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TUTORIAL
TUTORIAL
As an example: next time something sounds
“harsh” try a bell shaped cut at around 3khz5khz and it should sound more pleasant rather
than cutting the tops entirely making the mix
sound dull.
High passing/Low cutting too much
High passing is an essential technique in achieving a clean mix however if done too high up the
spectrum you will kill the quality of the sound.
This is most common when equalising lead
sounds. As an example I normally high pass lead
sounds between 150hz - 300hz maximum: any
higher and they lose power.
This varies between sounds and can be a lot
higher for example for a high hat but the key is
to appreciate the character of the sound and not
to thin it out too much. In practice listen to the
sound in the mix and high pass until the character changes. Next step is to roll back slightly and
then you’re done.
Sub bass
Many producers high pass their kick & bass or
full mix. It’s true that 33hz and below pushes
more air than audible frequencies however by
cutting this you are in danger of your tracks
sounding great in the studio but weak on dance
floors.
Cutting the sub bass is a good technique when
you want the sound to translate well on laptop
speakers, radio or on a small hifi, as examples,
however dance music is normally played on full
range sound systems which often have dedicated drivers (3 way or more) for dealing with the
various frequency bands. Sometimes a shallow
cut at around 25hz cleans things up and gives
more headroom but unless you have an accurate full range monitoring system where you can
hear if this makes a positive or negative effect I
would leave this to the mastering engineer.
I hope you find this tutorial helpful. Many thanks for reading!
Nick Sagar-House
Mechanimal
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