5 Guitar Frequency Areas DESTROYING Your Tone

my friends sometimes you just cannot win when it comes to making content there were a lot of requests for this video that was the most annoying frequencies that I hear and a lot of people were big fans of it and a lot of people complained about it saying hey like this is misleading information because these exact frequencies aren't problems in every mix and to that I say duh like every song is different right like we don't expect for every single thing to be down to the exact hurts whenever we're explaining anything regarding EQ it's more about showing common problem areas you know things that are repeat offenders and I'm a glutton for punishment here so not only did I do that video but I'm doing a follow-up video which is basically about the five biggest frequency areas that you'll have problems with when it comes to your guitar tone so what's happening bam Miami here with jst and as a singer that plays guitar I'm a little bit more singer tips than fingertips that's really good I should probably use that for something anyways what I'm saying is that luckily I can mix guitar a lot better than I can play it you know being under Joey's Wing really helped me understand what goes into making a great guitar tone and bringing it into the next level so that's what we're going to be focusing on in this video one thing I really don't want to waste one of my topics on this time is high passing and low passing um high pass your guitar is anywhere from 80 to 100 Hertz and low pass them anywhere from 10 to 12K whenever you're dealing with heavy music let's move on so frequency number one two thousand four hundred thirty seven point five Hertz so whenever I focus on two thousand four hundred and thirty seven point five Hertz I like to grab a narrow band and sweet I hope you guys realize that I'm joking that's what I'm talking about like people focusing so much on the my new little details well we're not going to focus on a specific frequency we're going to go to that frequency range and the range that we're going to focus on this time is 2500 Hertz now one thing I want to say about this frequency is a lot of the meat of your guitar tone is going to be inside this frequency area and because a lot of it lives in that area what that means is depending on the type of distortion that you're using it can be extremely harsh it's also a point where you're going to clash with a lot of other instruments you know the positive to this is when you need more presence in a song this is a very quick area to reach for to make your guitar sound more present but back to that whole clashing thing it could be clashing with symbols or keys and this is a recipe for ear fatigue speaking of keys and sense we actually have a sample pack including those dropping really soon so just head over to Joey Sturgis Tone's Instagram so you can kind of get the lowdown and what we're going to be releasing I promise is something you want to keep your ears glued to anyways we're going to try not to cut too much in this area even though sometimes it causes problems it's one that we have to pay attention to because we want to keep our other instruments breathing and in their own space so let's take a listen to what it sounds like and take care of the issue [Music] [Applause] [Music] now that you know what that area sounds like it's a bit easier to watch out for when you're dialing in your distorted guitars now this isn't something that I see happening a lot on acoustic guitars but just to be safe it's something that you might want to check anyways because all it takes is a tiny little dip you know you don't have to go wild with this one and for everyone that's going to be breathing down my neck yes I said 2500 Hertz it might be 2200 Hertz it might be 2700 it's in that area it's somewhere around that area now we're going to get into frequency see area number two and that is ringing frequency harmonics this is going to take a second to explain but bear with me have you ever done like a surgical EQ cut and felt like it was creating more ringing frequencies than the one that you started out with well there's actually a scientific explanation for that when we're using distortion on a guitar tone we're typically using one of two types of distortion in that it's tube Distortion or solid state Distortion tube Distortion has even order harmonics and solid state Distortion has odd order harmonics are you with me so far okay cool now we're gonna find a ringing frequency in a distorted guitar tone [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the second I'm made aware of that ringing is something that I literally just need to press out of existence but there's another ring that should make you aware of something and that's ringing the notification Bell hitting that sub button you know get our numbers going and of course giving it a like if you're enjoying that content that we're putting out regularly my transition game is still crazy now let's get back to harmonics one would think you can always just cut the ringing frequency and that's it but Distortion creates an entirely different problem area because the harmonics of that frequency are going to become more noticeable as you cut the first one here's an example not to get all scientific with it even though it is science but if you had a ringing frequency at 700 Hertz and you're using tube distortion the more you cut 700 Hertz the more you're going to be made aware of the multiples of that so you're going to do 700 Hertz then it's going to be 1400 Hertz then it's going to be 2800 Hertz so you pull it down and now your ears are going to perceive the other ones a little bit more and the harder you Notch it the more obvious that the first multiple is going to occur so it actually like kind of lowers itself as it goes down with these harmonics like 700 will be the loudest then it dips down for 14 and it gets lower for 28 and so on and so on what this