If You Think You Only Need One EQ, You’re Wrong

Björgvin Benediktsson 0 Comments

EQ’ing is hard!

And you engineers get real worried sometimes about how many plug-ins you’re “supposed” to use on on a track.

Or how much cutting or boosting you’re “allowed” to do.

It’s all a bit funny to me because it just doesn’t matter.

You can do whatever you want if the end result sounds good to you and your client.

EQ’ing Bass

Take this one bass guitar track I was mixing.

When I was mixing it in with the drums I used two EQs.

The first was for subtractive EQ’ing and making it fit with the drums.

Then, after some compression I added a second EQ for some slight boosts in the mids. The bass was nice and thick but I made it cut through a little more with an additional boost.

After that was done I focused on the rest of the mix. I added in the other instruments and went around EQ’ing them as well.

It wasn’t until everything was rocking in the mix that I went back to the bass.

With a bunch of new instruments the bass started cluttering up the mix again. It was a little too muddy and it lacked some clarity.

Did I go back to my EQs and modify what I already did and risk the balance I had before?

No.

I just slapped on a third EQ, made some quick adjustments and rebalanced my mix.

Use As Much As You Want

Sometimes you simply run out of bands and need to be more surgical.

If you want to have three different EQs on your tracks all doing different things be my guest.

I won’t judge you.

You don’t have to worry about how many plug-ins you’re “supposed” to use or what you “should” do when you EQ.

In fact, if you’re insecure about how to use EQ I WILL judge you if you don’t get my Ultimate EQ Guide.

There’s no reason to not know your way around the frequency spectrum. The Ultimate EQ Guide has a detailed breakdown of everything you need to know to recognize frequencies. It helps you wipe the muddiness from your mixes and increase clarity and separation in your instruments.

That tip above is just a tiny nugget of wisdom compared to treasure chest of knowledge you’ll get out of the EQ Guide.

Grab it here:

www.audio-issues.com/ultimate-guide-eq

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