The Artistic View on EQ

One Minute EQ Trick - The Importance of Filters for Clearing Up Your Low-End

As a mixing processor, EQ is pretty much one of the most important ones.

You can think of it like you were a sculptor using a chisel.

You have a block of marble and chisel away at it until something beautiful forms from your imagination.

When you use filters and cuts you carve away at the frequency spectrum of your instruments, making room for everything in the mix and cutting away everything that doesn’t belong.

You can also look at it from the perspective of a painter or a colorist adding to a pencil drawing.

You add gradients of color that make something simple look even more vibrant.

When you add warmth and presence to sounds you help them cut right through the mix without overpowering other instruments.

You can also look at it like an art historian, admiring the various decades of art all with their different characteristics and picking the most important art pieces of every era.

It’s similar to when you’re using your analyzer on your mix. Whether you’re mixing or mastering you use analysis to help you see the frequency spectrum of each instrument, deciding where you should focus your efforts and finding what’s lacking.

As far as art goes, EQ’ing is pretty artistic.

There’s really no one way to go about it. It very much comes down to preference and taste in the long run as long as you simply follow a few guidelines to help you create a balance within the frequency spectrum of your mix.

Update: I put together this free EQ Course with 70 mixing hacks if you are not ready to buy my ultimate guide below.

Check out EQ Strategies – The Ultimate Guide to EQ for more practical and easy to use tips on EQ:

It’ll help you:

Know the importance of getting used to an EQ instead of a fancy plug-in that EQ’s for you
Figure out how to recognize and eliminate annoying sounds
Learn the only mantra you need for effective EQ’ing at the beginning of your mix
Understand how small boosts in the harmonics of instrument can get them to cut through
Know when to use your training wheels i.e. analyzer

Here’s where you go:

www.EQStrategies.net

If you liked this post, share the love:

Music Mixing

About Audio Issues and Björgvin Benediktsson

We help musicians transform their recordings into radio-ready and release-worthy records they’re proud to release.

We do this by offering simple and practical music production and success skills they can use immediately to level themselves up – while rejecting negativity and gear-shaming from the industry. A rising tide floats all boats and the ocean is big enough for all of us to surf the sound waves.

Björgvin’s step-by-step mixing process has helped thousands of musicians confidently mix their music from their home studios. If you’d like to join them, check out the best-selling book Step By Step Mixing: How To Create Great Mixes Using Only 5 Plug-ins right here.