FL Studio 12 - Equalization is Easy!

what's up guys i'm talking about eq today in this video i'm going to touch on three questions the first what is eq second why you should care about it and third how do you do it and to demonstrate that i'm going to be using fruity's parametric eq 2 tool which is native to fl studio let's get started eq stands for equalization the active equalizing is modifying the frequencies of sounds in your mix you can boost certain frequencies to make a sound more powerful or cut certain frequencies to eliminate unwanted parts of a sound this is accomplished via a tool called an equalizer and i've got one open now but i'll get to that shortly the key to equalizing is in the frequency and the idea is simple you want to equalize all of the sounds in your mix so that they occupy different frequency ranges when sounds occupy the same space on the frequency spectrum they fight with each other and it muddies up the mix this is generally not ideal you want your sounds each to have their own spot in the mix and on the spectrum to keep things as clean as possible now obviously you are going to have some overlap here and equalization is not an exact science to be honest it's really done to taste if you're looking at the spectrum for all your sounds and you see that many strike heavily in the same area don't freak out that's natural it's up to you to decide how much you want to equalize your mix elements and do what sounds best to you 3d parametric eq2 is fl studio's native equalization tool it's quite nice and it has a lot of visual feedback i created a pattern using a serum synth let's listen and watch the frequencies of the sound in the equalizer you'll notice frequency hits all across the spectrum in the low mid and high areas look at how some frequency hits glow brighter than others the areas that glow the most are the major frequency regions that the sound strikes at this information is important and will aid you in equalizing your sounds [Music] the equalizer functions on two main units of measurement the raw frequency is measured in hertz on the x-axis and your cuts and boosts are measured in decibels on the y-axis there are some additional x-axis information at the top that gives you a rough separation of regions starting at the sub at the 50 hertz region and moving all the way up to treble at the 10 000 hertz region to get more familiar with the frequency spectrum move your cursor back and forth within the equalizer and look at fl studio's information panel at the top left it'll tell you exactly where you're at in the spectrum the seven circles in the middle of the window are your bands they're initialized at a set location and are numbered one to seven the default locations are an attempt to split the spectrum up into even sections or bands think of these as your anchor points you can click and drag to move one around and start carving the frequencies of your sound when you hover or grab one it'll give you a readout in hertz of where it's at each band anchor point has a few parameters and several options to help you shape it in the way you desire this bw knob at the bottom right is particularly useful it stands for bandwidth it changes how wide the frequency range is for the selected band allowing you control over narrower or wider ranges let's take a look at how that affects band 7. we can see that the range is pretty wide right now let's tighten it up move that slider down and you can notice the range that band 7 is modifying becomes much smaller this freak knob right above bandwidth and these long vertical sliders are just alternative ways to change band frequency and band gain remember our x and y axes frequency is on the x measured in hertz and gain is on the y measured in decibels i rarely use these but it's nice to know they're there i just prefer to click and drag my bands around you can also right click on a band to find more useful options order controls how steep or gentle your modifications are here's gentle and here's steep types are just quick ways to select popular band structures such as a high or low pass all right it's time to tie all of this together by taking a look at a small composition what i've got here is a drum beat and a lead pattern the lead is split into two separate sounds that i have layered together to my liking layering is exactly what it sounds like it's layering simultaneous sounds on top of one another that generally play the same patterns i've layered these sounds together primarily by equalizing them in different ways the high lead which is here on the left i have high passed at around 250 hertz when i solo this and play it you can hear and see that there are hardly any low frequencies in the sound due to that high pass [Music] in contrast i have a low pass on the low lead here on the right at 4 500 hertz when i solo this in play it you can hear and see that there are not any high end or treble frequencies in the sound because i've cut them out [Music] i've also slightly boosted the 170 and 400 hertz areas to get a little more power out of the bass and lower frequencies of the sound so what we're left with is one sound featuring a more prominent high end and the other sound featuring a more prominent low end and when i layer them together they sound like a rich full sound again now you might be asking well what about all the mid-range frequencies that are overlapping and that's a good question to ask in my example i felt that the mid-range frequencies from both sounds were not very thick so they weren't really clashing heavily with one another it sounded fine to me to leave both sounds with a relatively unequalized mid-range but in your case or your taste might be different [Music] [Applause] [Music] one last thing i'll mention is to give your kick some room in the mix the smaller equalizer on top shows my kick when i play this i can see that the real low end thud of my kick occurs right in the 60 to 70 hertz range right here on band 1. so when i'm equalizing my other mix elements i want to reserve that frequency range as much as possible to preserve every ounce of power that my kick has that's why my low lead still cuts all low frequencies below 80 hertz [Music] i want enough low end in the lead to make it sound good but not too much that it fights for space with the kick i want the kick to be the most powerful thing in the mix that you hear and feel just so you can hear some lead frequencies that i've cut out i'll solo the low lead which i've already done and bring back all the low end frequencies it has it might be difficult to hear over the video but do your best to listen to the difference you should hear more low frequencies come through as i pull back the band [Music] the flip side might be easier to hear listen to all the high end frequencies that come back when i bring back band 7. [Music] well i think that's it for this tutorial remember guys that equalization is more of an art than anything else the purpose of this exercise was to give you some examples and to get you thinking about how to equalize elements in your own mixes do it sounds best to you and i'm sure you'll end up with something wicked sick later guys thanks for watching

Channel: alexcode

Views: 19,902

Rating: 4.913846 out of 5

Keywords: FL Studio 12, Fruity Loops, Fruity Parametric EQ2, Equalizer, Equalization, Mixing, Layering, Serum, Beatmaking, Music, Production, EDM, Tutorial, Guide, Bands, Boost, Cut

Id: qFhtUkCGRHE

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

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No seriously, quality tutorial. Exact, precise and to the point.

[u/astro_world]

Nice. Thanks.

[u/Amphetaminoman]

Nice fl