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So the same little warning... I don't consider myself professional, I'm just offering tips on what I've learned and how I've learned it. Stuff I wish people had told me. This isn't meant to be a published article, just to start people talking about this stuff. So get to it! Anyways... Since there are two main times I EQ, I'll touch on each of them separately: One, pre-mix. EQ each track separately Two, post-mix. EQ the entire track to bring out certain parts Personally, I don't end up doing a whole lot of EQing. My ear catches most things as I mix things together while writing the piece. Well, that and I get incredibly pissed off when it doesn't sound like I want it to and end up doing half-assed EQing on the fly. Just like compression, subtlety is the key here. Even if you're making drastic changes in the sound, it's the small changes that make the sound change from good to amazing. So what are you trying to do with EQ? From a mastering standpoint, you're trying to remove unwanted clash in frequency ranges... example: you have a bass line and a melody line, the bass line has harmonics and effects that span the higher frequency ranges, and the melody has lower sounds. Since you want to bring out the bass line and melody line, EQ out the top a bit on the bass, and the lows off the melody. The simplest EQ is essentially just using high pass and low pass filters. You're cutting off the excess that you don't want. Why don't we do this? If you eliminate the frequencies that aren't the emphasis you lose the "human" sound of the instrument. The little nuances are what make it interesting. I know someone who writes dance music and masters like that... separates his drums into each band, filters out the excess, and compresses the hell outta it. His music doesn't change much overall, and so that style technically "Works" but it makes his music incredibly boring and lifeless, even though people will dance to it... it makes me want to claw my inner ears out when I listen at home |
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So that simple concept is getting a little more complicated... so start adding in more lines, bass drum that overlaps the bass line in some lower registers, snare over the mid, hihats on the top, and an ambient pad with white noise that spans the entire frequency range. Now what? This is where subtlety comes in and your ear becomes incredibly important. There are no magic frequency ranges, ESPECIALLY in IDM where we use incredibly weird sounds for different parts. The goal remains the same, keep the lines emphasized and not muddy, lower frequencies per instrument where they're not needed and do the same on the overall mix. I'm going to repeat that... you want to soften the parts that are unwanted. I did not say you want to amplify the parts you wanted to bring out. Making it as loud as possible is the LAST part of mixing. If you want something to come out, consider dropping parts that are conflicting with it, things that are very close in tone or Hz range. It sounds better when the track is louder, so it's really, really, REALLY easy to do this. Drop the ranges you want, increase the overall volume. Take a break, do it again. |
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Yep EQ is horribly important. I try to keep the mix of bass in the track so that it's about the same or slightly higher than the midrange and hi end. USUALLY if you're working with decent samples the EQ will be near enough by itself, in whihc case it's a matter of getting the samples etc to the right volume. |
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But... even though you want to do it subtlely, it helps to know some of the magic frequencies, right? I'll point out a few I like... If you want to make something sound fuller, bring out the bass... depending on the instrument between 50-450Hz. Bass drums sound booming at around 60-80Hz, notch that up a little for some heavier bass. With a human voice, more like 300-450Hz, plucked strings, a little lower, 100-200Hz, higher strings and brass type stuff much higher... 400-600Hz. If you have a sparse sound, ambient or just a few instruments, you want to up these frequencies a little, depending on the instrument and where the real body of the sound is for the particular patch. It all depends on the particular instrument, and more importantly, what PART of the instrument you want to amplify. With a snare drum for example, you can make it deep and heavy by uping the bass drum frequencies, 80-100 or so, or up right above that to make it sound more full, but not club oriented, like 150-250, or go way up and get that crisp sound that comes close to a hihat, but pierces through the mix easily at around 2kHz. If you want any specific instruments, experiment, find a guide on the web, or ask on here and I'll fool around with a few patches and post what I figure out... I like experimenting |
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Taking breaks is incredibly important. This is all about subtlety (how many times have I said that now? I love that word). Your ear gets used to the sound range when you've listened critically for a long time. You ever notice when you're listening to music in the car, not paying attention to it really, and you have an urge to turn it up? Try turning it down instead. You'll find in 5 or 10 minutes your ear will attune to the new decible range and you'll hear it ok again. Or, an easier way you'd recognize... how about listening to a song you wrote and mastered a week earlier, HUGE difference on what you hear. Your ear adapts to what you're hearing, so let it rest. I like flipping the EQ on and off when I'm mastering so I remind myself what I started out with. I take a break when I realize I'm not hearing what I could an hour ago, at least an hour, but sleeping on it is better. Try and go do something quiet for a while, let your ears relax. |
