EQ Tip Number 10. Bring up a spectral window, so you can actually see what's going on. Rather than just using your ears. Let's take this example where we have a flute sound listen to this flute recorded really well really cleanly. There's nothing that's kind of sticking out. When I'm using my ears right now, I'm not really hearing any harshness, or I need to make any changes to the body at all.

So, one inclination is you know what, just leave that alone. But if you use a spectral viewer, like this, check out what happens. See if you notice what's going on. Don't use your ears use your eyes this time. Look at all this junk down the first octave from 20 to 40. There's a ton of stuff down.

So without notice, using Yes, I do recommend using it is, like most the time using a special viewer can really help you understand what's going on, on a track without actually you know, a lot of stuff in here. So we're gonna fix that. Yeah, high pass filter by, drop that off. And because the very lowest fundamentals even above that you can probably afford to bring it that way we're not affecting any good spectral content but we have taken all this junk down the bottom, trusty high pass filter. Tip number nine. When you're trying to find a noxious frequency number, how we do that we go fishing by turning the gain all the way up, use the narrowest cue you can make and then you can start Scanning across that frequency spectrum until you find that annoying frequency I'm looking for the boxes in this acoustic guitar.

So listen round three. So once you've found that, then you can go ahead and pull that out. And when you're pulling out frequencies, typically here's another tip within this tip is that you want to cut fairly narrow, but if you're going to be boosting any frequencies like say the let's go back here and then boost up some of the picking action around six chaos like that. You might want to put that a little wider. So generally speaking, you Want to cut narrow and boost wide? Tip Number eight Here we are with our lead vocal of that song.

You've got my heart that Gradle was leading your, your heart to mine. Now I've hit you over the head many many times about it's very wise to cut below your fundamental. And you can see that as we play this you can see the melody shifting up and down and the piece we share is already there inside of so you can see that's where the fundamental of that of that melody is. So it is saved and advise to pull down all the frequencies below that. Now you might be thinking well Okay, now I think I downloaded a cheat sheet and it looks like the vocals go from about 100 hertz, up to the fundamental the highest note I can hit. I mean, Mariah Carey is different, different based, but 1.3 K is about the highest note highest fundamental that I can hit.

So you might be thinking are awesome. I'm going to clean up the top end. And I'm going to be using a low pass filter, which is the inverse inverse that of the high pass filter here. And I am going to lop that off, down to say 1.3 because I know that David can't sing any higher than that. So therefore that'll be awesome. I'll do that.

And let's hear how it sounds. Now I know it might be tough to lay your heart right because I know you've had your share of hurts. Well what's going on is every sound has a bunch of harmonics and overtones it gives it its life and its its presence and its brilliance and all that kind of stuff that I don't generate anything below the frequencies that I'm the fundamental of what I'm singing, but I generate a lot of overtones and harmonics that if you can take them away as we've just heard, it makes it very very dull. Let's hear this and I'll drop that low pass filter in and out let's listen along the way but at the end of the day, you got to trust someone or $1 right? Let it be me. Okay, so you got that tip.

Cut below your fundamental but don't get too smart and think, okay, I can cut above my fundamental because that's where all that richness of those overtones harmonics live. Tip number seven, try cutting rather than boosting if you just get in the habit of just boosting all the time, then you might get an overly harsh mix. Let's listen to this acoustic guitar. Imagine we wanted to get a little bit more overtones out of that and a little less of the boom Enos I put a high pass filter on it already. But let's instead of boosting the top end, let's kind of chip away at some of the body of this and see if we can get a better result. So again, I will narrow up my IQ boost at the the low mid frequencies here and scoot around until we find that boxing.

