How to Use EQ Like a Pro: Fix Problems and Add Polish

Hello. Welcome to another episode of Inside the Recording Studio. I am Jody Whitesides and with me as always is Mr. Chris Hellstrom. Halstrom, how are you today, Chris? Oh good, now I'm confused. Shit, I thought we went back to like the 20s there for a second. That's just trying to get in the mood for what we're about to talk about today. You sound like 20s old timey radio. All right, well what are we about to talk about today?

Eq styles and kind of like a yes or no on corrective versus sweetening kind of thing. That's my understanding anyway. Hmm. All right. That's right. Yeah. Glad we're both on the same page here. I reject your reality and insert my own. Because that would be awkward. I'm not talking about your subject. I'm going to talk about something else.

That would be very confusing. Exactly. To you, we'll just jump right in. Oh, in my mind, and I live there. What is the difference between corrective versus sweetening EQ in your mind? Holy shit. [ I hear corrective EQ as fixing something that is mildly, intermediate or grossly out of order in a recorded track. Okay] That's corrective EQ. Sweetening in Q, I'm going to hear as a method l of putting a little extra sheen on something that already is in a decent place.

Fair enough. I agree with that. I like to think. How about, okay, I mean, you're agreeing with that statement, Yeah, I mean, I think very similarly as you do, I think the difference is just a corrective, but are you going to say there's something different to that? Mm-hmm. like you're fixing issues in the audio, not necessarily just, oh, I know I'm going to roll Okay.

off some low end here, but if there are issues where there might be rumble or there might be a hissing frequency or something, there might be a ringing in a snare that you know is going to be an issue. Those are fixes that I'm looking at as corrective, you're correcting the source. And sweetening would be to me just making it sit better in the mix. Corrective EQ also helps something sit better in the mix as well. I mean, that's kind of the point of EQ in general.

Okay. to me it's just getting rid of stuff that is going to cause an issue down the line. That's the way I look at it. Ultimately, if we're listening to some audio and we're deciding to use A ratchet. an EQ on it is generally it doesn't have enough of this, so we add that or it has too much of this It's the idea.

and we remove that. That's basically EQ, right? But I think just the mindset is, because I know that when I track stuff and generally this would be with live drums and things where before I even Uh-huh. get into mixing drums I listen for potential issues and whatever that is All smart tracking engineers, recording engineers would do that. yeah and you could say that well shouldn't that have been done at the recording stage and of of course, that's you shoot for that as, as best as possible.

That's the hope. Sure. That's kind of the thing. But there might be issues there. There might be, you said there might be some rumble or it might be something. Sure. So I like to get rid of those. And it's sort of like a mixed prep type of thing that I like to do so that I know when I'm mixing it tracking, I'm going, what the heck is that no annoying frequency? Oh, it's that. Once I compressed the snare, we got like a weird ring in like the 2k range or

whatever. Right? So I like to get rid of those things as much as I can before I do it. Yeah, but I'm not Al Schmitt. That's kind of the whole point of the Al Schmidt method of getting the microphone in the right space. (laughs) So yeah, no, I don't even have anything funny to say to that. Are you sure? Well, let's take a case in point. Of course, that's the thing, but in the mix there are moving parts and things happen and you try to capture things as best as possible.

There might always be issues. There might be string squeaks on a guitar or there might be other issues that you have to correct. Yeah. We recently were working on a mix for a song Yep. that we were working down. And there was an issue that I heard on literally one word Yeah. that was getting mashed by the kick drum. Yeah. And then there was another point where there was a single word that had an issue with the proximity of the vocal to the vocal mic.

With the first one, with the word being hidden, so to speak, with the kick drum, explain what you did there. I didn't say you did. With a word, I didn't solve it in the way that you think I solved it. No, I know, but right, but we're talking about EQ here, so I think that's, but it wasn't 'Cause I offered up a suggestion. Oh, so it wasn't an EQ thing that you did. an EQ thing is the way I solved that.

Oh, if I could reach through this screen I solved that, it, yeah, but it worked though, didn't it? and I could have my white glove, I would slap you across the face. It did. No, it was an issue where I thought possibly it was just going to do a quick dip on the [BLANK_AUDIO] offending frequency. It just automate something there. I think it came down to just half a dB or maybe even a dB vocal ride on that first syllable of the word. Gotcha. So that kind of took care of that. [BLANK_AUDIO]

What was the other one you asked me about? The vocal proximity thing on the single word. Oh, the proximity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] This one was an EQ thing. It was also just on not even a word. I think it was just one syllable that was... It was pretty close. Yeah. I mean, it was a very small thing. Yeah, right.

