Recording - October 2016 - 53

level reading on the master fader. Then
add one channel at a time, switching its
phase negative, then positive. Leave the
phase switch in the position that results
in the most robust response.
If there seems to be no difference
between the two positions, the default
assumption should be to leave that channel "in phase". If you end up choosing to
flip the phase on most of the channels,
then start over with phase reversed on the
first channel and try again. The idea is
that the majority of your tracks were hopefully recorded "in phase", so the minority
should need to be phase inverted.
A trickier method is to actually choose
one track as a fixed reference and slide
the other tracks backward and forward in
time to align them to its waveform. This
can work very well (and can even be automated to an extent with plug-ins like Sound
Radix Auto-Align), but move tracks with
care and always listen to make sure you're
making the sound better, not worse.
6. Using signal processing to shape the
tone and timbre of tracks
I've separated this section from Step
4, because I believe that noise should
be dealt with before any tone shaping is
done. Start clean!
When it comes to tone shaping during
mixing, EQ is one of the most powerful

tools in the mixer's toolkit. I believe there
are two distinct reasons for using EQ:
one is (for lack of better descriptives)
reparative and the other is creative.
Generally, as I prepare tracks for mixing, I approach EQ adjustment reparatively. What do I mean by this? At its
essence, reparative EQ is a process that
minimizes aspects of a track's frequency
response that will have a negative
impact when the track is combined with
other tracks. Subjective? Yes. But that's
how I see (and hear) it.
Hopefully the following example will
help: if you've ever been to a soundcheck at a live venue, you'll have heard
both the Front Of House and monitor
engineers "ring out" their systems. In this
process, the engineers find "problem
spots" in the response of their systems,
where the gear that's in use, its placement in the room, room acoustics, and
gear settings all conspire to make certain frequencies resonate (and in
extreme cases feed back). The live
sound engineers' solution to this problem
can include changing out and/or moving mics and monitors onstage to
achieve a semi-acoustic solution to the
problem, but more likely, they'll go
about fixing the problem by identifying
and selecting the resonant frequencies
and turning them down via EQ.

Identifying and minimizing resonant
frequencies on a per-track basis is a big
part of what I consider to be reparative
EQ. Of course, since this resonance isn't
going to be as obvious in the studio as it
is in the live venue (where feedback is
the telltale sign), you'll have to work a
little harder to find it. Everything contributes to ugly frequencies: the nature
and quality of the instrument being
played (even really good instruments
may have wolf tones or dead spots in
certain keys), room acoustics, mic choice
and placement, preamp, signal processing chain... simple, right?
Generally speaking, I'll EQ every track
in a mix, with my first attention going to
identifying and minimizing resonance in
the lower mids, then identifying and minimizing other obtrusive resonant frequencies, going after the most egregious ones
first.
I use a fully parametric EQ for this
process, and I find and kill these resonances using the "boost then cut"
method. Here's how it works. First, turn
down your monitors a bit so you don't
hurt them (or your ears). Then select a frequency band on your parametric (starting
with the low mids), tighten the Q as narrow as it will go, and turn the gain up as
high as it will go, producing a narrow frequency spike. Then slowly sweep the

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