EQ Tutorial - Basics

today's tutorial is about EQ and we're gonna be covering all the basics for beginners hi folks I might and I hope you're well now using EQ and using it well is one of the most important skills you'll have in your studio so today we're going to be guiding you through the basics for beginners but if you're an old hand there may be some nuggets of information in there for you as well we're going to be covering the basics like what kinds of EQ is there are how to basically use them we're going to be in queueing an acoustic guitar and we're going to be taking a sneak look at some of the more advanced techniques you will need to learn in the future now if this is your first time here and you're looking for this kind of content tutorial is about da WS home recordings plugins etc then please do subscribe and ring the bell on YouTube so that you get notified about my future videos now let's get stuck into some in queueing so let's start off by taking a quick look at the different types of EQ plugins available to you now they fall into two basic categories those are graphic equalizers and parametric EQs now graphic equalizers will look something like this one you can see on the screen here this is from nomads Factory and they're easy to spot because they have lots and lots of sliders to control specific frequencies or ranges of frequencies within the audio another example of a graphic equalizer would be this one from wise now this one's a little different there's more sliders to control different frequencies and they have them for the left and the right channel but what I want you to notice here is the display at the top this is called a spectrum analyzer and this indicates to you the amount of energy for specific frequencies within the audio and it's a really useful tool if you're just starting out with your EQ Engraving equalizers are not used as often as something called parametric EQs these are much more versatile and a more often use in production today the first examples I'm going to show you us based on some old hardware this is the SSL EQ from wavez and this one is also for waves and it's called the V EQ now they are based on the characteristics of those hardware and sometimes that that hardware did sort of color the sound in specific ways and add certain characteristics so they're not what you call very transparent plugins and they don't often have a spectrum analyzer so I don't recommend them if you're just starting out instead I recommend a more transparent one and a good example would be this one which comes with Studio One and it's called the pro EQ now this is a stock plug-in that comes with Studio One but if you're using another D aw you more than likely have a stock plug-in that comes with it which will be something like this for example if you're one of my many cakewalk users you you will have with cakewalk this one's by sonnet as' and it's called the equalizer this is a six band EQ so what do I mean by different bands if we go back to the studio one one here I can adjust the bands here this has seven bands the bands are basically different control points where you can adjust those frequency or range of frequencies so that's an interesting thing to keep in mind when you're choosing which EQ you will use now if you don't have an EQ like this with your DOW or you don't like the one that comes with it there are some free ones available and they're actually quite good the first one I want to show you is by melter production and this is called EM equalizer this is a six band EQ and it's a really nice one to use and another one which I really like is called Nova and it's by tokyo dawn records this is only for bands but it has some extra features with it to adjust the sound which i think are very very cool so you could use this in a combination with another EQ i definitely recommend downloading this one so check out the links in the description now in terms of paid equalizers I really like the one from isotope called ozone I use this quite a bit it's an 8 band equalizer and it's just really straightforward to use but very powerful equalizer at the same time however the EQ that I'm going to be using in today's tutorial is by fabfilter and it's called the Pro three this is just my favorite EQ to use first of all I find it's very versatile you can add many more than five six seven or eight bands you can just keep adding bands as you want them and it has some really very cool features which I won't be covering today but it's worth taking a look now if you're interested in getting this particular plugin I've got a link in the description where you can actually get 10% off of all fabfilter plugins in fact so follow that however you do not have to be using this fabfilter pro-q plugin today for this tutorial because everything I'll be talking about applies to all parametric EQs that you can get your hands on so in starting out with the queueing it's good to get some understanding of the ranges of frequencies that we can hear with our ears human hearing ranges from around about 20 Hertz which we can see on the left side of this display here all the way up to 20,000 Hertz which is represented on the right side of the display now this particular display actually shows range is