EQ ranges for vocals and guitar

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leavings

leavings

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I'm working on a track right now that is predominantly electric guitar and vocals. I'm wondering where in the frequency range people generally put these two to avoid too much competition. I'm getting a decent mix at this point, but there are some parts that sound cloudy, especially when the vocals are lower.

I know it depends on a lot of variables, like the singer's voice and tone of the guitar...just looking for general themes if people have them to offer.

Thanks, Peter
 
The big problem is that you've got these two instruments that actually lie within the same range.

About the only thing I can tell you is that I "normally" add a little "air" to a vocal and reduce the "air" in an electric guitar... "Normally..."

However, if the guitar is chunking away on an "A" and the vocalist is monotonizing an "A" that's where you're really going to find the problems.

Panning can help... A little dip on the guitar in the vocalists' "chest" range (somewhere between 250 & 400) might clear the lower mids up also...

How I ramble...

John Scrip - www.massivemastering.com
 
I discovered something I thought was a little weird about vocal frequencies.

I'm recording a friend's band and last weekend we were mixing one of the songs. We decided to play with some EQ on the singer's vocal track. I'm still pretty green and the EQ is completely trial and error for me. So I start playing with the sliders to get an idea of what frequencies are most important for the vocals. The first one I slide down is 1000HZ and BAM! his vocals are practically invisible. Of course, they aren't invisible, but you can barely hear them. Most of this guy's vocal content is at 1k. I can completely kill his vocals by cutting 900-1100HZ, but almost all of it is at 1k.

Anyway I was playing around last night to see if this holds true for other voices. I have recorded two other singers with the same mic and I tried the same EQ on their tracks. To my surprise it didn't have the same effect on the two other singers. I could still hear their voices. Granted, completely attenuating 1k killed alot of their vocals but it wasn't NEARLY as dramatic as this other guy. And they both had content beyond the 900-1100HZ range.

So I was wondering, is this common? I know there is a certain range for the human voice (I don't know what it is), but is it common for the human voice to have such a narrow frequency response (if that's what you call it)?

Cheers!
 
On that note, can anyone recommend a good graphic EQ plugin? I've been using the CPA9 parametric version, and I don't think it gives me enough control.

Also, does anyone know of a plugin (or perhaps hardware) that will identify the decibel levels of a track at each frequency? I feel like this would help me identify where the competition is. At this point I can make an educated guess, but my ear isn't trained enough to pinpoint it.

Thanks,
Peter
 
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