EQ 101! Equalization / Explanation / How to Best Use EQ / Frequencies / Things Like That!

hey everyone and welcome my name is Erin and today I want to talk to you a little bit about EQ or equalization what is it where how should I use it where should I not use it and I want to give you some examples of sort of how I use it when I play guitar and when I mix and when I record and things like that so the first thing we need to understand is all sound is vibration and the speed of that vibration is called its frequency it's how frequently it vibrates so you may have heard that term frequency it's actually just another word for pitch sounds that vibrate at a slower frequency are lower in pitch and sounds that vibrate at a faster frequency are higher in pitch and frequency is measured in cycles per second or the number of times something vibrates in one second sometimes this is called Hertz or HC Hertz was a guy who discovered something so anyway you might see that when you see a frequency you might see 60 Hz that 60 Hertz that 60 cycles per second so the human hearing range is roughly 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz 20,000 Hertz so you might hear kilohertz or you might hear K if somebody says 5 K that means 5 kilohertz 5,000 Hertz 5000 cycles per second incidentally there are other mammals and animals who can hear a lot higher than human beings dogs for one you may have heard you know it cuz when you blow on the dog whistle you can't hear it but your dog comes running or freaks out or whatever it is dogs can hear up to 50 K cats can hear up to like 80 K and dolphins can actually hear up to 150 K so human beings are actually pretty low on the evolutionary scale when it comes to hearing but anyway everything you've ever heard in your life is some combination of frequencies from 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz now I say combination of frequencies because most natural sounds are a extremely complex combination of maybe a fundamental frequency and then a bunch of overtones and distortion and things like that so just bear that in mind that most sounds are a whole bunch of frequencies all mixed up also the science is a little bit soft on this but that we can't hear there's an argument that they can still sort of affect us like there's been evidence that low-frequency sounds like around four to nine K can you know if we hear it at a high decibel level can actually make a sick some people think to that very very high frequency sounds well over twenty K we can perceive even though we're not really hearing them and that's why actually a lot of modern recording equipment can record way higher than any human can hear you can decide for yourself on that you know if you use the gear and you think you can hear a difference or whatever but in general we're gonna stick with 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz as the human hearing range so what is EQ EQ or Equalization is the manipulation of frequencies in a given recorded signal to achieve a desired result typically to enhance good sounding frequencies and to minimize bad sounding frequencies there are two main types of EQ two main ways that we do this one is graphic EQ this is basically a set of frequencies each with its own level control the simplest example of this is maybe like your car stereo it's got bass mid and treble if you're lucky so low mid and high I've just got bass and treble in mind low and high what frequency is the low who knows what frequency is a high who I don't know but that's all you have and you can either turn it up or down simple easy you see this in a lot of home stereo setups and consumer type of equipment and some simpler plugins also a lot of times with these things you end up seeing this smiley face EQ if you've ever heard that term this is where it comes from from a graphic EQ and and someone's just put like a smiley face in it one main reason people do that is because our ears are very very sensitive to mid-range it's because the shape of our ear canal is actually the size of a 1 kilohertz tone 1 kilohertz is right in the middle of the mid-range of the frequency spectrum when it comes to human hearing and so we hear those sounds much more quickly than other sounds then very low sounds or very high sounds we hear that mid-range and we hear it immediately and we think it's harsh sounding or whatever and so a lot of times we will scoop out that mid-range and accentuate the high end and the to sort of make it more pleasing so we can turn it up really loud and and not have it hurt our ears the other type of EQ is called a parametric EQ a parametric EQ is a variable multi band EQ that allows you to adjust frequency boost and cut and bandwidth now what am I talking about so a parametric EQ starts out as more of a blank slate instead of being given a certain set of frequency bands that I can either turn up or turn down I can first choose what frequency I can slide that frequency around I can pinpoint it so I can choose exactly what frequency I want and then I can boost or cut that frequency not only that but I can change the bandwidth that is I can change how the frequencies around that fundamental frequency react when I boost or cut that frequency this bandwidth is sometimes called the curve or the cue if you've ever seen a cue like control on a plug-in a very high Q is a very narrow bandwidth so if I select like 4 K and I want to turn it up and I want to have a very