Yeah. And because of the technique of how you had recorded that vocal, where you had to have been very close up to the microphone, we got a little bit of other proximity effect that almost sounded like a puff into the microphone. So in that case, it was just a matter of automating out the low end. I just did like a low shelf automated cut attenuation around, Uh-huh. Yeah. it was like 160 maybe, for it just that word just automated that and that took care of the issue. Had I removed that much

Oh, it would have been an. Yeah. through the entire vocal take that would have been an issue because then it would have sounded thin and it would have been horrible. So there's a little bit of a balancing act there where the temptation might be to even if you're just doing a vocal ride on it that you want to take out more than you necessarily should and it's a trial and error type of thing but I think it was even it

Mm hmm. And you know what's awesome about it? With the modern It wasn't a lot there either. It was maybe like 2 dB that came out, if that. Even on that, what's that? Yeah, yeah. tools of the DAW, you can automate that stuff. You don't have to have 10 people trying to synchronize their moves on the entire mix and be like, okay, you do this here, you do that All right, yeah, now it's... there, I'll get this here. And you're practicing it over and and over and over again.

It's a matter of just going right back to that phrase Yeah, yeah. and you can listen to it and go, "Oh, okay, just to automate this a little bit out and put it right back in and nobody's the wiser." And it does sound really good. Mm-hmm. It's nice just on the technique there and overstating the obvious here. You could have that if you have a control surface, just put your track into right mode or latch mode or whatever and you make that little fade.

If you want to get really anal with it, go in and draw in your nodes and do the ride ( audio cuts out) (no audio) that way. these really precise things obviously and shouldn't be afraid of doing those (no audio) (no audio) (no audio) little adjustments because they can make a huge difference as we noticed on this track. (no audio) Yeah. They can. And this kind of segues into the next portion of what we're talking about here. How you would go about using EQ to do corrective steps.

Yeah. And since you were correcting something on this vocal, you've mentioned one or two things. [ Silence ] but another thing that may or may not be very useful in a corrective sense is the size of your cue. You didn't really mention, you just mentioned, oh, I dipped something out at 160.

The idea of the cue size begins to take effect here because if you have to correct something that's drastic and maybe it's in the 400 range, but you don't want it to start touching into 200, 100, [silence] 751K, it becomes an issue of your Q range, because if your Q range is too big, you're going to start affecting a lot of things around it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And in this case, it was an easy one because it was just a low end.

And being vocal, it wasn't a whole lot of information. So in this case, I could just use the low end shelf. (silence) - Altering the entire character of the, yeah. and I just like took out a little bit. But just like you're saying, if you're higher up in the frequencies, depending on where that issue lies, if we take out too much, it's just you're not necessarily fixing it. You're just affecting the entire audio. Yeah. Right.

Yeah, so it can very easily start sounding unnatural, I find, if we have a too wide of a cue setting. Nice and narrow bands there If that's the problem, obviously sometimes things can be a little bit wider, but as you and just zooming in on that frequency. And... Indeed. mentioned getting too aggressive can start to cause issues with that instrument or that vocal starting to sound unnatural.

So the temptation can be to wanna cut more Mm hmm. than is actually necessary. And I think, well, I tend to do these things initially in solo mode, because I want to really own in on the offending frequency and fix that. But once it's actually sitting in the mix, if I've been too aggressive with it, it can again start sounding unnatural, even if I pay attention to the cue width.

So maybe a few dB will just take care of it, but obviously very, very dependent on the ( ( audio cuts out) issue is what the track is. Mm hmm. So how do you go about that? Do you have anything to add to that? Or what does your experience tell you? - Sure. I would have approached a couple of things maybe a little differently and has more to do with the tools that we have available now if you have them under your belt, so to speak. - Right.

And a great tool is the isotope EQ, [Silence] the dynamic EQ specifically, if you've got issues that aren't always cropping up, but are here and there. And I might've used the dynamic EQ instead to just dip it whenever it happens. 'Cause it happened more than once in the track, but it was only really a problem in one spot in the track. >> Right. That's a great point. I think it depends on if it's recurring issue.