Yeah, a little bit of that. Go out to some of the harshness quite pleasing up there. Now with that we'll actually low the, the level of that track. If you boost that track up a little bit, then that's really very much similar to what we will be doing instead of looking at the zero line being Right here measuring the zero line is about here, you can see that we're boosting Canada that the high end, we're not really, we're leaving that to zero, but just kind of a different way to look at it. Remember, you'll need to boost up a little bit because you've taken some of this energy out, but what you'd be left with is something that will have a little bit more clarity and a little cut through a mix. The next tip is how to add a radio effect to any track I think I showed you this in an earlier example of us mixing this song but I just wanted to put this in the tip section just in case you missed it.

And we at the mark we're just doing this on a on a acoustic guitar or sorry, a vocal you could put it on acoustic guitar, you could put it on anything. In fact, we'll show another use of this in the next tip. But for example, we have this lead vocal here that I copied over and I've added a bunch of EQ, fancy mid range wrote everything off. This is the echoed EQ So the EQ echo is high net 10 sounds right. And we have the low pass filter sloping off the tops the high pass filter sloping off the bottoms and then everything peaked right about that no one k area and all the way to its max. So let's have a listen to it.

Tonight as the lead vocal he comes the echo so very grateful to my guns just at the right time. So take that EQ off and those filters off and it's just an echo. So right that you fell into my arms to set the right side of the ride. Just sounds a little cool. If we Add that EQ, pop these on that you fell into my arms just at the right time. Especially if we add all the other vocals in there as well.

It just allows it to just have a little bit kind of a different kind of a spice. In terms of EQ, it's not corrective. It's just a way to make it just a little bit more interesting. I'll do my rides tonight. Nice, very cool. In this tip, we're going to start using subgroups now in reason basically all you need to do is in the bottom of each track, you can output that to the the master section of left right or else you can send it out to an output bus.

In this case, I've made this EQ better Right here, and you can see that all of these backing tracks, basically everything except the vocals is going to this one buss. So all the vocals come out of here. And all of these get routed into the EQ bass which then in turn goes out to the master section. So you can imagine if you play this, you can just completely mute all the backing tracks up the next day. So even just playing around the mute, you can drop all the back musicians in and out deselect the vocals kind of shine there so you can have some fun there. But here's something else you can do because all of these go through this bath that I've just called EQ bass, we can mess around with the EQ or the entire thing.

Now this would not be corrective EQ, it would be creative EQ, you hear some dad's music all the time where you know basically all the the The the drums and bass, everything just basically gets sucked out, and then they become bright and they kind of bloom in the mix. Let's see how we can do that in here. We can do that via a low pass filter, or our high pass filter. Let's start out with a low pass filter first. The next brand so you could imagine automating that in a mix. So you know, there's a part of the song, it's just kind of the drop, where you can just suck all that out and then start bringing it back.

Let's look, listen to the inverse of that cannot be the next day. works well Miss Song, but clearly the types of music that would work really well is dance music, you hear it every time there's a drop in, in, in the song, where, you know, a lot of the mix will just, you know, completely bottom out and it'll just sound like you know, just like a thud of hearing music, you know through the walls next door, and then all of a sudden that becomes brighter. That's all done with subgroups, and then treating that subgroup with EQ more often than not filters, low pass filters and high pass filters. Down to Tip number four, and this is called EQ in place. There's plenty of times when you want to solo any particular track and then really zero in on that like for example for in the lead vocal here.

Even bring up a spectral window if you have it, and then really hone in on that. But another thing to do sometimes is just to so as is sorry is to eat you in place. In other words, have everything playing along and see what you can play around with until you really hear a difference in the mix. So for example, this high pass filter here, something that I would normally do is bring that up really high and then listen to that vocal and then bring scoots that down until that fineness goes away because sometimes, you know, you might think, okay, I'll bring it down to a where you could have gone got away with, you know, one 20th like that. So let's just bring that up, and we'll listen to this really late, right. I know you've had your share along the way.

The day you got to trust someone look into my eyes and so end up being around 80 hertz, that was the best place that neck. Keep in mind if we look at here that even though it is around that corner is at 80 hertz, it starts sloping off at probably about 110, something like that. So by the time it gets to 80 hertz, it's already down around three dB, and then it drops down. Probably, what's an octave so it's an octave from here to here. So that's To 18. So it looks like it's about 12 db per octave.

