Thanks *VERY* much Danny.

Danny Danzi


Donny,

I'll give you my take for what it's worth. In my opinion as well as what I teach, when you are new to this field as far as eq goes, "be a cutter not a booster".

That said, it depends on WHAT you actually record. It's almost like telling someone to automatically use a high pass at 150 Hz on down on a guitar track, yet the guitar track itself doesn't NEED to be high passed to that extent. So though I would definitely like to see you be a cutter instead of a booster, there are a few things to consider.

The most important thing that no one has mentioned so far, is what I like to call "sound identification". Meaning, you have to be able to hear a sound and know that it will be useful once you mix, or know that you may need to change a mic or a sound choice BEFORE you even record it.

If you cannot decipher that, an eq will only bring on frustration and excessive turd polishing. You simply don't record a sound that isn't right from the source. If you can't tell, sound identification is where you need to be before you even mess with an eq.

To be able to really understand what constitutes good and bad sound, the fastest way to achieving this is to be shown examples of sound in its best and worst forms. By conditioning and remembering, you know when something is useable and when it should be thrown away.

In understanding sound identification, you must have a good system to hear the right stuff. For example, I had a client approach me to record a video for them showing them examples of these sounds. Their monitor environment was not correct so they had problems hearing what I was trying to teach. I can't show good and bad uses of sub low bass if someone doesn't have a system that can handle sub low bass frequencies. This individual had a horrible time judging bass in his mixes. No wonder why he was jacking up loads of bass in everything...his monitors were not allowing him to hear bass at all in those registers.

So in order to learn about sound, you have to be hearing sound correctly. This is why good monitors, a tuned room or at least some sort of monitor EQ like ARC or something can make an incredible difference. You can't fix a thing if you can't hear the thing, understand?

Once you have a grasp on this stuff, all the eq uses and techniques will give you that "ah, now I get it!" moment. Until then, you very well could be squirtin' into the wind. Having the knowledge on what to do and when to do it will always over-power techniques or "how to's".

All this depends on what and how you track as well as what you hear from those instruments tracked being transferred properly or not. You don't high pass a bass guitar because someone told you that you should if YOUR particular bass guitar is lacking lows. See my point? Sure it's common practice for us to high pass a bass, kick drum, snare or vocal...but you have to determine whether or not YOUR actual instrument needs that and to what extent.

So most definitely watch and check out videos people share with you...but keep in mind that you HAVE to know what to listen for before any eq technique, trick or "common practice" can be applied. Best of luck.

-Danny

Thanks Bit and Danny again and agreed on all this.  I'd say that my mixes were just consistently dark across the board compared to commercial mixes, so I'd toss Ozone on the master bus in pursuit of the "sheen".  Most all my instruments are straight off a keyboard or plugins, so I had the mindset that I shouldn't have to tweak the sounds any more.  Glad I'm moving out of that mindset and listen, evaluate, tweek, repeat until I've got what I want.

Also the idea that the mix should aim to be as close to the finished product as possible and that ideally, not too much should be required in my "mastering" is emphasized in some of the videos I've been watching.

bitflipper


Expanding on Danny's theme...my best EQ tip is to apply the strongest corrections to individual tracks, and the gentlest tweaks to busses. The closer to the source, the better. So really, the best EQ technique of all is capturing the desired spectrum at the source through mic placement, instrument placement, and microphone selection.

I sometimes catch myself abusing EQ, such as a boost on the bus to counter a cut in the same band on a prominent track. Such "duh" moments can often be avoided by simply postponing any bus EQ at all until the mix is 99% complete. The ideal mix is one that sounds full and complete at the master bus with nothing on it.

doncolga


Thanks Bit and Danny again and agreed on all this.  I'd say that my mixes were just consistently dark across the board compared to commercial mixes, so I'd toss Ozone on the master bus in pursuit of the "sheen".  Most all my instruments are straight off a keyboard or plugins, so I had the mindset that I shouldn't have to tweak the sounds any more.  Glad I'm moving out of that mindset and listen, evaluate, tweek, repeat until I've got what I want.

Also the idea that the mix should aim to be as close to the finished product as possible and that ideally, not too much should be required in my "mastering" is emphasized in some of the videos I've been watching.

bitflipper


Expanding on Danny's theme...my best EQ tip is to apply the strongest corrections to individual tracks, and the gentlest tweaks to busses. The closer to the source, the better. So really, the best EQ technique of all is capturing the desired spectrum at the source through mic placement, instrument placement, and microphone selection.

I sometimes catch myself abusing EQ, such as a boost on the bus to counter a cut in the same band on a prominent track. Such "duh" moments can often be avoided by simply postponing any bus EQ at all until the mix is 99% complete. The ideal mix is one that sounds full and complete at the master bus with nothing on it.

You're very welcome. :) Dark mixes....the reason being, most sounds in a synth out of the box are meant to make you go "darn that sounds great!" This puts you in the position of a guitar player that is tone chasing. "Umm what Danny...you lost me?!" LOL! No worries...I'll explain.
 