Let's say that it's in this case like a vocal and it happens not constantly on certain syllables. >> Mm-hmm. It happens once in verse one and second time of the bridge or whatever, right? >> Okay. You can go about that with the dynamic EQ. >> Okay. If it happens more than once, it's going to be a pain in the butt to go ahead and do that manually, if you will. Mm hmm. That would be one way of going about it. Mm hmm.

I think it's a little different also if you are experienced the same thing. Let's say that you're dealing with a snare and you have like a weird ringing. Chances are that's going to be present through every snare hit going through the Or a good portion of them, depending on how it's being hit. song, right? So that that's when I, sure. But yes. Well, yeah. That's when I would probably just leave that processing in there on the track.

Right. But I mean, it is supposed to try to, you know, Well, yeah. But there is another tool that makes that fairly, actually two other tools that make it fairly notch it out and be creative in doing it on every hit, right? It does make any sense. But if it's constant, Sure. Yeah. substantially easy that I can think of right off the top of my head. They both come from Eventide.

And I'm sure other companies have these as well. And that is the Splitty Q and and Vision. And they And they recently did an update to vision on even tide as well. [Silence] So it actually operates a bit more like split EQ and fission is essentially the granddad or the father to split EQ, the precursor. The precursor. Yeah. Yes. [BLANK_AUDIO] But they've done an update to fission now that incorporates a lot more of split EQ into it.

So they're almost kind of melding these two, but the specific idea of fission is to separate the tone from the attack, which is what split EQ does as well. Yeah, I haven't played with fishing really. They have very granular effects that are specifically designed for things like snare drums that fixes them. It's great. So yeah, maybe I'll have to.

I'm not trying to be like an ad for the plugin, [BLANK_AUDIO] but I have it and I've used it on snare drums for that very specific purpose of fixing rings and snares because it's paying the ass to EQ it Right, when you do this processing, let's say that it is a snare thing, and then have it sound thin in one spot and fine in another. And Fission is capable of doing that as a split EQ to get those things out of the wave each other, so to speak. If it's a problem before the mix

like it's a constant through the song. Do you leave the processing there during the mix? Do you

tend to rebounce that track before you stop me? Hmm. Okay, but then would you yeah, so you will and I'm controlling the output of the multitracks, I will make it a part of the processing before it goes to the mix, correct. apply the processing and then when it gets to mixing you now have a new version of the snare track presumably in your mix without the processing because it's baked in now. Without that corrective processing, yes.

Gotcha. Yep. All right. I agree with that. Okay, now corrective EQ. We've kind of already told what we think about this, but before or after compression. Yeah, because it's fixing stuff. Generally speaking, 99.9999 added fitted them before. Right. It's not necessarily the sculpt thing, right? So if you have all these issues before, or let's say that, yeah, if you have them and You're enhancing it and making it worse. then you add compression, you might just make it worse. Yeah, right.

So why not get rid of it before you're compressing Yeah. Wholeheartedly agree with that. and bringing that volume up and down, so to speak. Sweet. And with that, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

And we're back. We're going to boot on over to the other side of compression and EQ that we are talking about today called sweetening. What is sweetening to you? of the sculpting that I might do to make something sit better in the mix. ( Making enhancements to something if it needed. Or at this point it could still Mm-hmm. Okay. That almost sounds like you need to whip and change.

be like it doesn't have to be like it we're adding stuff now this could still be like a subtractive kind of EQ to me it just depends on what it is but just to make the track in question here behave in the mix so to speak. Well, let's say that it's, I'm going to use a drum kit as an example. And that comes more along the lines of compression to me. to me. How's that with EQ? Right. Let's say that's snare that we've now fixed, right?

It doesn't have that weird frequency ringing out and whistling in the track. It can sound awesome by itself. It could sound awesome in the context of the kit, but now we're fighting with other elements of the mix, right? So it might need a little bit of help to cut through the mix, even if it's been compressed [BLANK_AUDIO] or whatever. It might need a little bit extra low end to it, make it a little bit fatter sounding. It might need a little bit more of the crack. Hey, hey, hey.

So that's the type of EQ I'm looking at now, right? So it could be boosting a little bit of, I don't know, 1K of the snare. It might be, you know, adding something as low as like 150 to get some heft in there. if I yeah all right but I yeah but I also tend to layer snares a whole bunch so but that's a [LAUGH] Get some meat. That's not a cue, dude. different story but um let's stick to the subject shall we yeah and what about you what do you think Let's stick to the cue. Mm hmm.

