Using EQ to Help Your Mix

By Carlos Morales 

When you record a song, most times you’ll record all the individual instruments and voices on separate tracks, then mix them all together so they’ll sound the way you want.  The first thing to do during the mix session is adjust the volume levels of the individual instruments so they are in good proportion to each other.  You’ll often find that adjusting the level of one track makes another track seem to get softer, muddier, or disappear completely!  This is called “masking,” and it is a natural occurrence where sounds at the same frequency from different sources fight each other to be heard, the winner being whichever is louder.

The simplest solution to this problem is to pan each of the competing tracks left or right, thus giving each of them their own niches in the stereo field.  When panning is not enough, your next step is to turn to using your EQ to “notch” out frequencies from each of the conflicting tracks so they can share the same space.  When done effectively, you’ll be able to bring out that acoustic guitar so it no longer sounds like part of that thumping bass drum.

When working with EQ, it's very important to use it intelligently.  You have the capacity to either boost frequencies or cut them, and which one you do depends largely on the style of music you’re doing.  Boosting frequencies makes the mix sound unnatural because you are altering the very sound of the instrument you want to hear.  Ultimately the instrument may sound louder, but it won’t sound natural.  Therefore, a lot of engineers producing folk, rock, or more traditional rock styles do a "cut-only" technique, where boosting might find its way into more radical-sounding productions.  No two songs are alike, so use your best judgment.

A better approach is to listen for each of the lost tracks in the mix, and try to identify what part of their sound is missing.  For example, if the basic mid-range sound of your acoustic guitar seems lost, listen to other tracks that have sounds in the same frequency range.  One by one, your EQ can remove or reduce the mid-range frequencies of these tracks so that acoustic guitar is more prominent.  If you want to hear the high-pitched rhythmic sound the pick makes on the guitar while strumming, find tracks which also have a high pitched sound (maybe it’s the snare drum) and reduce it in that range.  By using EQ to eliminate the competing sounds, you'll make the right sounds come alive in the mix and be more easily heard.

Here’s another way to look at this process: think of your recording as a large multi-layered cake!  There are various different things that go into making a cake, like eggs, sugar, fruits or chocolate.  Would you like your cake to taste richer in strawberries?  Reduce the proportion of competing fruits (like the raspberries) and you’ll get the result you want.  The same idea goes for music – there are some things you’ll just have to remove in order to get a better result.

With your tracks clean of conflict, it will be easier to blend in anything else you want to add to your mix, plus you’ll have a very solid product for the next stage: Mastering!