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PutBoy is right although its not a simple case of prescribing some other solution that 'works.' It doesnt swing like that.
Put it this way - every instrument has an exacting harmonic series in relation to a fundamental frequency and sometimes it is incredibly complex. If it is atonal then it will probably consist of partials - as in membranophonic instruments like bass drums and steel drums.
If you artificially increase or decrease certain frequency ranges of an instrument using EQ you will make it sound unnatural. If you keep it subtle you can get away with it, but if you are making huge +15/-15 dB boosts/cuts to an instrument so it will fit in the mix, you are probably overcooking it and theres a good chance it will sound shite when you are done.
You fill up a spectrum with a good choice of bass, mid range and treble instruments (spanning several octaves) and you make full use of stereo separation and panning to make it all fit inside the box.
That EQ guide basically describes a mix as having to fit into a box where its vertical dimension (y axis) is the amplitude of the sound, the horizontal dimension (x axis) is frequency and the third (z axis) dimension is stereo width.
The third one is very often ignored and I used to do this alot. Basically, I had too many instruments sitting dead centre and the only way to stay within the dimensions of the box was to either a) lower the output gain on the master bus (thus making everything quieter) or b) compressing the living shit out of the mix so it fits under 0 dB. Both are undesirable if you do them to the extreme.
From studying Beathacker's Transpose, I eventually worked out that the only instruments that sound as if they sit dead centre, with zero stereo width are the kick drum and bassline. Everything else is either panned or widened off centre or automated so that it exists predominantly on the left or right side of the mix, when another similar instrument is on the opposite side.
The trick in that song is that the high 303 leads at the end of the track, are doubled up but widened to varying degrees and both instances have a slightly different tuning so you never get a situation where they are exactly in phase, causing a spike in amplitude (which kills headroom). If you listen closely you will also hear that their stereo pan is automated and they jump to opposite sides of the mix and cross over at one point, to get the greatest sense of space and the greatest loudness without resorting to massive amounts of compression or clipping. The hihats are all over the mix, both left and right side. Look at the waveform in a wave editor - notice how it isnt even compressed all that much despite sounding huge and loud. It still hits close to 0 dB but those are transient hits from the bass drum and high hats. The key thing is that it hasnt been brickwalled and it sounds so much more dynamic because of it.
Take a listen:
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Pay very close attention to how the lead drifts from left to right. Also notice that you cannot get that dischordant, off key sound on a 303 without using more than one instance. Finally, notice that both instances of the 303 sound *never* occupy the exact same phase, key, stereo width and pan at the same time. When one is hard panned right, the other one is sounding up and to the left (for example).
Last edited by Derivative on May-25-2006 at 17:49
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