And over here, that's 18 to 36. Yeah, maybe that's, I would say it's probably 18 db per octave. I swipe off right there. So there's lots to be said, The soloing up tracks and really zeroing in on there. But sometimes you can, you can get a little crazy with the EQ, it's actually not a bad idea to actually do that in place. So you're listening to the entire mix, and then you're making your changes.

And if you don't hear a change in within a mix, then don't do it. You know, there's a lot of times when we can really start boosting up these and, you know, if you're not hearing a change in your mix, just maybe split the difference and just don't do them quite as drastically. EQ tip number three, EQ To the performance of the track, not the instruments, his is a good example. So I have some vocals over here I've solid, and their vocals right there a male vocal, what would you imagine the high pass filter should be set up or the low roll up? It should be around 100. Right?

That's my vocal. I know what I saying I don't have, you know, particularly low voice but I have a pretty typical, you know, male voice. So that would be the smart thing to do right on these ones here. But what kind of performance is on these tracks? Let's listen to them. That should be coming up in a second.

Okay, no jokes about how bad that is actually in a blender today. ends up working working pretty well. But those tracks even though they're a mouth vocal and you go to your cheat sheet or your make your your look at your own notes and say, Okay, I need to roll that off there a better role probably around here probably around 400 hertz or something like that. Let's have a listen to it again. Let's look at where that fundamental will be. Look, I wrote about this so you could bring that up.

Not there. That's that's been. So that's EQ into performance rather than to an instrument a guitar solo is another great example if you've got a guitar solo where the players playing around a 12th fret and the thinnest three strings then you do not need to be you know, rolling off way back down here even though the law string on a guitar Right is about 80 hertz. They're playing way up here. So always EQ to the performance. Let's just listen to how that sits in the mix with all of the other vocals.

And then no. Coming off the back of the last tip here, what time? What allocation of time should you spend on E cueing tracks? This is just basic time management, right? You spend the majority of your time with things that matter the most, and what kind of things wouldn't matter the most in this mix here? Let me just unsolo Have these and play it from say here.

Lead vocals spend the most most of your time on the lead vocal, I would say spend the least of the amount of time on on internal loops and internal instruments within your da w because a lot of work has been spent at the manufacturer at avid at propeller at Cubase. You know, all those guys I spent a lot of time making sure those internal sounds sound really good at out of the box, I would spend the least amount of time probably nothing at all most of the time, and it's been the most time the lead vocal and then varying amounts. As it goes through the mix. The larger things are in the mix. Clearly you want to spend the least amount of time I'm not really going to spend a lot of time EQ in these falsetto parts over here because they're very low in the mix.

Really don't hear them until They're in a blend. I know you might say, Well, okay, well I should spend, you know, as much time as I can on each track you you have so much time, you know only so much time to EQ and mix a whole song before you actually get really sick of it. So spend the most time on the lead vocal, and various other instruments anything comes in through a microphone that you know, isn't some pre process loops, things like that, spend some time on those ones as well and anything download and mix. You know, you won't get a lot of bang for the buck messing around the EQ on these falsetto paths. And finally, the number one tip in the EQ masterclass is mixed with your ears. And I've been showing you all the virtues of using a spectrum viewer, but sometimes you just got to turn that off.

And then start moving these knobs around until you find something that's pleasing to your ear. I mean, you may have it stuck in your head. You know what The, the kind of boxiness of a of a vocal is 300 hertz. And so you're always done and that new start really fixed sciatic fixating on all these little numbers. Best thing to do sometimes is just start playing around with these EQ settings until you have something that sounds good to your ear and an adjunct to this final tip is if you're going to use your ears, then invest in some really nice monitors. I would invest probably a third to a half of my entire budget to monitors.

It's a really, really good investment because at the end of the day, it's what's coming out of you mosses. That is your final product.