slightly outside of normal human hearing but your plug-in may differ slightly but they all will show that range of frequencies now on the left hand side where the low frequencies are that's where we'll normally hear things like bass guitars or kick drums as their main frequencies let's have a quick listen to a bass now you can see that it's occupying these low frequencies down here predominantly and even these sub low frequencies right at the bottom here it's worth noting that these instruments also will fall inside of other ranges so there's a little bit of this bass guitar which is actually in the low mid frequencies you can see them here a good example would be the kick drum as well if I put the kick drum on you can see it's got lots of energy down here in the bass and but it's got a reasonable amount of energy in the mid and high frequencies as well but we would generally think of it as a low frequency instrument now let's move on to an other extreme which be something like a hi-hat now that exists predominantly up in these high frequencies which you can see on the right hand side it still has some in the mid and even right down on these low frequencies there's still some energy there but most of it is right at the top there and we'll also move now on to an acoustic guitar which covers a much wider range of frequencies you can see it's predominantly in the mid and upper frequencies but it still has some down in the low frequencies here so those are some examples of some instruments and where they exist within that range and it's good to start thinking about this when you start to listen to different instruments and think about where their main frequencies are and what other ranges they also occupy so the primary purpose of your EQ plug-in is to cut or boost specific frequency ranges now if I click on this line here and Pro Q 3 I can start a new node now as I say on your particular plugin there may be some existing nodes or another way to add a new node but here in pro-q we just click on the line and if I drag it upwards I can increase that frequency and if I drag it down I can decrease that frequency now the important thing to notice here is the curve either side in fact the frequencies either side of our main frequency that we've selected are also being adjusted according to that curve now if you want to make it much more narrow and be very precise about what you're doing you adjust something called the Q it's almost always called the Q in all plugins now if I drag it upwards it becomes much more narrow and I'm just adjusting a very narrow range of frequencies there likewise if I drag it down here I can affect a very very broad range of frequencies so that's a very very important control and it's important to understand that you're not just adjusting one particular frequency now in this particular example we're looking at what they call a bell curve you can see why it's called a bell curve if I make it like this and you look at the shape but there are other types of curves that we commonly use I'm not going to cover all of them today but I want to cover some of the main ones the first one I like to look at is called a cut so if I change this curve to a low-cut we can see that this from a particular point starts to cut everything below it it's called a low cut it's cutting the low frequencies now in some plugins it's actually called a high pass rather than a low cut it's exactly the same thing with different terminology it's just a different way of saying we'll only let the high frequencies pass or we will just cut the low frequencies now you can also normally control the rate at which that cut happens here it's fairly gradual but if I want to make it more aggressive I'll just change the control here and change it to 36 you can see this is a very very aggressive cut almost immediately after this particular frequency which I've chosen everything below that almost is cut off now if you want to make sure you actually really do cut off literally everything below that frequency you can choose something called a brick wall now this is not available on all plugins I have to say but it's a really good way to show what the cut is doing so I'm actually gonna put this down here so I'm not cutting much at all and I'm going to play this acoustic guitar now have a listen to what happens to the acoustic guitar as I start to drag this up [Music] so you can hear what's happening there it's really just cutting out all frequencies below that point now it has a counterpart in the upper end of the frequency so for example we can use a high cut which is going to cut everything above a particular frequency just the same principle in Reverse so those are very useful types of curves now another one that we often use is called a shelf so and I often use a high shelf I'll just click the shelf here and what that does is if we look at a particular frequency it actually increases everything above that frequency or decreases like so but normally we use it in the sense of a shelf and we'll look at this a little bit later as we try and add some sparkle to this acoustic guitar but those are the three different types of curves that you should be aware of and you can get a lot out of just those three curves now it's