It's this case where you get the balance pretty much in the right place, every instrument is pretty audible and it should be relatively simple to polish the mix and further refine it.

BUT there's one chord in the chorus where the bass and guitar totally clash and everything goes wooooomf for a few seconds... Automating the levels just won't work, neither will compression. If you EQ it all out, the rest of the song just seems to fall apart.

I admit that in my naivety, I've always thought of EQs as something fairly static, which required you to find the best compromise that would work throughout the song. Except maybe turning on a hi shelf and cutting a few db's here and there at specific moments when things get too busy, to make room.

But today was my first attempts at systematically automating a particular band to tame a specific chord throughout an entire song. I was after that D flat on the guitar bus like white on rice. A bit of compression, and, voilà.

It works, and they say, whatever works... But it nags me every time I hear that chord in the song, like: you fraud! you've taken the easy way out, you've cheated.


Is it or am I being way too naive? You guys use tricks like that?

I can overuse EQ with the best of them.

I've had to do that but not often. It be that 'one' note that woofs and yes that animal needs to be tamed. 

One bad chord over an entire song sticks out like a sore thumb- esp if in the first 20 seconds.

Phil Spector spent 10 hours trying to get one Ramones chord right.

Terminate with extreme prejudice.

When I watched Brian Lee White's EQ and Filters video course on Lynda.com I'm pretty sure there was a whole section on EQ automation, where he said it was common practice to automate EQ on that kind of fine level. I've seen people automate vocal volume on a syllable by syllable basis, so why not EQ? I guess it depends how much work you want to put into it. Sometimes I'm too lazy!

You need start thinking about transitional EQ. Automate the problem spot with EQ to meet the needs of the track. Static EQ doesn't always work. Ugh, see that Sharke just covered it.

You can't have that clash so I would try to notch them so they intertwine without stepping on each other.  You only need to do this for that one area so feel free to try a few experiments.

It still may be worth finding out why they clash. Is the bass player playing the right note? I had a situation like this and it turned out to be a wrong note from the bass.

Could you steal the same chord or bass note from the same place in another chorus and use it there.

Automation of the offending sounds just for the duration of the problem.

I have dropped out a bass note altogether in a situation like this and it cured the problem and was not missed or it was not noticed.

Jeff Evans


It still may be worth finding out why they clash. Is the bass player playing the right note? I had a situation like this and it turned out to be a wrong note from the bass. 

Or, if Bapu's playing bass, did the guitarist play a low Am?

I'm with Jeff...  is it not possible to play a different bass note and eradicate the EQ problem by not having a problem in the first place?  If the EQ ain't right, the woooomf ain't right, the harmony ain't right, wouldn't there be peace in the valley by playing a harmonically pleasing note?

Just curious.