3 EQ Mistakes We All Make!

hi everybody it's warren hewitt here and in this episode we're going to talk about three eq mistakes we all make [Music] hope you're all doing marvelously well this is going to be fun because i think we're all guilty of this i've certainly been guilty of all these three things the first one is this overusing sweep eqs i can't remember the last time i used the sweep eq simple as that i may have done it in a video fairly recently where i was just trying to point out something i realized though as a beginner you are encouraged by everybody to use sweep eqs i watch every other video and i see somebody boosting an eq and moving it across like this i will illustrate it for you so here we have a song by steve mcgorr and i've got this guitar part for instance have a listen to this so take me down again moaning and don't pretzel the guitar it's nice but you could argue it's a little kind of honky isn't it i haven't done any eq to it it's how i recorded it we're going to go for a six band eq here and i'll just grab this eq point here let's tighten the cue so it's super super narrow engage the eq and you guess it let's boost it and we're gonna sweep along oh that's ugly sounding isn't it so that's 200 let's keep going oh that's ugly too 275. oh that's horrible 324. all right so let's start with that first one 200 and this is the logic of it isn't it let's go back to that 275 that we just thought was absolutely horrible let's have a listen to that now i'm going to create another sweep oh that's ugly oh let's get rid of that let's create another quick one oh ugly ugly horrible ugly let's cut some of that oh we still got one band left let's grab that last band oh horrible all right here's a here is a before an after wait there it doesn't sound better in fact it sounds lifeless and horrible the point is if i take any eq band and boost it 5 10 15 20 db no matter how narrow it is i will keep sweeping around and i don't have to move very far for something to be completely and utterly obnoxious do you know why it's obnoxious because the frequency is too loud i mean the whole principle of sweeping frequencies with big high boosts like that to find something that sounds terrible you you could end up with literally 20 cuts you could put another eq another eq another key and you'd be amazed by the time you've actually rebalanced the output on your plugin and you put four plugins in a row if you're lucky you'll end up with the same sound you started with but what you'll probably end up with is this incredibly horrible weird facey mess of disgustingness if you are hearing something horrible that's when you look for it but when you're merely sweeping to find bad things you're always going to find bad things what you need to do is trust yourself trust your ears it doesn't matter if you're a beginner or a seasoned professional in some ways quite frankly a beginner young with wonderful hearing is going to hear ugly frequencies so if you hear something that's bothering you in the mix let's have a listen so take me down again moaning screaming don't pretend i wanna hear my name i mean what i'm hearing on that guitar is i could take out some low mids because i feel like to myself well it sounds thick and other times things are getting a little lost but you know what that might be compression maybe you just need to compress some of those hits a little bit push them back in and bring up some of the low stuff it is trusting yourself to make decisions based on what you hear and you'd be surprised you know there is a certain level of professionalism you know we've done this a million times before and we reach for eqs and we know what we're doing but at the same time you're young you've got great hearing you know that's a beautiful place to be in trust your ears it doesn't matter if you've been doing this one year or 20 years or whatever trust your hearing listen for something that sounds offensive in the mix and if it's not offensive don't go looking for things to be offensive you will find any frequency boost 5 10 15 20 db like this is going to be quite offensive and if you do that you'll end up with a really soft really boring mix number two not using high and low passing this is pretty huge you get tracks to mix they could be organic they could be completely programmed virtual you're going to have a lot of build up in certain frequencies and of course in that low end that sort of 20 hertz up to about 200 it can be an absolute mess i guarantee it is a horrendous mess when all eq is bypassed so that's where you go in and you start getting creative if it's an organic sounding track [Music] so i've got a kick sub here i'm boosting 63 hertz which is like the fundamental of that kick drum i'm cutting a little bit of 31 so i'm focusing it there i'm also actually cutting some 125 but i've done a little high passing there so i'm actually high passing underneath the kick i've got my toms high passing here so when the toms are ringing all the way down there where the kick lives my snare top snare drum high passing here at 88 again no need for low rumble bleed into the microphones absolutely no problem doing that even on my bass guitar i've high pass gently at about just about 60 where it is but i'm doing it gently before going into a boost and then high passing again at about 50. so i'm shaping the low end it's going to be there there's going to be low end below 50 hertz but it's going to be shaped beautifully so there's room for the kick to live in this is really really helping my mix so maybe on the guitar the smartest thing would have been to do is actually this go and do some high passing i've got some low end build up [Music] below 90 i don't really need [Music] now there's zero low end now in the kick drum there's no overlap in that area that's great throwing the bass [Music] so that high passing's really helped for me it's cleaned up the low end now let's go to our nord part here and i've got a lift in the high end but you can see i've got a gentle high pass at about 140. [Music] i don't have much high end going on up there but what i've