sometimes hard to know exactly which frequency that you want to adjust so I'm just going to create another node here and show you a technique for listening out for which frequency you want to adjust I just have created a bell curve here and I'm gonna put up fairly high I'm gonna make it a little bit narrow just like this I'm gonna play the guitar again and I'm gonna start dragging around this in a very boosted sense and trying to listen to which frequencies being boosted here's some very high frequencies are being boosted there so that's called a sweep and it's a very useful technique for trying to find which frequency you want to adjust you can then go ahead and adjust that as little or as much as you want to now some plugins actually have a solo feature this one does and it's here on this headphone icon here if I click on that and play the guitar again it solos those frequencies so I can hear which ones I want to adjust now there isn't available on all plugins and some of them implement it in a different way but it's a good one to look out for now I'm going to EQ this acoustic guitar using a combination of subtractive and additive EQ annouce abstract if occurring is simply where you actually reduce particular frequencies and additive is where you increase particular frequencies now you'll sometimes hear people saying things like oh I only use subtractive EQ or additive eqe I prefer to use a combination of both types of EQ depending on what I'm trying to achieve so let me explain I'm going to start off with this acoustic guitar by trying to get rid of some unwanted frequencies some things that really stand out which I don't like and often in acoustic guitars there's a kind of a honky sound in the mid-range which can make it sound a little bit cheap so let's have a listen and try and find a couple of those frequencies [Music] okay so I'm not really liking that frequency there so I'm going to reduce down and I'm going to just narrow that queue a little bit so I'm just focusing in on a particular frequency let's go there and I'll have a listen again now you'll notice I've reduced it there by around about five four to five dB you can see on the scale here the number of decibels that we are reducing or increasing now there's a lot of people will say you should only ever do things subtly never more than three DB that kind of thing I really think it's best just to use your ears and take out or add the amount that you want and sometimes what I like to do is actually just shut my eyes and then do the adjustment so I'm only using my ears and getting what I want out of the sound so that's the best tip I can give you in terms of how much now I didn't like that frequency and I think there's some others above it which I didn't like as well so let's have another listen yeah that area there it makes it sound really cheap [Music] okay so you would go on I have done a perfect job there but that's the way you would approach getting rid of particular tones within the whole sound that you really don't like now the next kind of subtractive EQ in I will do is a low-cut so I'll add in a low-cut here and you'll notice when I actually play the acoustic guitar but there's a fair amount of energy down here from around about 50 down to 20 that is pretty low and not what you associate necessary with the acoustic guitar kind of a booming rumbly sound so what she want to get rid of that by using this cut I'm just gonna use my ears again and have a listen yeah I really don't need these frequencies down here so around about there is fine now I'm actually gonna change the slope there to really make sure I get rid of some of these sub frequencies because they can really be undesirable so I'll make it much six okay now I'm really really cutting out some of those low frequencies now you may ask Mike why bother to cut frequencies that you can't really hear anyway there's a good question first of all when you get several instruments with those frequencies in it you can get a kind of a buildup in that area and that can create a less of a rumble in your mix which you don't want so that's one reason to get rid of them and the other reason is although you can't hear them your computer as it were can hear them and it will affect other plugins down the chain so for example if you're using a compressor on from this EQ then it may make the compressor kick in when you really don't need it to so that's another reason to do a low cut or a high pass remember as it may be called by some plugins so that's all of my subtractive eqing done the next thing I often do on an acoustic guitar is trying to add a little bit of sparkle and this can happen with vocals as well for example where you just want a bit of breath unison vocals but in acoustic guitars I'll describe it as a sort of not quite jangly but definitely a sparkle at the top so I'm gonna use a high shelf here so I'll just pop that in there and put in where is it a high shelf and as we discussed earlier a high shelf is going to increase all frequencies above a particular frequency so let's have a listen again to this guitar and I'll just increase that high shelf [Music] okay so it's just adding a little bit of spot hawk it even got further again [Music] okay maybe - okay so that's by no