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You might notice EQ does a lot of the same things Compression and Filters do. If they overlap some of the effects, how is that going to affect the mastering? Why does this matter? The order of the mastering is becoming important as we add the second piece... if you put EQ before compression, you're compressing the already equalized sound which could flatten out what you just tried to do. If you compress before equalizing you could lose the peaks you just tried to create. You need to worry about each part individually, and in relation to the sound coming out of the previous effect. Traditionally reverb and delay come first, then EQ empasizing the ranges you want, then compress the peaks, then maximize the volume. Compression makes the piece sound clearer, our ears pick up on the sharper peaks a lot easier than the subtle frequency changes, so we want that to be our primary concern. But then again, you can flip them around and get a slightly different sound. What works best? Depends on what you're doing. Experiment and find out. |
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Lately I've found I get better results modifying my source (synth patch usually) and playing with levels instead of EQing. You can fuck up a track real fast with EQ. |
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Yeah, definitly will get better results from more fooling with the instrument itself... messing with the EQ too much makes the instrument lose it's charm sometimes |
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And how to get a deep bass without loosing overall volume? |
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I now know for sure that I'm too lazy in these areas of songcreation, I already find it off-putting when I think about having to do the stuff mentioned here. |
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I never really do any of these things, but I think my music sounds quite good anyway. This is Insane. |
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Yeah it is a drag... but I try to keep seperate the creating and the production. |
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I'm doing a good job at that too, which is why I've created alot of songs and never actually finish one. :p "alright, this one's great, I'll sort out the patterns & sound details later" |
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i'm with "fabien P". it's like some people even forget to write a good track to go along with all the tech talk..... |
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It kind of come naturally because i a perfectionist when it comes to creating music. |
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This is funny : ) |
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And how to get a deep bass without loosing overall volume? Bass instruments cover a range of frequencies, play with the EQ to see which part you want to emphasize. If you want some deep body moving sound, pretty low, like 60-100Hz you want to play around with. There are a lot of other things that could help... reverb, expander, etc, etc... or maybe you just need a better sound from the instrument. |
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How about I just send you some of my songs for EQ'ing instead? ;) |
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I have enough trouble mastering my own stuff... ya wanna pay me, I'll master tracks for people, but that's about the only way |
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Getting a good bass is one of the hardest things! You have to of course have a big round bottom but not too loud or it blows out the whole track - adding some mid and lower mid is essential because you want to have some notiness and pitch instead of just a thud. I'm still not sure about the short decay concept of bass programming to give it a punch - sometimes that just gives you a quacky attack and the rest of the note sucks, then it's harder to fit it into the mix because the EQ and level change from the attack to the main part of the note. Then it's time for compression or alternately spend the evening smoking cigarettes masturbating and crying. |
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Yup yup... anyone else want to add to this? |
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how much? sounds like you really know what your talking about... :P |
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How much what, do I charge to do mastering? Hell, I dunno... really cheap if I have time (which I will for a few months) |
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This thread has proved invaluable to me -- Can someone recommend me a good 30-band (or so) DX-plugin EQ? I'm currently using Sonic Forge's 20-band, which is good, but I'd like some more freedom. |
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shiiit ... 30-band? that'd be great. I use 10-band EQs... and filters... I don't just use one EQ, but I use several after eachother. |
