Basics of EQ for mixing metal and rock - tutorial

hey everybody don't want a sec here with unstoppable recording machine and today we're gonna take a look at the very basics of how to EQ now there's a couple things to talk about here so EQ is something that takes years to get good at obviously and it can be very complicated and very overwhelming but if you're just starting out mixing and you want to get a basic foothold on how to EQ better the way to learn to EQ is to simplify what you're doing so having less things to worry about so I think the best way to do that is to simply take sources here and do a simple shelf this is what a shelf EQ looks like you can use a graphic EQ I recommend grabbing a point now we could do parametric EQ like this but we don't that's a little bit more advanced for our ears so let's just start out simple the easiest way to get good at e cueing I think is this just take a shelf because essentially there are two questions you have to ask we're gonna listen to a source meaning a drum a guitar a bass a vocal whatever you want and we're gonna ask a question does that source need to be brighter so we're gonna add some shelf you know what frequency isn't necessarily so important but we want to add tribal meaning you want to make the it brighter or do we want the source to be warmer and to do that we can do this we can reduce some of the treble and the next question is do you want it to be thicker and in order to do that ilan you add some bass so we can raise a shelf down here or do you want the sound to be thinner so you can subtract some bass so brighter warmer thicker thinner and that's a really good and easy way to start out when you're mixing and train that so a good way to do this is to open up a session and I've got one in front of me I got some Papa Roach here from nail the mix and I've cut out some of the tracks just to simplify this down a little bit everything's pretty much zeroed out on the mixer so I'm just gonna go and I'm gonna mute all the post-production I'm gonna mute the guitars and mute the bass and let's just take a listen to our drums so we've got all these fancy mics and let's make it simple I'm just gonna get rid of the sub this extra snare mic the mono over ahead here and snare down and I'm just going to keep the Tom's a pair of rooms a pair of overheads a hi-hat maybe snare and a kick and let's just listen to each sound and then decide what we think it needs so let's hear a drum sound [Music] now we haven't balanced any faders so as we practice each cueing we're gonna balance so the first thing I'm gonna do is that would grab the instrument in solo and I think it's important when you're learning to EQ to actually start in solo and try to make each sound sound the best that it can and then take it out of solo balance it and then listen to the big-picture meaning once you've eacute a bunch of different things in solo meaning you've tried to enhance each sound to sound the way that it sounds best to you you can then take a look at the big picture and see how the pieces fit together and then you can make adjustments because for example if you make your guitar sound great but then you put them in the mix and they find out they're too bright obviously you need to adjust so let's listen to each instrument here and then just diagnose and adjust okay so our kick drum so our kick drum to me sounds a little bit muddy so if we let's see if we go brighter now let's make it warmer we're definitely gonna need some of that click let's try to make it thicker and [Music] now thinner it's my ears making it a little bit brighter sounds the best cuz we're keeping some of the punch in the kick but we're gonna get more attack now again what frequency you preset the shelf at that's kind of to taste but again we're instead of sitting here and playing with all this EQ and I'm getting technical with it let's just focus on these simple things here brighter warmer thicker thinner so I'm just gonna make it brighter and adjust it to where it sounds good to my herb so we're gonna leave it there okay so we got our kick drum in now let's hear our kick our sorry our snare so the snare sounds kind of dull so let's see what happens if we make it brighter it's got a nice crack what happens when we make it warmer it sounds very boxy now let's make it thicker [Music] we're losing some of the attack now thinner it's missing some body so I'm just gonna go in and make it a little bit brighter okay so we got her kicking our snare let's hear em together I'm just gonna balance these out slightly and turn up our kick okay great so now let's take a look at our overheads I'm gonna meet the hi-hat in the rooms and let's hear what we got now I hear some harshness in the cymbals so if I'm go bright ER what's gonna happen is it's probably gonna get a little bit harsher [Music] let's try to warm them up a little it sounds better to me let's thin them out [Music] that adds a lot more clarity and well thicken them now I'm gonna put this in context with the kick and snare here so we can hear it but my impulse is to thin them out a little bit here oh it's muddy let's bring it down so we get more direct attack on the kick and snare now let's take our top end and add a little bit of trouble it's a little bit harsh on the year let's warm them up I think definitely the best if we're gonna make one EQ move the best thing to do would be to thin them out a little bit and get more of the direct kick and snare punch [Music] then I just balance the fader so okay so we've got a little bit of a basic drum sound going here and just to keep this video simple and not go for eternity because we're focusing on the basics of EQ I'm just gonna get this going with my drum sound so a kick snare overheads and then I'll bring in some rooms so the rooms are kind of dark let's see what happens when I turn up some trouble makes it harsh let's make it warmer [Music] broum sound a little bit bigger now let's send them out and they go taking them up I kind of like that let's hear that in context with the overheads the kick and the snare and then I'm just gonna balance it because our drum set just a little bit of Ignis alright I am gonna do the Tom's I lied I'll do these really quickly here just to speed things up all right let's hear the this time in solo Suns kind of dull let's add some brightness sounds better let's warm it to dull thicken it up - bumi too thin so I'm gonna add just a little bit of brightness I'll put cut through the mix a little bit better and I'm just gonna arbitrarily pan this hard left and this one hard right let's hear the floor Tom kind of dull so