means a perfect example but it goes to show you the combination of using subtractive and additive EQ now when you're starting out it's tempting to think of an EQ as just a fancy kind of tone control to make things sounds nice but that is not quite true although you can use it for that but often we use EQ for many different reasons within a mix now I'm not going to go through details of how we use them in different ways but I just want to give you some inspiration by giving you some examples of how we use EQ now the first one is that we're often using it to kind of carve out a space for an instrument in the mix now what happens is when you've got many instruments in a song and some of them occupy the same frequency range they actually begin to cancel each other out and you'll find yourself just pushing up volumes all the time and never quite getting the mix quite right and that's probably because they collide in frequency ranges now it can be a little difficult when you're starting out to hear which frequencies they're both occupying so there are some tools that exist to visually help you so we're looking at Pro q3 again here and I've got a track which has both a guitar and an organ which occupies some similar frequency ranges we're going to start off so you can see the guitar [Music] now you can see that it occupies this mid and top range mostly here now pro-q has a feature where if I put the pro queue plug-in on both instruments I can then view them alongside each other I go to the analyzer down the bottom here and I'm gonna select organ here now if I play again you'll see both the guitar and the organ together and you can see the organ occupies a lot of this space right in the middle here and they could be cancelling each other out so if that's happening we would either decrease or increase frequencies for one of those instruments so I'm actually gonna reduce the middle frequencies for the guitar to try and help the organ shine through a little bit so let's have a listen [Music] now finally I'd like to show you an EQ trick which I use all the time and you really should use it this is on reverb now in this case I've got the acoustic guitar and I'm sending it to a really big hole reverb it's quite overwhelming actually probably more than I'd normally use but it's good for this example now what happens is when you send something like a guitar to that reverb you get this real muddy buildup in the kind of low and mid end of things so what I'd do is put an EQ in the chain before it gets to the reverb I don't put it on the guitar itself but I put it on the bus where the reverb is living so I basically have the guitar which I have a send to the reverb and in that chain I have an EQ on the way so here's how it sounds without any EQ at all [Music] so as I say like loads of muddy reverb they're more rougher than I'd normally use but we can start to really clean it up by adding in a low-cut so I will throw it in a low-cut here and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start sliding up as I play it and you'll begin to really hear the difference and so you can hear that's much much cleaner so if you want you can have that guitar seeming to be in like a Cathedral or something without having that horrible low and mid build-up that's a really really useful way to use EQ now the best way to learn about each cueing is to get your hands dirty and start doing it so make sure you use the best tools at your disposal and those are your ears now if you have any questions at all please do ask in the comments down below and I'll try my best to answer all of them if you like this video then hit the like button if you didn't like this video hit the dislike button twice if you like this kind of content then do subscribe and ring the bell on YouTube so that you get to hear about my future videos now if you have made it this far then I think that shows a certain dedication to the art of eqe so let me know in the comments tell me down below like I made it to the end and I will congratulate you there see in the next video

Channel: Creative Sauce

Views: 31,351

Keywords: Eq Tutorial - Basics, eq tutorial the basics of how to eq properly, eq, tutorial, equalizer, equalization, fl studio, fl studio 12, parametric eq 2, how to eq, basics, how to use equalizer, how to use a parametric eq, how to use a parametric equalizer, how to make beats, how to make a beat, how to mix beats, how to mix, how to master beats, how to master, mixing tutorial, mastering tutorial, mix, vst, vst plugin, plugin, pro tools, leveling, how to mix 101, 101, how, to

Id: DbOBtnNyGYg

Length: 23min 24sec (1404 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/CreativeSauce2B]

Hi folks! For those of you just starting out with recording, you may find this using EQ!

​

As always - thank you for watching :)

[u/Grumpynnn]

Nice tutorial! Maybe you could make a tutorial on FL stock EQ.

[u/chief_yETI]

excellent work, mate. Would like to see one on reverb/delay next

[u/ElMuchoMofo]

Really thorough introduction and well presented. The only thing I wish you did more was bypass the filter so we could hear what the changes were doing side by side with the original. But I enjoyed the video for sure and learned something about reverb eq!