Oh man…have I got an analogy for you… So this weekend we had a party at our house to celebrate Eurovision. If you don’t know what Eurovision is you’re: a) Probably American Anyway, it’s every May where Europe goes to war with each over through song. The whole continent competes and every country votes for...
Got a question from Michael, an EQ Strategies customer about live sound: My question is whether do I use same EQ technique mentioned in your guideline for both recording and live sound. Or are there differences in technique when you EQ for recording and live sound. One difference I can think of is that you...
Nailing that low end is tricky right? You want the bass EQ to be just right to get thick lows without muddiness while still making the bass cut through the mix, even if you’re mixing on small speakers. You might be working with many different instruments and they all sound good, but for some reason,...
Mixing drums is one of the hardest things you do in your mix. But it’s crucial to get it right because a tight drum sound is one of the most important elements of creating a solid foundation in your mix. A weak drum sound kills the rest of the mix and makes everything else suffer....
Today’s tip will be a simple one, but so very useful when you’re trying to get instruments to fit together. I did this the other day when I was mixing vocals and the instruments were always cluttering up the vocal. If I pulled the fader up the vocal was too loud. If I left it...
Using reverb can get pretty challenging. Not too much and it’ll sound dry and unpolished. Too much and it’ll be a cluttered mess. You can use reverb for contrast between verse and chorus as well as how you can use reverb to create two completely different mixes for the same song. Reverb For Contrast In...
I was working on this bass track the other day. I multed the bass so that I mixed the verse and chorus bass parts differently. I ended up slapping a bass emulator, an EQ plug-in and the Rbass from Waves to mix it. In the end the bass parts sounded very different, which was the...
Compression is a tricky subject and it can confuse you even if you’ve been using it for a while. There are always more compression techniques to learn, depending on the genre, the instrument or the setting so I sat down and grabbed a nice collection of compression videos you can enjoy during your coffee breaks...
I was working on a drum track the other day. They were actually virtual drums but both kick and snare had multiple tracks that all had different characteristics. For instance, the kick had three tracks: A “body” track A “beater/snap” track A low “sub” track Having multiple tracks that all sound different is a very...
Got this question from a reader: In some of your emails you briefly mentioning balancing tracks. Of course, I understand that’s the first thing and I’m wondering if you have any articles pertaining to balancing (leveling?) tracks. Is there something you focus on before you begin EQ and Compression? Balancing tracks is the fundamental starting...