narrow Q if I have a higher number Q I'll be boosting only 4 K and nothing else around it in contrast if I have a very low Q this is a low number that's a very wide frequency band that I'm boosting so when I boost 4 K I'm not only boosting 4 K but I'm boosting 3 K and 2 K and 1 K and 500 Hertz and all kinds of things so as you might imagine low Q or very wide curve adjustments on a parametric EQ are much more dramatic sounding because if I'm gonna boost 4 K and also all these other frequencies around it a whole bunch of that kind of mid to top-end is going to get boosted in the signal this is useful when you want to make an overall instrument or sound source just brighter overall I want to bring up a bunch of frequencies around that fundamental frequency a lot of times EQ boosts with low Q's or very wide curves can sound a little bit more natural than if you get in there really surgically with a with a narrow Q so narrow curves or narrow Q's can be really useful actually when you're going in there and you want to cut something that's really annoying sounding to you so let's say maybe you're wringing out a vocal microphone someone's got a headset mic and there's a feedback at a certain frequency you you want to get in there and pinpoint just that frequency can only cut that and leave everything else alone or maybe it's like something on a snare drum there's like a ring on a snare drum mmm and you don't really want to cut everything around it but you just want to cut that one little annoying frequency that's a great candidate for a very narrow queue and a lot of times actually what I'll do is to find the offending frequency I'll boost it up with a very narrow cue and and and sweep the frequency spectrum until I can find the most annoying it's like it's like there it is okay turn that one down a couple more little terms that are useful to know shelf this is an EQ that boosts or cuts a frequency and everything above it or everything below it so if I'm gonna do a low shelf boost at 80 Hertz that's going to boost 80 Hertz and everything below 80 Hertz and everything below 80 Hertz or if I'm gonna do a high shelf at 8 K or 8 kilohertz that will boost 8k and everything above 8 K a bell essentially a parametric EQ is a bell if you ever see an EQ on a graph and it's shaped like a bell that's a bell a bell curve sometimes in a plug-in you can choose if you want Bell or shelf that's what that's talking about a low-pass now these get a little confusing and they don't make a ton of logical sense but a low-pass is actually a high-cut so if I put my low-pass at 4k it's actually cutting everything above 4 K so it's letting the low pass through and it's cutting the high same thing with a high pass it's letting the highs pass through and cutting the low so if I have a high-pass filter at 60 Hertz it's basically cutting everything below 60 Hertz and a filter too if you ever hear the term filter that's typically 1 or 2 bands if you're talking about a filter plug-in a lot of times it's just one band and it's very specific and you want to get in there and be surgical or sometimes with mastering guys will use filters or whatever sometimes a filter can be talking about a high pass filter or a low pass filter most of the time that's what those terms mean so some examples as a disclaimer you know there's no substitute for just getting in there and tinkering with stuff yourself and learning how you respond to different frequencies and which ones you like and which ones you don't like but I want to give you some general guidelines to places that I go my little go-to spots for problem frequencies and good frequencies that I like and things like that so first drums drums are an extremely wide frequency band you have everything from the low lowest of the low kick drum to the highest of the high twinkly angelic cymbals kick drum specifically the like thump boom of a kick drum hit that hits you in your chest somewhere around 60 to 80 Hertz a lot of times I will end up boosting that you know if you stand next to a typical kick drum there's actually not a ton of low low-end in there and the sound of modern recorded music most of that sound has been added and accentuated after the fact and we love it now we love that low kick you in the chest get your heart beating and get you dancing or whatever we've just grown accustomed to it and we love it 60 to 80 Hertz in general that's a great spot to boost on a kick drum 300 Hertz I almost always cut on a kick drum that's like mud it sounds muddy cut 300 Hertz and a lot of different instruments specifically kick drum cut 300 Hertz you'll be happy and then the nice click of the attack of the beater on the kick drum is let maybe like 4 to 5 K boost 4 K on a kick drum Tom's are somewhat similar a little bit different the low end that I like to boost on Tom's morale around a hundred Hertz to 150 Hertz and then I'll cut around 300 to 400 Hertz in there depending on what Tom somebody's hitting what size it is and things like that and then I'll boost a little bit higher like of 7 to 8 K I'll boost on Tom's snare drums it really depends on what kind of snare you have but I like a big fat sounding snare kick you in the chest sort of snare that thump of the snare drum is anywhere from around 150 Hertz to 220 Hertz or so and again it really depends on the drum having said that there's also a lot of problems that can develop anywhere from 200 Hertz to 500 Hertz a lot of times when you hit a snare