But as a recap for the week, here are some bite-sized pointers for you the next time you start fiddling with frequencies:

• Put EQ first
• Use both high AND low-pass filtering
• Don't assume muddiness, make sure it actually sounds muddy before you take all that warmth out
• Spend a lot of time in the high-mids to get separation between important instruments
• Use your analyzer training wheels when you get stuck
• Do multiple small boosts in the harmonics of a frequency to get things to cut through
• Use EQ as an artist, there's no one correct way about it

Mastering

Speaking of EQ, I ran into this problem when I was using EQ on my master bus the other day.

I slapped a plug-in on and it immediately made my mix sound better.

So I thought, "what awesome digital circuitry Batman!"

Turns out, it just made it louder.

It was a part of a video I made with Ian Shepherd I'll be sharing with you guys next week.

Ian got a huge kick out of me finally getting the "it's not better, it's louder."

And that's something Ian is known for because of his Perception plug-in.

Today is the last day to get it on sale for $50 off. I highly recommend it and use it on all my mixes and masters.

If you missed my walkthrough of it last week check out the video below:​

Production

This last video is from The Long Wait channel. If you remember we did a big voting poll the other day where you all picked your favorite songs for us to record on our next EP.

Well we have most of the songs picked out (thanks for that!) but we're struggling to choose the last song between three very different ones.

Check out the video below and click here to vote between those three songs.

If you listen to the very end you'll get to hear a VERY cool alternative production of our newest single Perfect Pocket. It's kind of like Fleetwood Mac, Ke$ha's "Timber" and ultra-modern country had a love-child. It was mixed by Rebu, the winning engineer from this month's Crowd Audio Playground.