Sweetening to me is often just gentle moves on things do to enhance a particular instrument or vocal. So it's similar in nature to what you're saying. I know what you're saying. It's not often that it is a drastic move 'Cause to me, especially drastic moves are more corrective than they are sweetening. Does that make sense?

Even though there's a scale there that would happen in the corrective function before compression, after compression, I'm generally not thinking Well, I'm going to kind of disagree with you there because I think this is where it's very of drastic moves. Mm-hmm. easy to get in trouble with our mindset. Well, I'm not saying that in terms of a corrective stance, that's a big difference.

Just like a lot of other people, when I was starting out, I had the mindset of hearing people say, "Oh, you should never boost more than a couple of dB or whatever." And no, no, no, but I'm saying so Right, but when you're sweetening something here, even if it's a great sounding again snare drum, let's say, right Uh-huh. (laughs) But if you want that, you know real brightness and you want that real whack Sure.

Don't be afraid to crank like 8k on it, you know, have you ever seen Tom or Chris Lord algy mix? Holy moly, right? Of course, yeah, they've got some ridiculous EQ curves. right I've seen that. But that's what I'm talking about. I think it's really easy to get really sort of scared of using drastic EQ moves if it needs it, right? Now if Mm-hmm. Sure. you always need to do that, then there might be an issue with how you're recording the tracks, right?

But not to be afraid of it if it is, if it's like a really big dense mix and Okay. if you have to make these drastic moves, make the drastic moves. You're still making something Sound better and sweeter in my opinion. That's the way I think about it now one other point Yeah. We're sounding like we're talking about just like boosting frequencies and stuff It is also for me here. It could be like removing mud That's not a fixing issue for me like that's that a let's say kick drum, right?

out. Well, I would liken the removing mud thing that you're That has a broad frequency spectrum But there's a whole lot of stuff in there and maybe like the 350 to 500 range that depending on your track I Generally don't want it there anyway. So here I'm sort of sculpting that out and that's still

Sweetening issue making it sound sweeter and nice and even if it is hyper aggressive or whatever so talking about as something that also generally brightens up the track that you're removing the mud from.

'Cause you're leaving what's left over Sure Sure, yeah, I mean the brighter portion of the sound, whether you're amping it up by using a boost or you're removing something as in you're saying removing mud, it has the effect of auditory illusion that it's getting brighter when you do it or thinner. And it's interesting that you're equating being thinner No, I don't think I used the word thinner. as being the sweet definition.

Yes. I said getting rid of the mud there, but the byproduct that you're talking about there, making it sound nicer is, of course, you could boost the low end and you can boost the highs, right? ( And okay, what's the difference from just taking out the mids, right? And then maybe boosting the track a little bit. arriving at a very similar point. It's a little bit of a workflow thing, but that to me is still Yeah.

( finding that ultimate sound for the track in your mix and doing whatever you have to do there too. Yeah. Well, and the boosting of the high and the low Right. Right. is essentially like removing mids or you could just remove the mids and the high and the low stay. That's six of one half dozen of the other in a sense. Uh huh. there are going to be mix engineers that will argue that removing it with whatever style of EQ you're using is going to be different than boosting.

And that would probably be dependent upon the type of EQ that you use. And you've kind of already brought it up earlier in the podcast, but the Poltek is not necessarily an EQ that you're going to use for surgical No. Right. procedures. You can, but it's not the greatest thing to use for that. Right.

A better option at that point is to use something like a surgical tile EQ, which would be your isotope EQ or your fab filter EQ [silence] or something that is fine grained in the system that has the ability to change its Q and lots of bands. That's more surgical to me. Whereas things like the Pol-Tec and maybe an Oxford or something of that nature would be more of a grand scheme type of EQ. Yeah, and I think whatever technique that you end up using with something like this, Sure.

it's just really dependent on your workflow and how you arrive at the results best. Either way Mm-hmm. from going from, we mentioned Al Schmidt or you mentioned Al Schmidt, he would just get it off the source and he would probably need very little if any EQ in his tracks because he's doing it all Mm-hmm. Yep.

in one go at tracking type of thing. And then you have other people that have also been mentioned here that are not afraid to use drastic boosts of EQ, generally boost from my experience I've Mm-hmm. seen them work. It's just how you arrive at the result to sort of circle around all of this. That sounds real interesting. But we'll be talking about that later. Yeah, that's really interesting. It's just about getting the sound that you want in your mix and to make it work. All right.

