Recording - October 2016 - 54

band's frequency across its range, and listen
for something ugly: a particular frequency
that honks out at you when you emphasize
it. (It's easier to hear than describe.) You're
looking for frequencies that make the mix
feel obviously congested, irritating, or distracting. Once you find such a frequency,
turn the gain down past zero so the boost
becomes a cut, and gently broaden the Q
until you've made that honk go away, leaving a clearer-sounding tonal blend. Repeat
this process until all nasty resonances are
tamed, first in the low mids, then the mids,
and maybe in the lows if needed.
At this time I'll also use a highpass filter
to eliminate or minimize frequencies below
the lowest pitch in the functional range of
the instrument or voice on the track. I use
the term "functional range" to make sure to
not exclude any sounds that happen to be
below the pitch range of the instrument, but
that are still useful. One great example is a
guitarist thumping the body of his or her
guitar for percussive effects while playing;
you don't want to filter out everything
below 82.4 Hz (low E), because the
thumps will lose power.
I keep a very handy book at my mixing
station: Music, Physics, and Engineering,
by Harry F. Olson. The most dog-eared
page in my copy is where Olson offers a
table of musical pitch conversion to frequency. He also lays out the frequency ranges of
symphonic instruments. This kind of information is extremely useful in reparative EQing.
If you don't already know the musical key
of the song you're about to mix, figure it
out! Then, depending on the track you're
about to EQ, figure out the lowest note/ frequency that the instrument or voice you're
focusing on is capable of producing. Often
I find that the ugliest/strongest resonant frequencies (especially within the lower mids
band) are within the first few harmonics in
the overtone series-the octave above the
fundamental, the fifth above that, the second octave, then the third, etc. In my opinion, it's these overtones that have a tendency to obscure the focus of the lower mids in
the overall mix, and there are a number of
good reasons for this.
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RECORDING OCTOBER 2016

Many instruments and voices inhabit
the lower mids and midrange-there's
always a lot of competition in this frequency space, so at least in my
approach to mixing, I find it important
to try to manage overtones from instruments in this range. That lets me try to
"clarify" more of the fundamental frequencies each instrument produces.
This is a good place to start in my first
(reparative) stage of EQ, even though
I'll probably revisit it later when I get to
creative EQ!
The last stage of reparative EQ
deals with upper mids and highs.
Depending on the sound of the track,
sometimes I'll leave these two bands
flat. Other times, I will use those bands
to cut ugly frequencies, and still other
times I'll use the upper mid controls to
find a "sweet spot" and boost it a little.
Many parametric EQs have an
option, both for the lows and highs, to
select shelving instead of parametric
control. Often I'll set the high control
for shelving, and especially if the track
was recorded using a ribbon mic or is
otherwise a bit on the dark side, I'll
add some high frequency at this point,
just to give the track some "air". (I also
use low shelving when I don't need to
chase resonances down there, to add
weight or clarify a track to make room
for others.)
A versatile parametric EQ offers up
billions of possible combinations of settings. It's no wonder that learning to EQ
effectively is worthy of a book all on its
own. So before you get frustrated, let
me give you one core element of wisdom on EQ-the only thing that really
matters in the end is the sound of the
track and how it works in the mix. I've
listed some of the ways in which I think
about EQ to try to explain why I
approach EQing the way I do; intellectual understanding is helpful, but it only
goes so far when it comes time to set an
EQ-you have to please your ears.
Certainly, there are many other signal processors available to the mixer-
delays, reverbs, pitch shifters, harmonic distortion, etc. For the sake of this
article, I'm considering these to be mix
tools, not pre-mix tools, though it could
easily be argued that any type of signal processing could be considered a
pre-mix building block for a later mix.
7. Leveling tracks and groups of
tracks
In my view, there is no more powerful
tool for creating a robust and concise
mix than leveling. And done the way I
most prefer to do it, there is also no
more time-consuming process! It could
easily be argued that leveling is in fact
mixing, but I've really come to view it
as a pre-mix process. I consider leveling

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - October 2016