done is i've introduced a nice gentle curve up there and if i want to grab this and make it a four band eq i can do that so what i've done now is i've now low passed so that node that has almost no high end in it i've got rid of it above the area where i'm trying to just give a gentle lift [Music] now let's think about the same thing here on the guitar so we go to six here now we're low passing again [Music] there's occasional high end on 8k there [Music] maybe do a little bit of lift too much get a little harsh so i've done more with high passing and low passing on that than anything else it's such a powerful powerful tool there's a lot of confusion about it but high passing and low passing and gentle eq moves are really really useful so if i'd taken and sweep through any of these instruments i would have found tons of offensive frequencies but once again you've got to trust your ears and decide whether offensive and if you're listening to an instrument and you're not hearing any reason for it to have excessive low end or excessive high end get rid of it get rid of it out the mix and you'll create some real clarity we talked many many times to how a lot of late 90s early to sort of mid 2000 mixers before the advent of the wonderful cell phone and earbuds a lot of them don't translate anymore and thereby hugely famous mixism part of the late 90s like rock and emo scene was a very very bright overhead shimmering for excitement which was very trendy i remember driving along listening to k rock on the radio and everything seemed to sound like especially on choruses now with those records in the world of earbuds small phones tiny little speakers you know there's so much high-end going on there so the thing you'll find now is with the great mixers especially people coming up now who are very very aware of how people listen to music high end is really really well sculpted and low passing is in full effect you open up a bob horn mix and it's like he is getting in there like i wouldn't say building puzzles but he's definitely controlling the high end really beautifully and instruments have a lot of detail so don't underestimate low passing it's really really useful so number three applying eq to solve a problem which isn't there all the time this is such a common one we're going back to this guitar part here for [Music] instance so i don't mind you doing this listen with your ears to the guitar part and also at the same time look at the eq because i'm trying to prove a point here obviously listening is the only thing that's important but combine it with looking at the eq for a second [Music] okay those notes are moving all around about let's just say about just under 200 to you know about 1 2k at the most but a lot of it you know the part is around there so you're hitting single notes single notes are being played and they're peaking on frequencies my point is is if i go in there for instance where i thought it was a little muddy before and i pull out you know psalm 200 because when i swept it told me i should be pulling that out so i pull it out and i'm listening to the groove here [Music] do the problem is is when it went to those low notes they got too quiet because the low notes have just been cut so let's just say i went really really nuts and had cut some of those nasty high mids before you know and maybe done it gently didn't go absolutely crazy some of those high notes that have been playing out would also be out of balance i have to be careful about these choices there's a lot of amazing plugins out there that do dynamic eqs or alternatively if you did want to cut this low mid area on the guitar a little bit which i think is not a bad idea do this go to auto and come in on band two here on off and automate it because when i'm playing that high note solo i don't want the low end to be removed from it i need that support i need it in there to make those high notes have some body so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go and grab it here and now it's off so let's find the entrance of the solo [Music] so i'm cutting on the rhythm and then i am pulling it back in on the guitar seller [Music] what's interesting is i made a mistake there but it was really good because even in the track you can hear how it ruined the lead part when it was still in there that eq cut have a listen [Music] listen to that that low note just came in with body so now let's hear the whole lead part with the body put back in [Music] oh beautiful [Music] heaven knows you're what i [Music] on this rhythm guitar i've done a bit of a low mid muddiness cut and then when the lead comes in the low mid muddiness cut disappears and allows me to give a bit more body on that lead part there's a part of me that might even push some of that low mid up so this is where we have to be careful if we always apply eq on the basis of like oh this is too there's too much of it here there's too much of it there on a chord that might seem like a smart idea we might say it's too thick in the low mids on this guitar chord but if the same guitar player plays an arpeggio immediately afterwards and concentrates on the high strings and suddenly all the low end or the low mids that were there that were reinforcing that beautiful high line are taken away the guitar gets really narrow and really thin so you have to be selective of where you apply the eq and don't be afraid to automate thanks ever so much i hope you enjoyed that please leave me a whole bunch of comments and questions below what are the sort of eq do's and don'ts that you find really huge to me these might seem quite simple but they are the fundamentals that i apply to every single mix have a marvelous time recording and mixing please hit the like button and of course if you haven't subscribed subscribe to produce like a pro and we'll see you all again very soon so long farewell avida zayn au revoir and adios [Music] goodbye [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 291,321

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio

Id: OJHSduz_088

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020