yep's Guide to EQing

First, pull down all the faders. We're going to start over completely from scratch. Turn up the kick and snare and get them so they're hitting about -6dB. Don't worry about anything but the levels right now, just get those two instruments sounding good together. One of the reasons it's hard to provide "settings" is because every instrument and recording is different. So I'm going to show you how to make your own "settings" for your track.

Take your equalizer and dial in a boost of around +12dB with a sharp Q (maybe 2 or so). Now, start to sweep that through the frequencies and listen to the effect that it has on the kick. You are looking to identify three specific components of the sound: The dull "thump" (probably somewhere between 60-120 Hz), the "click" of the beater head (probably somewhere in the upper midrange, 2-6kHz or so), and the round, boomy "note" of the resonating drum (probably between 100-250 Hz). As soon as you find any of these "sweet spots," stop. Leave your eq node "parked" at that spot as a marker, and bypass that frequency or turn it down to flat. We are not going to DO anything with these frequencies right now, we just want to identify where they are, because they will be useful later.

Wherever you find the "thump" of the kick drum is the lowest useful frequency, so take a highpass filter (low cut) and roll off everything below that "thump" frequency. If you feel that's too drastic or you want to leave something for the subwoofer fiends, use a shelving filter instead and turn it down by 6dB or so. This is going to clean up rumble and subsonics that will eat up headroom and waste your time.

Next bring up the bass and get that to fit in good with the kick and snare pattern. Use the same technique as above to roll off the ultralows, and also roll off the extreme highs of the bass, say above 10k or so-- the only stuff that lives up there is hiss and fizz. Now to identify the useful range of the bass. Unless your bass player plays slap style (please tell me she doesn't), the bass is likely to need one full octave and only one octave to really be the bass. so we're going to look for one octave of the frequency range that best showcases the stuff that is really critical to the bass.

Bring up a high shelf and a low shelf filter on your equalizer and dial them down 12dB or so each. Now drag the frequency points so they turn down everything but the octave from say 100Hz to 200Hz (An octave=a doubling in frequency). Now bypass the equalizer and A/B that with the bandwidth-limited sound. Do you need more lows? if so, drag the filters down to see how low you must go. If you need to go higher, go higher. Just remember we are hoping to identify one octave, so if you go up to 300Hz, try and cut the lows at 150Hz and so on. You don't have to be religious about it or anything, you just want to really try to narrow your focus and decide what's important.

Once you have identified a range of about an octave (you can go a little wider if you have to), bypass the eq but keep the nodes in place. Again, we're not USING these eqs to modify the sound right now, we're just establishing "markers" that tell us where the boundaries are. Those boundaries mark out sacred ground that the bass must have full ownership of. When you start to dial in other instruments, they are going to "mask" parts of the bass sound, and that's fine. They may cover up the string articulation and that nice woody tone and all that and it's sad but it's okay, because other instruments do mids and highs better than the bass does. But none of them should mask this range of frequencies. They might share it a little bit if the bass doesn't mind, they might overlap it a little, but the bass must dominate this octave. If another instrument is causing problems, eq this range out of that instrument.

So now we know where the important parts are of the kick and the bass. Start to bring up your other instruments, vocals first, and get THOSE instruments to sit in the mix with the bass and drums, not the other way around. If the kick drum starts to sound too boomy, you just turn down the "note" frequency that you marked earlier. If it needs more "thump", you just put a couple dB boost on the magic button. You can make little changes that are so small you don't even hear them as a change, they just make things seem to fit better and "feel" right. And remember, the eq settings we used above were just as a tool to FIND those places, they are not the settings we use to sculpt the sound. If I wanted a little more "click" to help the kick cut through the mix I'd prolly start with about 3dB boost Q around 1-1.3, whatever sounds good. Make sure to make these adjustments with the whole mix playing.

Oh, and turn down your speakers. Way down. Mix quiet, like below conversation level. It will help you to keep everything balanced and in perspective. And take frequent breaks.


 

Reprinted by permission Feb 2007; Author: yep