Yeah, that's really inspiring. I'd always try to find that out, and then I'd help find that out so that, One point I wanted to make as well before I forget is when we're talking about sweetening EQ here, uh, in my late low Mandarin, you actually need toالive down thoughts at time, and it seems easy to cover trick. it is really important to not do this in solo mode as well because if you do that it's chances Right.

Hmm. are where you end up in the mix it's going to sound really unnatural in solo mode and that's Hey, can. Sure. okay because nobody's going to hear it like that right it's about the whole as opposed to just individual elements and that can be quite jarring I find that if you're you know you're listening to Sure. So where do you generally put your sweetening EQ moves? that's there. It's like, God damn, that's a lot of high end. But when it's in the mix, it works fine.

You mean before after compression? Definitely after. Definitely after. Yeah. Because now I Yes, sir. Okay. All right. Sure. have sort of like the dynamics and the impact of whatever is there. And now it's just tweaking that. And if I need to put another compressor after that, then I probably should think about re-recording the track. [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] But I say that sort of half jokingly here, but it also is that... [AUDIO OUT] Right.

Let's go back and I've used it again and again here. I know a drum track, right? Let's say that it's a snare. There probably will be additional compression on like my drum buss, for example. [BLANK_AUDIO] right, but if I look at my channel strip and if I have EQ compressor, EQ compressor, and then more EQ, I'm probably in trouble, right? So it's something that, but generally the way I tend to think of it Yeah, I'll concur with that.

is corrective EQ before compression and then sweetening EQ after compression. That's the way way out on the look at it. Yeah. Woo hoo! One thing I would like to mention before we boot on to the next segment is that for those Mm-hmm. [Silence] learning to EQ and maybe EQ better, it's not a bad idea to try your mix the way you're >> Thank you. WordPress blog. Yeah. Right. used to and then go back and try the mix again using the opposite function.

In other words, if you're boosting a lot of high end, you do it the way you're used to and then you come back and try another pass where instead of boosting the high end, you reduce everything else but the high end and see how that changes the way things happen in your mix and so on. Oh, yeah. and then just adjust the fader as well, if it just needs it, if it's whatever you have to do.

And it's also one of those things that when you're learning this, you don't have to use one method or the other. It's like whatever the track calls for, whatever you can do to make that sound as good as you can make it in the mix, that's the method that you use. So again, just having different mindsets and different tools in your tool chest, I suppose.

[Silence]

And with these kinds of methods, we're going to move on to Friday. Finds Chris, what have you got today? I saw something really, really cool that I, well, I thought was really, really cool anyway. I saw it too. Yeah, Laney Amplification have come out with a new tube head that they called the Studio Amp. Yes. And besides just being a tube guitar amp, it has the ability to record direct from it Well, isn't that special?

using IRs that are built in by two notes, I think, right, that has essentially a DI box [silence] in them with IRs in it. You can have six different IRs and I believe you can even tweak those. I thought that was really cool because we have talked ad nauseam about guitar players. [laughs] I got out of my tube amp, man. Well, isn't that special?

I thought it was very special, so maybe this is one of those products that can get [laughs] some of the little bit more narrow-minded guitar players to perhaps crack open that door a little bit, because you can have your tube amp and you can just record without miking a cabinet, Mm hmm. We he. I'm going with something software based, and this is more for those who are but you still can. You can still run it with a cab and do it the traditional way if you want,

or if it's for live or whatever. But having that functionality built in I thought was pretty cool. That's my find for this Friday, the Laney LA Studio M. And you, good sir, what do you have for us? [ Painter Show On ] are into the creation side of things. [ Painting Anna, Although it does contain more than just creation software, Native Instruments has recently released an update to their complete series and it is now at complete 14.

Oof. Lots of updates in terms of that, Yeah, that's gone the way of the dodo bird, hasn't it? but there is one subtraction and it's gonna get some people bummed out. And that is Absinthe is no longer in there. It has, that's unfortunate with version 14, Yep. Mm. although the update to their interface that installs all the software does allow you to continue to see legacy software that you can hopefully still run on your machine. So Native Instruments, complete 14 Very cool.

and all the variations thereof. That is my pick. Awesome. While we've got your attention,

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If you have a topic or suggestion for Chris and I to explain in a future episode, contact us at the contact page and we'll put it into consideration for a future episode. With that, I'll say see you next week. best you Have a good one, J beats gospel)