The number one way to stop "interfering frequencies" is to start with sounds that fit together well. It sounds easy, but takes a long time, a lot of experience, to become good at. When I started out my ears weren't developed enough to fully appreciate that some sounds I was trying to put together weren't going to sound good together, no matter if I went nuts with EQ, compression or any other processing.

This is not to say that with the right sounds there is no need for EQ. But the place to start is always with the sound choices.

If the sounds do fit together well but need some frequencies cut away where they are clashing, then this is a creative decision. I'm sure someone can provide you with a graphic of how they personally make their own EQ decisions most of the time, but that may well be of little use to you and the way you want your songs to sound.

Some basses are low, deep, warm - they fill out the bottom end nicely, but have no presence, no bite. Other basses have a lot of mids and a decent amount of high end. If you like your basses to have some high frequency "bite", what use is a guide which tells you "lowpass filter all the frequencies above 1 kHz from your bass, they're not required"?

With lead sounds - sometimes they'll be extremely highpass filtered, leaving only high frequencies. Other times they'll have content down to 200 Hz or lower - it really depends on the individual sounds and their context - maybe in one song you'll cut out the low frequencies from the lead to let the bass through, then in the next song you'll leave more of the lead's low frequencies in and bring more of the bass through at 1 kHz.

It's a creative decision, not a case of "check this list of rules which will tell you what to do".

Nice post Derail. It is all about selecting the right sounds in the first place and that comes with experience.

although there's not a checklist of rules, there are some rules of thumb that if genreally adhered to will make your job easier, at least from an engineering point of view.

I'm going to take it that you know the inverse boost/cut trick (hi q, max boost, then sweep the sound (best soloed at least at first) then cut when you hear the resonant bands etc.).

Now if you solo your tracks one by one and run a analyser on the master you can see which contain the same frequencies and where they overlap. By A/B'ing them, you can easily see this and by soloing both of them you can see a boost in the overlapping regions.

This method also helps to teach you what sounds have overlapping frequencies and after a while you know when you hear the sounds which have similar content and which will sit independently of each other.

The other thing is shelving anything that could have contant outside of it's desired band (some basslines have some hi content for instant and some mid leads will bleed both up and down so a band pass is used etc.).

Finally panning can help separation with EQ - things that overlap in frequencies, can still exist to varied degrees if they are separated in the stereo field correctly.

I remember a while back someone posted a link to another forum that commonly used eq settings for commonly used sounds (kick drums, basses, leads, elec guitars). Can't think of it now but I'm sure it was one of the regs on here so maybe they can post it again.

Hope this helps

Make sure your sounds are sonically viable together in the first place (as mentioned above)
Use your ears
Practice
Practice
Practice

There is an EQ video tutorial on my website regarding harmonic EQ which may or may not help you out.

Mark

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Psy-Trance Production

After focusing on good source sounds that dont require too much EQ and knowing your monitors well, a good way to get better at EQ'n is to start by using a VST EQ that has a spectrum or frequency analyzer. Of course eventually you will have to move onto being able to EQ without any sort of visual aide, but i'd definately start off with EQs with visual represenation of what the sound is doing for learning on. At the moment I use mostly Waves EQs without any analyzer but I'd recommend the Voxengo EQ's for improving EQ technique.

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drop an EQ onto the channel. Sweeep through the frequencies to see how the sound is affected. now choose the designated frequency you want that sound to have

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if u do the eq-sweep technique too much your track will sounds fucking dull as hell in the end.

quote:

Originally posted by Kismet7 After focusing on good source sounds that dont require too much EQ and knowing your monitors well, a good way to get better at EQ'n is to start by using a VST EQ that has a spectrum or frequency analyzer. Of course eventually you will have to move onto being able to EQ without any sort of visual aide, but i'd definately start off with EQs with visual represenation of what the sound is doing for learning on. At the moment I use mostly Waves EQs without any analyzer but I'd recommend the Voxengo EQ's for improving EQ technique.

Why must you eventually move on to using no visual aid? That makes no sense... Use what works best for you.

Tutorial advice on EQing? I'll give you a great tutorial advice.. I think this is one of the best books that solely covers the topic of equalization. I've gotten it recommended from another guy, and just bought it myself. Can never be outlearnt on such an important topic. You never know what insight you might have missed out on.

http://www.pc-publishing.com/seqtt.html

Last edited by lenieNt Force on Oct-16-2009 at 19:07

Im no pro but this is what i do.

Go through playing all the sound and eqing the shit out of everything. Then play the song see which ones need more opening up, more eqing, etc.
Btw, I use FL9 so the para eq2 really helps with the process.

After all this, I start on the stereo imaging. Make the leads mostly stereo, then the lows get merged to mono.

Hope this helps

Ive always had a question about EQ and compression together.

When you EQ a sound, you lower unwanted frequencies right? But when you add a compressor, it lowers some of the loud sounds and boosts the quieter sounds. So when you do that, don't you technically reverse the effects of EQing? You just silenced a part of the sound and made it louder again. What about using filters to completely roll off the frequencies, is that the same as EQing?