When we hear sounds by themselves that blow us away, they just about always will NOT work in a mix. Sort of like the rock guitar players that come up with these insane tones. They sound great by themselves but put them in a mix and you're removing lots of the stuff that made the tone appealing.
 
The same goes for these out of the box synth sounds. They sell you on the greatness of the sound....however, they just about always need to be high passed, low passed and then tweaked inside the low mids and upper mids. This all depends on what else you have going on in your mix as well as what instruments are focal points and which are backing instruments.
 
You can get away with focal point instruments being a little bigger in sound size, but backers usually need to have the "goodness" stripped out of them. You probably won't like the sound when solo'd up, but it will work in the mix. That's just the nature of the beast there...and is also the reason you try your best to stay away from that solo button. LOL!
 
But yeah, if you're not doing much to the sounds in your synths, this is the reason for the darkness you're talking about. I would say (based on my own experience with this) that the darkness is more mid-range congestion and low end. Once you curb that, the sound will get a bit more shine to it. From there, you can decide whether or not you need a little more top end.
 
Try to do as much of this at the mix stage as you can though. Taking care of it via mastering can not only ruin the good stuff you have going on, it can be more difficult because you're dealing with the entire mix instead of individual instrumentation.
 
So keep some of that in mind. Hope this helps a little Donny...best of luck bro. :)
 
-Danny

Something to consider is, do you really want your mixes that bright? I don't know what commercial mixes you are comparing yourself to, but a lot of modern mixes are over the top bright. Subtlety is not a byword these days for a lot of folks.

When we hear sounds by themselves that blow us away, they just about always will NOT work in a mix

One of your best pearls yet, Danny.

you're welcome, don.

The general exception to the rule is the very sparse mix. The sparser the mix, the bigger each instrument can be and not step on other toes. Mixes used to be (generally speaking) vastly sparser than they are today, something I'd like to see come back. So you could have a fat bass and big drums and lots of ambience. In fact having lots of ambience was part of the picture, and why you could push those older mixes back further. As you pour more and more stuff into a mix, you can't have as much ambience generally, and everything has to be more and more frequency limited.

I like sparser mixes, with each instrument having much more space. That doesn't mean that they are highly separated necessarily. By allowing each instrument to be bigger, and having a good composition, you can have a huge sounding tune, with everything fairly fat, and everything glued together nicely. The longer reverbs can provide a lot of that glue. When you hear some classic tunes as separate tracks it's sometimes amazing the amount of reverb on them (and in those days of course a lot of that could be the room since they weren't recording in an apartment.)

I very much agree with Dean on this point. And it is interesting how one can inter relate the musical arrangement and EQ in the engineering process.

The more things that are playing at once the harder in a way it is to mix. You also have to make compromises in terms of having to HPF things in order for all to get along. But if you limit say two as the total number of sounds that may be stepping on each or even three then you are going to have a much sparser mix and the parts need to play our much more in a serial manner than a parallel manner.

Very simple and very complex music can be realised and most often parts can interweave rather than all be on the same beats together. As a direct result of this the parts can be much fatter and the full amount of its sound can be let through. 

This is why I enjoy loop recording midi and virtual/external instruments and switching tracks on the fly. You learn to start playing the parts much more serially and leaving even more space in between. First part of a bass line then followed by an electric piano lick, back to more bass line etc.. 

A lot of us are playing many parts to make our music and the trap is to overplay parts while doing this and building up the music. Before long it is already too busy and full. If so this is a good time to try and replicate everything you are hearing by cutting away lots of things that are overlapping and still leave the main essence behind. You are looking for the black backdrop behind all the music. Can you see it yet? (Dark Side of the Moon has lots of black backdrop)

I find a lot of well written music for advertising interesting in that it sounds like there is more going on but with much less. The other day an ad came on with a killer drum sound bass and guitar. No chords yet it sound big and huge . Guitar playing catchy and fairly busy distorted lead melody. The parts were inter woven and you heard all three very clearly but nothing was stepping on each other though so the individual sounds smacked through big time much harder and clearer. All the EQ's were seriously fat on each part but as nothing was really stepping on each other it did not matter. It is a fatter result than trying to get 20 layers all working together in some ways applying HPF to most.

I agree with Danny and Bit about synths too. I have been recording them for years and most of them are too fat for their own good. They could never co exist untreated (especially if the music is layered and many things playing at once!) But at least you are dealing with sounds that are usually too much and it is easier to take some of that away.

Kraftwerk is a great example of many parts and sounds that all exist and work together but none of them are stepping on each other much. So much space. (That black backdrop is immense!) As a result the parts are EQed to sound great IMO. But the music can also be dense and heavily layered like Brian Eno 'On Land Ambient 4'. Heaps of tracks all playing at once. But then it becomes EQ art once again. 

To be fair, it's easier to control overtones on synths. With analog instruments, they have lots of overtones generally, and they are taking up space far above and below the actual notes being played. Synths can control this and you can use more fundamental tone and less harmonics, which will take up way less space.

To me the big issue with self recorders is that the initial tracks are almost always overplayed becasue there's nothing else there. Then you become loath to redo them since you put in so much time on them. If you go back and do them again after more stuff i is in place, it's a lot easier to spare them down.