Before You Use EQ

[brandondrury]

Before you whip out the equalizer, you may want to read this guide.

<a href="http://www.recordingreview.com/begin...eq.php">Before You Use EQ</a>

Let me know what you think.

Brandon

[heller_benjamin]

Another great read. Will have to try out the microphone placement idea.

[brandondrury]

I'm glad you dug it. Make checks payable to Brandon Drury.

EQ is a funny tool. It can make or break you, but in the end it's just a wha pedal...only different.

Brandon

[emergencyexit]

What about for resurrection purposes?? ???

An other good read though, Completely true! Its sad that we see so many people ruin themselves because of there rely on EQ rather than good natural sound.

Good article, again!

Ben

[brandondrury]

One of the problems of using computers for recording is you have too many plugins. You can use eq or compression on every track. This wasn't the case when you had to mix on a Mackie board and had two compressors. Buy using less, you were forced to use other ways to make your recording sound good... like actually putting the mic in the right spot.

Brandon

[PhilB]

Great example of this - the other day I recorded my acoustic guitar using LDC. I'm guessing it had been 6" - 1' away before. Sounded pretty good.

Anyway, I decided to record both guitar and voice at same time, since time was short, just to get an idea down...put mic 1 - 1 1/2 ' away. Different position in relation to guitar as well. Man, the space just opened up on that guitar. Sounded so natural, fuller (I think). Great EQ tip - getting it right at the source.

[guitar junkie]

i have used some really tough stuff in an EQ fix and once or twice it worked...

EQ is something like compression
you can use it or abuse it!

i hear a lot people messing with it that have no clue about how to use it at all....

now from what i have learned you are best to just cut things and NEVER boost them...

i did a ive drum kit recording and we only had an AT4040 to use on drums and so this means that i used a heck of a lot of EQ to sort of clear the cymbals from the toms and the kick and the snare... i was able to use a mic on hte kick though that helped a lot but i have been known to EQ the crap out of my fiddle from time to time also.. most of the time its cutting some high end to clean out Bow hiss and whine... maybe its my playing but when i am done the fiddle does sound like the stuff on the radio so... hard to say.

i once did a singer live at his show and he was so powerful and dynamic that i had a huge amount of EQ to smooth out the lack of clean response the mic had.... in the end it did ok but i want to just redo his show with another mic instead...

very nice article a lot of truth there... hope to see more of these articles in the future

[Deng]

Got any tips for vocal frequencies to cut through?


-Deng

[brandondrury]

Hmm. Not any that have worked more than once.

The best tip I could give for eq'ing vocals .... is don't. Grab the right mic and call it a day. Very little EQ is needed if you can find the right mic for a singer.

Brandon