drum you get that ring depending on where the ring is that's kind of that problem area 200 to 500 Hertz or so so a lot of times I'll get in there with a little surgical narrow band EQ and cut out some of that ring and then the crack at the top of the snare that definition is maybe around 5 K I like boosting like a high shelf around 5 K so try 5 K on the snare drum cymbals it really depends on what cymbals you use I love to record very dark cymbals cymbals are so bright anyway I like to record a nice dark beautiful complex sounding cymbals and that's a lot of people have actually said that they love this sound how do you get the cymbals to sound like that a lot of it is just that the cymbals that I record they just sound like that and if you were in a room with them you'd go oh that's how you got them to sound like that because that's just how they sound so that's part of it but also I tend to use darker microphones I love using ribbon mics actually as overheads which are dark sounding mics when I do EQ overheads or cymbals specifically sometimes you'll want to cut out some of that harshness around 3 to 4 K that's kind of that ear piercing thing you know it's that upper mid-range and then you can boost a little bit at maybe 10k and above sometimes on overheads bass guitar goes lower than drums really in my experience in my opinion and a lot of times I'll boost maybe around 80 Hertz but really I like the I like the bass to sit kind of below this just below the kick drum and as far as frequency I'll also cut that 300 Hertz on bass do you notice a pattern here 300 Hertz is good for almost nothing it's just muddy when we hear 300 Hertz it's not really like low-end it's not really like mid-range it's kind of right in that no-man's land of like something doesn't sound right what is it it's 300 Hertz turned down 300 Hertz almost everywhere you go just turn it down aside from that you know bass guitar I sometimes I don't do any EQ on it it really really depends on how you record it and bass is a very important important thing to get right when you're recording it my favourite bass sounds that I've ever mixed are the ones that I haven't had to do hardly anything to they just sound how they sound and so I've learned to really be picky of when I record bass about what what bass is being recorded what gears are going through what preamp who's playing it things like that but when I do EQ it I'll tend to take 300 Hertz out sometimes I'll boost a little mid-range to get the little clarity around maybe 800 Hertz or so 800 600 to 800 Hertz boost on the bass boost a little 80 Hertz to give you that nice warm super low sub low-end acoustic guitars I actually like to do like a high shelf this is crazy but I like to do a high shelf starting at about 1.5 K that's a hugely generous high shelf I mean basically I'm starting in the mid range and turning everything up above it after i boost that i'll put a compressor to kind of tame some of that top-end what that does I find is it allows the tone the music of the guitar to come through because the majority of the tone is right in that mid-range and by boosting that EQ and then compressing it you're really bringing out kind of that tone that music the heart of the acoustic guitar a lot of times when you hear at KU stick in recorded music or when you hear it live all you can really hear is the strings it's like I don't hear any tone I don't hear any music I don't hear beautiful things coming out of that all I hear strings so it might seem counterintuitive to do a high shelf starting at 1.5 K but just try it try it it actually works it's crazy also on acoustic guitar anything below about 200 Hertz I just cut and get rid of unless it's like acoustic guitar in vocal and that's the only thing in the mix when you're doing a pop mix get rid of the low-end and acoustic guitar get rid of the low-end and a lot of instruments as a matter of fact electric guitars I love to boost around 3 to 4 K be generous with a nice high shelf boost around 3 to 4 K and then adjust kind of the level a lot of times electric guitars need to be brighter than you think they need to be to be heard and picked out in modern music a lot of times I'll cut lots of low end to and electric guitars let the bass & Drums kind of take that area and give kind of that mid-range to electric guitars with all instruments you're carving out little spaces for them to exist there's always going to be some overlap but once instruments start overlapping too much people can't pick them out and they start complaining and they start saying things like it's muddy or it's not it's it's not clear I don't understand it and they walk away or they turn it off what you want is to carve out a nice little area for each one of your instruments here's my bass guitar area here's the space that's occupying here's my kick drum area here's my snare drum area here's my vocal area here's my electric guitars area also on electric guitars I like to actually boost 300 Hertz it's one of the only places probably the only place that I will actually boost 300 Hertz that's kind of the the low end on an electric guitar it doesn't really go much lower than about 300 Hertz and that's kind of the the sweet spot for boosting that I've been cutting it everywhere else so I have space there to boost a little bit on electric guitars and that will give you a nice big low end and make your electric guitar sound huge piano piano is all about the magical