means is that sometimes we need to cut the multiple as well as find a good balance to our notches let me show you an example of what I'm talking about when it comes to tube distortion [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] see what I'm talking about and if it wasn't tube Distortion and it was solid state Distortion we would be dealing with odd order harmonic multiples so if the ringing was at 700 the next place we'll be checking for would be at 2100 and so on I know this one is a little confusing but you can be causing more than just phase issues when you're doing nauseous practice this one a little bit because it's going to be unique every time depending on the key the type of amp that you're using but let's get into one of the most annoying ringing frequencies of all frequency number three and I obviously have to talk about this one right but there's a reason I have to and it kind of relates to the topic that we just had a second ago we're talking about 4 000 Hertz and I know it's annoying to bring it up again but Don't Kill the Messenger there's some people lotion is that have no idea what I'm talking about so everything from 3.2 to 4K has the potential to be kind of ear piercing simply based on the fact that our ears are designed to be sensitive to these areas in general our hearing is aimed to be most sensitive at 2.5 to 5K but on guitar it's smack dab in the middle of that and that would technically just make it more annoying than almost any other frequency right so let's take a listen to the sound I'm talking about just so that you know in the future now we're going to take it and we're going to find a good spot to dip it down with this one I tend not to be ashamed with how I dip it because I really want to rub it from existence and I'm not shy with it it's always a surgical cut when I do this unlike the other example I was talking about and sometimes I'll dip it down 12 DB even 18 if I really got to go that far and you heard the example a second ago once you hear it you just can't unhear it and it's something that can frustrate you through a song so annoying by Design or not my ears just simply can't deal with it foreign [Music] if you didn't know before now you know it's extremely shrill it's not to be confused with presence and when you find the ringing frequency it doesn't have a lot of qualities that make it useful once again we're not trying to do wide cuts when it comes to this too much information lives in this area and we only want to remove the ringing section but let's get on to our next Point frequency number four 200 to 400 Hertz the mud when you're dealing with palm mute buildup right or you feel like there's too much low end going on this is almost always a problem that we'll have in our guitar tones you're going to want to grab a pretty wide band here and start sweeping around it's not going to be a surgical cut to be honest with you and you're going to find the muddiest spot and know when you hear it you know I like to start at 300 Hertz and then slowly start pulling to the right and then you know but sometimes it can go all the way down to two hundred Hertz you really just want to move around in that area until you feel like oh I've cleaned up all that low end and my track is starting to breathe now and when you do that it's pretty much gonna sound like this [Music] and that one's not really difficult to pinpoint right not like the other ones and once you figure it out you can guaranteed level up your guitar tone because that is one frequency that I have heard ruin thousands of mixes onto the fifth and possibly most important frequency area of the entire video frequency area number five every frequency area by now in this video you should realize that any and all of these frequencies can be a problem area depending on the other instruments that are in the song it's possible that anything can be an area that clashes with another one and that's a point I wanted to make sure to get out for example 200 Hertz might not be a problem until there's a song that has blast beats right and the snare is now eating up 200 Hertz because you boosted it now now the guitar and snare are fighting for the same space but you wouldn't have had this problem in a part of the track that this wasn't happening and that's less common than the problems you would likely have when dealing with mid-range instruments symbols vocals and other guitars are always going to be your worst enemy when it comes to frequency problem areas and are usually the culprits for masking so what I want to do is go over all this one more time 2500 Hertz ringing frequencies harmonics 4K 200 to 400 Hertz the mud and you know basically any frequency area because anything can be an issue that's just the reality of audio and I wanted to make this video because I wanted to clear up some of the things that I might have said and the other one that people didn't understand yeah sometimes things are just starting points but you still have to do a little work anyways I hope you guys grab something useful out of this video and I hope you gave a bit of a new perspective on how to attack EQ the next time that you're going about it guitar tone can be one of the trickiest things to nail and metal but I'm hoping this gets you one step closer to the perfect mix did you learn something new in this video are these moves that you typically make anyways leave it in the comments below and I will chat with you fine people like I always do if you're an engineer on the come up give this video a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe you only have to do it one time and tap that Bell for notifications so when a video drops you know the location till next time my friends later

Channel: Joey Sturgis Tones

Views: 11,194

Keywords: home recording, audio production, mixing tutorials, joey sturgis, joey sturgis tones, plugins, audio plugins

Id: Am6yUlRGb2g

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 10 2023