Today I remembered a moment when I thought I witnessed an EQ phenomenon.

I was about 17 years old. I used to play drums in a reasonably successful band at the time.

Our producer was in the studio with us and was directing the recording engineer.

At one point he said, “sounds ok, but I think it has a touch too much 1Khz”.

My ears pricked up, and I thought, you are kidding me right. People can’t just hear a frequency and know precisely what it is. Not only that but can they also know if one specific frequency is a touch too loud or not?

This memory makes me chuckle at myself. For, sure enough, these days, I do this very thing every day as effortlessly as breathing.

Years of practice have trained my ears. I was reminded of this when someone asked me for some EQ tips.

There is a lot to cover with EQ. It is one of the most critical adjustments in your mixdown. However, I’m sure you have a life outside of my email tips, so I’ll try to keep it snappy.

MY TOP...

Layering is pretty much the opposite of our recent subject Separation.

In this case, you are trying to combine sounds and make them feel like they all come from the one instrument (most of the time). However, just like separation, you also don’t want the sounds to fight with each other.

I generally use a combination of Instruments, Transposing, EQ, Overdrive, Compression, Stereo processing, and space. Here’s how.

Firstly, the choice of instrument is fundamental. It might even be the most crucial part of it.

When I’m about to layer, I’ll usually already have my core sound. e.g., a Synth. It probably sounds mostly the way I want, like 80% perfect, but is likely missing something.

I will rarely layer that synth, with another sound from the same synth. I try to use different ones or even better, use samplers.

The fact that the sounds are coming from different sources naturally helps them to sit well right from the start. Also, it’s a good excuse to remind...

I’ve been doing mixdowns (and masters) for myself and others since 2002, and I’m often asked for mixdown tips.

One of the most popular ones is dealing with layering and separation. These two things are opposites.

When layering you are trying to glue sounds together. When working on separation, you are trying to give them space from each other.

Layering can help make parts sound more full and robust. By contrast, separation can give your mix clarity, punch, depth, and power.

When I am going for separation, I try to achieve this through EQ, Space, Pan, and Colour.

EQ separation is the most important so I do that first.
If I want two sounds separated, I’ll make sure they don’t have a lot of frequency content in the same frequency. e.g., Kick & Bass.

If the kick has a lot of 100hz, I’ll cut the bass a bit at 100hz. Some EQs like DMG Equilibrium will even let you overlay the analyzer waveform from one track onto another. So you can see the two different...

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