Equaliser Tips to create separate layers in your mix
These Equaliser will hopefully help you with what is arguably one of the most important tools for mixing music.
Here’s one of the reasons why…
An Equaliser allows you to shape the frequency response of a sound and place it within a specific frequency band, this is particularly helpful if you have a variety of full-range sounds that sound muddy or cluttered when layered over each other.
Using an Equaliser to confine each sound within a particular frequency range can help to create a cleaner layering effect, you’re not limited to complete cuts – that can sometimes alter the source sound too much, but clearing up space for other elements to cut through will benefit the overall mix.
Even if it sounds like there’s minimal low-end in a synth or percussion channel, it always helps to use a spectrum analyser to make sure. Often the low-end that comes through is masked by other louder frequencies in the source sound, however the lows are still present and end up conflicting with other sounds in your mix.
Cutting low-end from sounds which don’t need it is hugely important, making sure there is no frequency conflict in the low end of your track – the result is less phasing issues too.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts…
It’s not just the low-end of a track which benefits from this, every instrument or channel in your track can benefit from well thought out processing with an Equaliser, especially in busy sections of an arrangement where there are multiple sounds playing at a single moment.
One thing to remember is that the perfect mix is about the relationship between all of the elements in the track.
Sometimes when removing frequencies from a sound that is soloed the effect can sound very drastic, this is why it’s important to reference the difference in solo as well as alongside the other sounds in the overall mix.
Here’s an Equaliser Tips tutorial video running through the basics of using Equaliser on various instruments and sounds:
[youtube_sc url=”https://youtu.be/JYZsQrSMwoc”]