mid-range it's a beautiful mid-range instrument pianos my first instrument I love it and there are so many bad piano sounds out there so many bad piano samples and what they almost always get wrong is the mid-range when you sit down at a real piano and you play it it's got this lovely comprehensive beautiful mid-range sound and my favorite piano samples are the ones that get the mid-range right a lot of times in recorded music people are like I can't hear the piano so they turn up the top-end like they turn up like you know 6k and and above or whatever and it just sounds horribly harsh because pianos such a percussive instrument I don't want to really hear the attack so much as I again I want to hear the note the heart of the sound which lives in the mid-range so a lot of times I'll boost about 1k I'll find a nice generous big wide low Q and I'll kind of boost overall mids on a piano I'll cut maybe the top and actually the bottom and vocals really really really depends on who you're talking about that you're recording here it's very hard to make generalizations when it comes to vocals but in general the heart of the sound of a vocal is in the mid range again our ears are evolved to pick out human voices because our ears are shaped like a 1 kilohertz tone and so we're very sensitive to it and we like hearing it but it can be too much very quickly a lot of times massaging an EQ on a vocal is kind of about taming and given that mid-range sort of the TLC my own voice specifically is a little bit accentuated right around 2k and so a lot of times I will cut 2k like I am right now on this recording I'm going through my ving tech x7 t3i preamp over there and I'm cutting 2k because I just know that it's easier to listen to me if you cut 2k I'm gonna go over there and actually turn it up and you'll hear the difference ok so now we have 2k turned up and you can hear it's even more harsh on my voice and you can probably hear why I like to turn it down let's go turn that back down ah yes much better hmm so 2k I just know that about my own voice that I don't love 2k when I'm going somewhere to sing and maybe it's a new PA or whatever I'll just go over to the EQ and just pre EQ the thing take 2k out it's about experimentation and figuring out what works for you and again with voice it's all about learning what that specific person's voice sounds like and what you want to cut and what you want to boost into all kinds of things so now I want to take you through a couple of my favorite EQ plugins and pieces of hardware first of all the VIN Tech X 73 I it's basically a nave 1073 type preamp EQ I'll absolutely love these things I like to use about 10 of them or so when I'm recording drums I'll use EQ generously while recording just because this EQ is so musical sounding and what I mean when I say that is it doesn't sound like you're using an EQ it just sounds like oh that's what the source sounds like now it just sounds brighter now but it doesn't sound unnatural it doesn't sound Phase II and weird and clinical or whatever so I love that thing I use on a lot on the way in and then as far as plugins I love the waves SSL Channel and the waves SSL EQ this is a great bundle of plugins if you want to go by it I highly recommend it it just works I reach for knobs I can be very aggressive with EQ and it still sounds good again it doesn't sound weird before I had this EQ I never wanted to use plug-in eq's because it always just kind of sounded worse when I when I started using him after I got this this is just the de facto standard my go to when I need EQ on something that's what I put on it 95% of the time that's what I'm using I also like the waves EQ p1 which is like a pultec style EQ I find with this thing you can be even more aggressive you can boost a heck of a lot or cut a heck of a lot and it's not a super dramatic difference it's a very smooth natural beautiful sounding EQ that's kind of emulates the hardware pull texts that are cost lots of money and really that's about it there's not much more than that that I use and there are others that are out there that are great and do a great job and a lot of people have fabfilter and a few others but the point is you don't have to have a ton of different EQ plugins to get great results I basically use one and that's just what I use and it sounds good and that's all really all I need so lastly I just want to say EQ is important to understand but don't necessarily reach for one right away if you don't like the sound you're hearing there are other things you should do before you do EQ like switch out the instrument you're playing or maybe switch the person who's playing the instrument switch out the microphone switch out the placement of the microphone all of these things will affect the sound and you have to keep all of that in mind EQ is very useful but it's one of many tools in an audio engineers little toolbox cool well I hope that was helpful feel free to leave any answer questions you have below we'll see you guys next time

Channel: Aaron Sternke

Views: 50,740

Rating: 4.877676 out of 5

Keywords: EQ, Equalization, equalisation, Frequency, frequencies, Hertz, Hz, cycles per second, Mixing, guitar, drums, bass, acoustic, vocals, EQing, snare, toms, cymbals, kick, kick drum, drum, Explanation, education, master class, class, course, online course, free education, free, tutorial, EQ tutorial

Id: hy8rLIsK6cg

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2016