I'm gonna just add some top and to it alright so let's hear the drums balance these in a little bit more so you can see we're not going crazy with EQ we just have a single move and it's improved our drum sound just to show you let me pull out all the e cues here and link all these channels up and we're just going to compare a cue before and after and you'll be able to hear okay so everything is linked and now I'm going to bypass the EQ [Music] so you can hear now that with just a simple amount of EQE a little bit of shelving we managed to make a drum sound a lot better we got a lot more clarity in it it's got more impact so now let's hear some guitars and bass in this mix and see what happens ok so I got two guitars I'm just gonna pick one I like that guitar better so let's do this one for simplicity ok so let's listen to this in the mix tarah sounds pretty thick so what happens if we brighten it makes it kind of fizzy what happens if we warm it up no articulation what happens if we thicken it up to Bhumi what happens if we thin it [Music] I think that's my favorite let's hear it in the mix now again as you're diagnosing these things again just listen very carefully if the sound sounds boxy or it sounds congested just try each one of these moves you know brighter darker thicker thinner and see which one gets you there then compare your results so now you can hear when I play this back and I send this guitar out a little bit what ends up happening is it fits better in the mix it blends in with the drums a little bit better and there's a lot more clarity so I'll audition it one more time for you [Music] see if I overly thin it it sounds weird [Music] all right let's start there okay now let's take a listen to our bass guitar and - we've got sounds a little muddy it doesn't have a ton of bass in it so let's make it brighter and see what happens get some ratalie attack let's make it warmer it sounds a little dark let's thin it out it's the bass clanky and let's thicken it up I think I like it a little thicker let's hear it in the Mesa [Music] alright see that's sounding pretty good so let's compare all of these tracks now here that we DQ'd and you know when you're learning to EQ it's important to not rush anything just take your time experiment there is no right or wrong obviously you're gonna have certain things that are gonna sound good to you and it's important to note that over time your ears are gonna develop and it can take a long time for them to develop your hearing is kind of gonna work in stages like a ladder and if you think about it like this like you're gonna be struggling you're gonna mix for a month or two months maybe three you're not gonna feel like you're getting any better then all of a sudden one day you're gonna be like wow I think I'm getting better at mixing and then you're gonna go back and listen to all your work and be like oh geez I can't believe my last mixes suck and then you're gonna go and go and go and you're not gonna feel like you're gonna getting any better then suddenly two or three months later boom you got better and you're hearing things that you've never heard so for me it started out when I was a queuing I heard a lot in I was able to add treble and bass and I was not able to hear mid-range then I started to learn how to cut and massage mid-range then I started becoming very specific certain frequencies that became very specific to my hearing all of a sudden I heard too much 2k and everything or I heard too much 500 and everything and you know you start becoming very sensitive to certain frequencies and then you adjust them and you're gonna go through all kinds of different phases in your e cueing but like I said this is just a great place to start as a beginner and you know you got it you gotta start learning to EQ somewhere so why over complicated okay so let's come let's compare the before and after I'm gonna bypass the EQ on all the channels and it's amazing how much better this sounds with just a little bit of fader balance and a little bit of basic EQ it's crazy to me what a upgrade so again just listen to before [Music] now after the snare and the kick actually have some punch there's some clarity you can hear the guitars and the bass the notes and we haven't even really done hardly anything I mean if I was mixing I probably already have used a hundred more bands of EQ by now on these sources so that just goes to show you you know a little bit of simplistic EQ you know adding subtracting cutting whatever whatever sound needs you know thicker thinner brighter warmer you just got to decide and there you have it so you can really learn a lot by just focusing on the fundamentals so if you want to practice this and get better at e cueing as you get more advanced I would just open some sessions like this get some stems and go through each sound and basically sit there and ask that question does it need to be ah you know brighter or warmer or does it need to be thinner or thicker and that's pretty much it and then just go through and practice and as you get comfortable doing that and you start adjusting your hearing then you can start adding extra bands so for example if I was e cueing these guitars and I went to learn the EQ mid-range I would then maybe grab a parametric point and I would sit around and say like okay what sounds wrong with these it's my ears they sound a little boxy [Applause] [Music] to me that's the most annoying area so let's bring it down [Music] that sounds more balanced let's hear it in the mix and compare it so much boxiness that took out [Music] so that's the next step in EQ but like I said this is really just for people starting out learning to EQ basically and getting a good foothold and developing good skills so like so there you have it if you like this video please click the like button let me know how your EQ is going and if anybody's out there practicing this and working on your fundamentals look love to hear how you're doing on it I would do this every day for maybe a week or two and then I start adding additional bands just keep mixing that's what's the most important if you like this type of content we have tons of great mixing videos so please subscribe to our channel thank you so much I'm Giovanna SEC and this is unstoppable recording machine

Channel: URM Academy

Views: 33,964

Rating: 4.9338298 out of 5

Keywords: joey sturgis, eyal levi, joel wanasek, urm academy, nail the mix, mixing metal, home studio, mixing metal music, mixing tutorial, eq, equalizer, how to eq metal guitar

Id: T5Ov3yb7nLc

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 11 2018