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great thread. more please, particularly about the order in which the various processes (compression, eq, reverb etc) are usually done for different styles etc. where can i get a program which will allow me to see a frequency/dB graph for a particular point in my song? or for a particular channel, say synth A, snare B, etc? as far as i know there's no way to do this in fruity loops. i have sonic foundry 6 but don't know my way around it yet. |
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If you're using a 30 band EQ step back and do the same thing with a 4 band. You might just be incredibly meticulous about getting the sound right, but I'd bet that your songs would be better if you EQ'd using a 4 band and didn't go overboard I usually use a 4 band or 10 band at most |
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I don't overdo it, I'd just like to be more specific with a targeted frequency. |
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Parametric is the thing to use - I love the parametric channel EQs in FL Studio - generally every source has one particular resonant frequency you want to isolate and tone down - a good way to do this is to turn up say the midrange - narrow the width of the affected frequencies - then sweep the selection back and forth until you find the REAL ugly frequencies - then turn that band DOWN instead of up. Voila, it's de-uglified. If you do that for every channel, you'll hardly have to EQ at all in the mastering stage. Mostly I end up having to dip the bass a bit and compress to even things out across the spectrum. And still my music sucks because I suck! Ha ha ha! |
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For drums, I'll usually do things in this order... compression > eq > expansion (very rare, only if required in certain situations) > delay/reverb For everything else I'll almost always use EQ to make sure there aren't any interfering frequencies... I use EQ a lot. |
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More people should input here... and ask questions |
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obviously if you want nice fat, full sounding drums you compress them all separately, then all together. but should the bassline be added to this latter compression or not? of course it all depends on how the individual song sounds, but i'm interested to know what people usually do. |
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Good one I saw on the Reaktor forums: apply a 200 Hz hipass filter to everything but the bass drum and bass. Gonna try that this weekend to clean up a couple of congested sounding tracks. |
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Do what you think sounds good, thats what I say. There is a ton of shit that is mixed well that still sucks. We would all be listening to a lot of turd for music if that were the only thing that makes a good song. Awesome thread by the way : ) |
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could you put out a before/after sample of something you've mastered? two 10 second thingies or something? |
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I master as I go... I EQ things to make them more clear until it sounds right, then I move on to the next part I got to a point where I was -incredibly- pissed off with the way my tracks were sounding... point in case... go listen to Kadath Kadath is really badly mastered. Granted it was one of my first pieces and I didn't know what the heck I was doing, but it's muddy, the parts aren't apart from each other, lots of peaks in the wrong places. The worst part is all the overlapping sounds. Since then it just annoys me if it doesn't sound the way I want. So most of my "mastering" is on the fly, then I do a full post master just to get the levels correct, tweak some of the finer EQ values and get the volume up to where I want. And I'm definitly not the best person to master things... a lot of my tracks aren't really well mastered, at least from a professional standpoint, but I'm going in that direction. That's why I put these threads out... lots of the tricks you guys mention on here I fool around with, helped me out quite a bit I'll see what I can do about finding an old track that isnt' well mastered and posting a pre and post mastered version |
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If your bass sounds too "watery" and lacking punch, rather than just compresisng it to excess or turning it up so loud it clips, turn the bass down a bit, boost the treble (just on the bass' channel) and the gain up slightly. It makes the high end harmonics a bit easier to hear and works particularly well on string based bass sounds. |
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Key_secret, you wrote that you use several eq's after each other... i'm not criticizing you or anything, but if there's one good advice i have considering eq'ing, it's if i notice that i'm using several eq's on the same channel it's a sign that i'm totally overdoing it, or more likely the sound on the intrument itself is wrong... nice thread! |
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hmm...but i just realized that several eq's could be useful in some situations. For example if you want intentional hissing sounds without the actual high freqency sound of the instrument |
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OK. The topic 'Mastering Tips #2: Equalization ' has been added to your favoritesYou are now being transferred back to the topic, otherwise click here |
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I have to use the favorites in the browser because i had filled my xltronic favorites right up! |
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You can add 69 now though! |
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