Modern VS Old School EQ Moves Explained

do you ever find yourself getting caught up in the new wave of mixes coming out and finally feel like you have a handle on it but then you have a band come in that doesn't want any type of modern production they want things to sound more authentic or old school you know not as polished and the first question i'm sure that you internalize is like well if you wanted an old-school style mix why would you come to me when i don't even do that kind of thing but whatever we gotta eat right and regardless of genre or style choice it's our job to make the band happy and give them what they want regardless of our opinion to an extent well when they give you references of older bands you need to sort of put yourself in the mindset of those engineers from back then how would they have approached this differently i mean the first thought is probably working on a console right but this is so much more involved than that by the end of this video you'll have an understanding of the different types of eq moves used in modern and old school mixes so what's happening fam miami here with jst and i thought this was an interesting topic because one could argue that we prefer the way that music sounds now because of all the tools we have at our disposal but what if having all these options is taking away from the source material maybe there was something to using the few options that they had i'm saying the few options they had as if like having a console is a disadvantage or something but you know what maybe it is unless you're mutt lang who would eq every single syllable on a vocal differently sometimes while we would just throw soothe on it ain't nobody got time for all that ain't nobody got time for that we're going to get into this and figure out who has the right idea when it comes to proper eq technique across the frequency spectrum you know the proper way to boost our subs and boost our highs and on that subject click that subscribe button to boost my subs because that will definitely boost my high i'm high on life people get your heads out of the gutter make sure to click that like button and hopefully the only bell you touch today won't be on an eq my transition game is still crazy wait wait don't think that i forgot and we have to announce the winner for the daking mike pre and we're going to do that somewhere in this video so stay tuned the first difference in the way of eq'ing is how people simply used to eq on a console versus using multiple eqs on a single source so the old school would have their filters and a few bands to get a source right on a popular eq like a knee a modern plug-in chain for us can have tons of eqs on it even if we're not thinking about it let's think of a vocal chain waves are eq4 to roll off the low end because it has that adjustable curve and it's a habit to pull it up q10 or fat filter for cuts or boost soothe as a dynamic eq a de-esser which is another dynamic eq and we still fight with the vocal chains sometimes right living in reseda there's a freeway running through the yard it's a long day living in reseda there's a freeway running through the yard it's a long day living in receda there's a freeway running through the yard it's a long day [Music] there's a freeway running through the yard it's a long day living in it's a freeway running [Music] it's a long [Music] there's actually a bit of beauty in the simplicity they used to have we're kind of spoiled and because of that we rely on tons of products to get the job done what this can lead to is having too many options to focus which decreases productivity but does give the option for a more polished sound but wait a second i wonder what saint anger snare might have sounded like if they had all these tools at their disposal you know i love bob rock but come on that one was crazy let's listen to it for a second [Music] so unless bob snare can redeem himself buy everything every plug-in i mention wait so unless bob snare can redeem itself by everything achievement unlocked i'm sorry i'm getting a little emotional that was my best transition yet transition game leveled up so yeah i don't think less is always more even though i consider yingwei malmsteen from the old school there was something he said once that stuck with me less is more no more is more how can less be more it's impossible more is more so we have more tools at our disposal now just understand that if a project is calling for less polish let's try bringing it down to a single eq and see what we can do with that which brings me to the second difference in the style of eq broadband versus notching let's take a second to think about the first eqs that were used in consoles neve api and uh emi or chandler none of these had a very tight queue so everything was pretty broadband until the ssl which came out around 1980. i mean that means pretty much all of the infamous stuff like pink floyd the beatles you know was just gentle broadband shaping the term that became associated with these broadband styled eq moves was musical so the thought was the more we were able to flexibly manipulate the original source the more unmusical it sounded but just to clarify the ssl was still considered musical for the most part the eqs used today are so much more drastic than what the ssl eq was even capable of i remember about four years ago when i was working on a mix and i was talking to my good friend al levy from dale the mix and i was asking his opinion on the song and he says i can already tell that you're over eq'ing these guitars you know notching out every little frequency and it's making the guitar sound extremely thin i want you to go back use a four band eq and make it sound good with just that sure enough i went back to the drawing board with it and i got a sound in which the guitars were massive i got to give a redeeming quality for bob rock here i think back to the metallica black album that was mixed on an ssl with a few band eq and those are some of the beefiest guitars i've ever heard so be careful when using notches because you can take the sole out of the instrument if you dig too deep into it with eq unless it's 4k then we can just you know all nod and agree at the smart choice you made so yes broadband for more musical old-school styles and notching to be modern and get your hands dirty the third difference is they used minimal additive and subtractive eq moves we don't really go by these rules anymore i sort of brought this up in my video about audio school but they had to get the concept of teaching that from somewhere right old school mixers would not do the drastic boosting and cutting that we do today by limiting themselves to these thoughts a lot of this stuff actually starts to make sense why they would redo entire takes for stuff that today we would consider perfectly workable material it's funny how we work in the box but they put themselves in one i gotta write that down that line was fire many of the greatest engineers of today will tell you that there's no wrong way to make a sound so as long as you can make it sound good don't think too much into it but if you're recording a band and they specifically want that old-school sound it means you have to spend way more time perfecting the source during tracking which will get expensive for them so as long as they're willing to dish out that cash give them what they want i suppose so let's go over the big three one more time single eqs versus using multiple eqs broadband versus notching minimal additive and subtractive eq and i'll run off a couple more that i don't think are as important the use of hardware versus digital filters you know that gets kind of tricky because of the style of aliasing that happens how they used to use de-essers in place of a dynamic eq even though de-essers would have to have upwards and downward compression and expansion to even come close to what we use now there's always so much to talk about in this world of audio but i never know how nerdy you want me to get in these videos if you feel like we've gotten the basics covered and you want to start doing some deeper dives into these topics please please please just let me know in the comments below that's how i determine the direction i'm gonna go with these videos it's completely based on you guys so the next time you're recording something and you need to go for a more raw sound or old school sound you've been pointed in the right direction once again want to thank all those people that participated in the daking mic pre contest all you had to do was leave a comment and we're going to pull that winner up on screen right about now thank you so much for entering just make sure to hit up support joeysturgistones.com to claim your prize and we'll be shipping that guy out to you if you're an engineer on the come up give this video a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe if you only have to do it one time and tap that bell for notifications so when a video drops you know the location until next time i am out of here mic drop accept as engineers we know i'd never really dropped this thing because that gear really expensive even if it is a piece of shirt later

Channel: Joey Sturgis Tones

Views: 6,559

Keywords: home recording, audio production, mixing tutorials, Analog eq, Plugin eq, joey sturgis tones, JST, audio mixing, EQ, what kind of EQ should I use

Id: ef4YeDcxrRQ

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021