Punk rock is the genre I'm mixing this week over at Icelandic Embassy Studios.

We're working with this really cool band that's super punchy and loud.

Hard hitting drums, powerful riffs, everybody yelling against the establishment.

You know the drill.

In this particular case the challenge was mixing the guitars.

They had a particular sound that they recorded which we tried to capture as best we could. But when it came time to mix it just didn't sit right with the rest of the arrangement.

The guitars were too metal and the song was too punk so something had to be done.

I started in my usual way, adding some analog summing and channel strips for color. I don't have the best pre-amps in the world but they do the job during recording. So my goal is to always add something with a little color during mixdown to make the tracks stand out.

When I started EQ'ing I realized just how difficult this guitar track was.

Looking at the analyzer you could just notice how incredibly scooped the sound was, with most of the energy centered around the high-mids, resulting in a pretty harsh and hissy guitar tone.

I added some fat lows from my Abbey Road TG12345 channel strip that I got from Waves during Black Friday (love those deals!) but then I added huge cuts in 3.3 kHz to get rid of the harshness while adding a big boost in 1.2 kHz to add in some edgy attack.

You might think those frequencies are close together when you see them in your plug-in window but that couldn't be further from the truth. Both of them add something incredibly different to the mix. When I A/B'd the 3.3 kHz cut I felt like the the only thing I could hear when it was bypassed was hiss.

Finally, just to add a little extra body back after I had added some compression I slapped on my V-EQ4 and cranked up the  500 Hz to add some power to the frequency balance.

So think about that the next time you're dealing with a difficult guitar tone that doesn't fit the style of the song. EQ can go a loooong way towards shaping the type of sound you're looking for.

And if you need some in-depth training on how to make the most out of your EQs, look no further than my EQ Strategies- Ultimate Guide to EQ.

Packed full of tips like these, complete with a video walkthrough where I mix a whole song with only EQ, it's one of my best selling tutorials.

Here's what a recent customer, Julius, had to say about it:

"I think the EQ guide has been great so far; I've learned a bunch of stuff that I didn't think of before. Where the "hotspots" for different instruments are, like where I should boost and cut frequencies when EQing bass drums, snares, guitars and so on. I absolutely love the easy-to-understand way of explaining things; it's straight-forward and it is exactly what I was looking for!

 

I think the best thing is all the quick and easy steps to get better sounding instruments in the Ultimate EQ Guide pdf, and also the movie clips that come with are excellent in complementing the book. Also the price for getting all the EQ-related stuff AND the compressor masterclass video is VERY appreciated; thank you so much!"

Get your copy of EQ Strategies here:

www.EQStrategies.net