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So...
The first step in making that searing lead sear without drowning out that flitty arpeggio is to use filters intelligently.
Don't use a low-pass filter on all of your synths and create a mess for yourself. Instead, have a balance between low-passed, high-passed and band-passed synths. At the same time, resonance can go a long way in emphasizing a certain frequency range of a part. This makes this particular part more robust but doesn't overwhelm the other sounds.
An epic trancer, break it down in your head. What's in it?
Well, you have:
1. The kick
2. The bassline
3. The hi-hat
4. The lead
5. The pad
6. The "flanged" band-passed or high pass pad
7. The second lead sound
8. Miscellaeous percussion
9. FX
How do we make all of these parts fit into a harmonious whole without creating a chaotic mess?
Let's take an example. Let's say you have a rich pad in the background of your newest soon-to-be-released stormer, but you realize that it's being obscured by some other sounds. Well, you can pretty much rule out most of above except the leads and the FX. Here is a strategy that should work for you:
Imagine you have one of the synth leads coming in every two bars on whole notes or even half notes. The other lead is a little busier and is considered the primary lead. What if the two are both primarly low-mid to mid sounds? Try this, take one lead and boost somewhere in the mids, maybe around 3k or whatever suits the sound, in the other lead, do the opposite and cut an equivalent amount at the same frequency. At the same time, try boosting another frequency on the secondary synth and cutting the same on the primary. Now, take that background pad of yours and cut in the two places you boosted the leads. Imagine your sounds are living entities, if they don't have room to breath, they're going to suffer.
Of course, you should be subtle about the boosting and cutting. Boosting something by 7db usually isn't a good idea. Also, make sure you don't use too narrow a bandwidth as this always sounds unnatural.
You can imagine, the next tool for seating your sounds, panning, would go a long way when used in conjunction with the above eq tips for leads and pads.
So what about panning? We all have that hi-hat going in the center of the mix, but what about those cymbals, those closed hi-hats and shakers. They all sound so similar. Similar in frequency content and similar in timbre. You must pan, pan and pan somemore to make this similar sounds seperate. Take those closed hats to one side (not to far though). Make that cymbal bounce from side to side. This opens up a lot of space for percussion. Something we don't have the benefit of doing with the kick and the bassline.
Now you've given your leads room to breath, your pads room to wiggle and your percussion room to....percuss?!, so it's time to concentrate on the low end of things. Kicks get a lot of their power in the (give or take) 80 to 130hz with harmonics in the 1k region. Basslines of course fight for a lot of the same space, but around 250-300hz things can get messy. The best thing to do here is experiment with little cuts in this muddy 250 area. See if it opens things up. If not, work on your envelopes more. Hopefully, when your finished with your mix a little multiband compression can tighten this area up.
Other little miscellaneous tips that will go a long way in sonically tidying up a mix are the following:
1. Don't be satisfied. Don't have the "Oh well, it doesn't sit now, but later I'll EQ and make it sit." attitude. Get it sounding good with filters and panning, saving EQ for the things that you couldn't do with the filters.
2. Warm reverbs are nice. Those lush reverb tails so smooth on a soloed track, but add that pad with that low frequency tail and your going to splash mud over the rest of your mix, instead, take advantage of the reverb high-cut and low-cut knobs and ask yourself does the tail really need to extend that long after the sound. Think similarly for delays.
3. Not all EQ plug-ins are created equal, no pun intended, but many will do the job. A lot of top engineers say that the Pultec EQ on the Mackie and the Sony Oxford EQ sound the best (for plug-ins), but who has that kind of money. According to those same engineers, Waves is pretty colorless, and that's a good thing. When in doubt, whip the Waves out, right! Most other EQ's will do the trick and no one EQ is massively superior to another (in the software world).
4. Cut out what you don't need. A kick doesn't have too much info around 5khz, but it does have some. Solution, try slightly cutting above 5k and see what you get, same for a bassline (low-frequency bassline). Try a cut below 500hz on hi-hats, there is not much useful below there and you can even experiment with cutting below 1k.
5. Hi-hats can be given a little edginess and sparkle above 5 kHz. Similarly, most similar percussion will have close to the same characteristics. The depth and warmth of a synth pad lies around the 80 to 250 range (be careful), the presence in the 1 to 3k range and breathiness around 6k. It's roughly the same for leads as for pads, but you can add some top end at around 9kHz for some extra sear. Of course, these are approximations, but that's all you'll ever get with synthesized sounds, it's different for acoustic sources.
By now, you might be saying that you already know all of this, and if so, great, the take home message is that there aren't "EQ settings" that can be recommended. Sometimes we hear a polished mix and don't think about how hard-earned that polish is, but if we take the time to use filters intelligently, panning deliberately and EQ subtely, then maybe we can acheive a little bit of that sheen before we send our next stormer to the mastering house.
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Business is very food.
Last edited by Etherium on Nov-07-2003 at 16:22
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