In my world, you simply capture the best sound you can before you touch a thing. Most of my recordings have very little eq going on because I got the sound right at the source. The most I do is high pass, low pass add or take away mids if needed. Sometimes I don't need to low pass....sometimes my mids are fine, other times a little mid push is good.
But the main thing to remember here is...if you are spending loads of time with eq, you may not have recorded a good sound this time. On the other side of the fence, sometimes a really good sound can mask with other sounds. Especially low end instruments like kick drums and bass guitar. If you have two great sounds that are sharing the same frequency, they can cancel each other out so you may need to do some eq tweaking here on the low end. Go in with a game-plan. Decide whether you want a kick drum with a bit more beater attack or a bit more of a thud. This answers what your bass should sound like. For example...
If you like thuddy, boomy kick drums, you can get away with a bass guitar or synth that has less low end in it that may also be a bit more percussive with a little more clack in it so to speak. Now let's reverse it. If you want a kick drum that has a little more beater attack and less thud, you can get away with a bass or synth bass that has more low end "ooom" to it and then these instruments will not mask each other.
Watch for keys and guitars as they share a similar mid range frequency than can wash each other out.
My rule of thumb for eq-ing:
If you hear too much low end, lower the low end. Do NOT raise highs to compensate.
If you hear too much high end, lower the high end. Do NOT raise lows.
Always try to be a cutter at all times unless there is a specific need to boost. The reason being, the more you boost, the more you may pick up some noise depending on how the sound was recorded. Over time, you will learn when something is right, when you need to cut and when you need to boost.
I don't say the above to mean "don't ever boost!" I say it meaning....8 out of 10 times, cutting fixes problems and boosting is for sweeting things with a little icing on the cake so to speak. At least that's how it is for me. There are effects out there that actually enhance when you boost the heck out of them though, so in those situations, boosting to the extreme can actually help. A prime example of this would be if you had a Manley Massive Passive. That eq can be slammed all the way up and won't ruin your instrument when the right frequencies are accentuated. It actually gives it a different color having it jacked like that. The software version works nearly identical to the hardware version....so it's just "one of those eq's".
But do your best to cut when you can while you come up in the ranks of the recording realm. Honest when I tell you, you'll know in time when it's right to boost. I'll give you a few instances...
If we had a twangy, 60's wah (think Shaft) type funk guitar that was super thin sounding (which those guitars are meant to sound that way so they cut through the mix) to thicken it up a bit, we could boost low mids to mid-mids a bit to make it a bit bigger in sound size. Now, you may not want to do that with this particular guitar because like I said, it's supposed to be a bit thin sounding.....but if you wanted to thicken it due to it being thin, this is a time you would boost.
If you had a bass guitar that was rattling your windows, this would be a good time to cut lows if need be AFTER you've high passed the offending frequency. Most bass guitar sounds do not need a lot of low end and they usually can benefit from having low mids cut a bit so the bass has an identity within the mix instead of it just sounding like a low vibration that has no texture. Remember, bass guitar has less low end than you think. What you hear in songs with low end is the combination of kick drum and bass guitar (along with the other instruments) adding to the over-all low end. Add in the song being mastered and even more low end comes from "everything."
If you had a vocal that sounds sibilent and thin, low passing, de-essing (which is just a plug device that controls high end ssssss sounds etc) and lowering highs can improve the vocal. If it's too thin, the mids can come up a bit to thicken but watch out here or you can make them mid-range congested and boxy if you're not careful. But a cut here in the high end will do wonders while a slight boost in the mids can make the voice a little thicker. Just don't over do it.
If you had a keyboard or some big piano sound that was ruining your mix...sometimes you don't know what to do to fix it. Most of the really nice piano's come out of the box sounding so incredible, you don't want to touch the eq on them. However, you have to because if you don't, they will walk all over everything. You shouldn't have to conform your mix to one instrument. The one instrument should conform to the core mix.
So this piano is walking all over everything. Width is important. These "out of the box" incredible piano's are huge in both sound size and the width they take up. Trim the width a bit with a Sonitus phase plug or use the piano software width control if it exists. You'll need to cut mids here...anywhere from 300 to about 900 Hz. That's a huge span....I know. I'm not saying cut that entire range, I'm saying....you'll be cutting somewhere in there depending on the piano sound. This will thin it out a bit and allow it to sit in the mix.
Don't be afraid to automate your eq's. An "all alone" sound can be what you want it to be when that instrument plays all by itself. You can have an eq set for that when it's alone. When it plays with the other instruments though, you'll need to make changes so they all work together as a team and nothing is masking or silencing another instrument.
And lastly, sometimes an instrument will not sound good when you solo it up after you've eq'd. Don't let that scare you. Don't get me wrong, it shouldn't sound terrible, but it may be a sound that you don't particularly like if you solo that instrument up. You've eq'd it to be in a mix with other instruments, so this is why it may not knock your socks off when it's alone. This is why you automate and make sounds that are all alone "awesome sounding" and then when they are in a mix with others, they literally work as a team. Hope this helps....good luck.
-Danny
post edited by Danny Danzi - 2013/10/07 14:18:10