This muddiness tastes like mint….blergh!

I got quite a few responses to my weed-riddled garden story the other day.

Turns out there are some engineer/gardeners out there (Hi Alyssa!) that enjoyed my analogy.

Some didn’t like it that much but that’s ok. I’m not for everyone.

In fact, if you get angry easily at what people write for free on the internet I recommend using the unsubscribe button rather than the “spam” button. Hitting “spam” is kind of like punching a girl scout when she’s trying to give you a free sample of their cookies.

It’s just mean.

Anyway, back to my garden.

Another analogy on audio popped into my head as I was wondering what the hell I should do with all that mint that’s taking over my garden.

In case you didn’t know, mint grows!

All over the place.

If you don’t take care of it it’ll run rampant all over your other herbs and vegetables.

And that’s when I realized that dealing with mint is exactly like dealing with muddiness in your mixes.

You have to take care of the low-mids otherwise your mix will sound like somebody threw a blanket over it.

It’ll lack definition and clarity and will just sound boomy and boring.

You need just enough of it, and you need it in the right instruments.

Just like you need just enough mint and you have to separate it in its own little area so it doesn’t grow over everything else.

Here’s a quick system to getting rid of muddiness in your mixes:

Start soloing instruments one by one and notice which instruments build up the most low-end.
Use an analyzer to see the build-up of frequencies as you go.
Filter everything you don’t need in the lows, as far up as you can go without making the instruments sound “weak.”
Do the same thing with EQ cuts in the low-mids.

That’s just a sneak preview of the similar things I teach inside EQ Strategies – The Ultimate Guide to EQ.

Check it out for some solutions to your common EQ problems:

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

P.S.

Here’s an email I got as I was writing this post about EQ Strategies:

“Yes! the EQ Guide is informative and very helpful. I am now able to digest the concept of EQ’ing a whole lot easier than before. My mixes are getting better and better, cleaner and everything is sitting where it supposed to for the most “practice” resource much like a scales guide is for guitar playing.” -Chuck Sailer

Image by: Edsel L

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