No. When someone says something like "boost the bass at 60 hz," they mean just boost the bass track at 60 hz. Of course, these are only starting points, and you gotta use your ears to figure out exactly what frequency and how much boost or attenuation you need to apply.
As an exercise, solo one track and just play around with the knobs on your eq. Use your ears to correlate the adjustments you are making to specific sounds.
Then, you're gonna move on to other tracks.
Say you've got a bass track, a guitar track and a vocal.
Solo the bass and play around with boosts and cuts at different frequencies. You'll notice some frequencies (specifically the ones on the high end) won't be affected much by big boosts or cuts. Once you've started to hear what parts of the bass's sound are affected at different frequencies, mute that track and solo the guitar. Cut and boost the same frequencies you just familiarized yourself with, and you'll notice it has a dramatically different effect on the sound. This is because each instrument has it's own characteristic frequency range that defines the sound of that instrument. Boost some highs on the guitar an you'll notice a much larger difference than you hear when boosting the same frequency on the bass.
So, exercise done, stop soloing tracks. You want to do your eq-ing with all the tracks playing together. This is because the characteristic frequencies of various instruments will invariably overlap. So, what happens is that, if two instruments both have a lot of information in the same frequency range, whichever is louder will cover up the other (this is called masking). The goal of eq-ing in the mix is to allow the various instruments to sit together, not masking each other, but still sound like themselves. This is called, among other things, complementary equalization. An example: maybe the guitar and bass are masking each other. But some particular frequency range in the bass doesn't particularly contribute to the sound you want from the bass. At the same time, that same frequency range is integral to the sound of the guitar. You would cut that frequency range in the bass and boost it in the guitar, using you ears to determine exactly what particular frequencies and amounts of boost or attenuation to use. The boost you make on one instrument "compliments" the cut you made on the other. Simple, right?
Notice that I didn't use any numbers in the above explanation. That's because the best way for you to learn this is to ignore entirely what the "recommended" frequencies are for different instruments (besides the obvious stuff - bass and kick are generally low, really bright instruments, like a mandolin or high hats are generally high, voice and a lot of guitars are often heavy in mids to mid highs, etc...) and to just figure out what happens when you play with the controls.
PS - You generally don't want to apply eq to the master stereo track. If there's too much or too little of some particular frequency range in the full mix, find the instruments that need a boost or cut in that range and apply it to them.
It can be another good exercise, though, to go ahead and slap an eq plugin on that master stereo track and just play around with it so you can hear what aspects of the mix (power, air, clarity, warmth, mud, harshness, etc...) are riding on what frequency ranges.
Good luck, and have fun!
