EQ Rules of Thumb

  • Thread starter Thread starter doncol07
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Indeed! You don't get that metal kick drum sound using slight amounts of eq. And to say that those engineers can't "track their way out of a paper bag" is a rediculous statement!

Mr.Glen, maybe you should click around on that web site of pipelineaudio's. You might be surprised who you are arguing with about this. I would say that maybe he has a little insight into what big time engineers do to the audio sometimes.

;)
 
FordPipelineSonusEdReiAudioChild said:
Im interested in how pure you might leave a close mic'ed kick drum when there's a cardoid pattern on it

proximity effect is NOT what you hear naturally, and you have to deal with it
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Look, I never said that NO processing was involved. Kick often gets a boost somehwere between 3.5k and 5k to increase beater slap and/or cut somehwre around 400 to clean out some mud. It's so cliche to say that, that I'm sorry I even need to even bring it up. And kick is usually one of the first instruments to get some leveling compression, especially when the drummer is inconsistant with his playing. And other processing (a little EQ seasoning or verb) than what I mentioned above might be in order for the production. But rarely should more an a few dB of EQ or compression at any given frequency be needed for most productions.

That is a LONG way from advising someone to EQ the fuck out of their mixes and saying that it's usually not possible to get a good mix without twisting the knobs to kingdom come. No matter how you try to parse or spin it, that is just plain awful advice.

And compounding you offense by taking two false personas on this board at one time is just plain pathetic.

Well...at least I hope you appreciate the entertainment that I'm giving you in your short time here before you reincarnate yourself as yet another devil's Internet spawn. :D

G.
 
Now why would I have a cox.com website under pipelineaudio, stating to be in Phoenix AZ, and then have a website for a live sound company in Portland Oregon, and have my Portland persona interview my Phoenix persona?

LOL....The only pathetic thing here Mr.Goob is your attempt to somehow discredit me. Go PM BruceBear or something and maybe you and him can "talk shop" about how you will produce some jazz drums to a metal tune or something. I mean, you OBVIOUSLY have never done a decent metal production.
 
Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, this board caters to BOTH kinds of music: metal and hip hop. Those of us who work mostly with rock, blues, jazz, country, soul, R&B, and every other style of music on the planet, and have been doing it for a quarter of a century, simply don't get it and don't belong here.

My fault, I forgot entirely that this board is only for 20-yr-old head bangers and booty chasers. And I also forgot that it doesn't matter a rat's ass that it's metal, that heavy processing of the kick is still not a necessity.

I'll bow out now. My mistake.

G.
 
Ford Van said:
Maybe an introduction to him is in order.

http://www.recordingproject.com/articles/article.php?article=23
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Hey Pipeline,

I read the discography at the bottom of the above link. I see that on Cheryl Crow's "Sweet Child o' Mine" you were the assistant. I first heard that song when I was assisting David Schiffman on a session in Nashville. He pulled a DAT out of his pocket and said he had been working on that a day or two before. Did he track and mix that tune or did he just track that tune. I remeber when I heard it that day, I was blown away. I was always was a huge G N' R fan, and I liked Cheryl Crow too. I was blown away when we listened to it before the session I was working on.
 
Jeezit fuck man, you are arguing that point with an engineer that has worked with Megadeath! Read some of the other names on his resume dorkwad!
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Those of us who work mostly with rock, blues, jazz, country, soul, R&B, and every other style of music on the planet, and have been doing it for a quarter of a century, simply don't get it and don't belong here.

My fault, I forgot entirely that this board is only for 20-yr-old head bangers and booty chasers. And I also forgot that it doesn't matter a rat's ass that it's metal, that heavy processing of the kick is still not a necessity.

I'll bow out now. My mistake.
G.
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You said, not me!

by the way, I'm 32.
 
I wouldnt say metal or hip hop

I would say though that ANY style, played on * MODERN *pop40 is not going to be realized with purist principles

"back in the day", aka "good sounding" albums of ANY genre could be made using a purist setup.

modern pop40 albums cant be

show me the modern kick you could get by recording a kick in the real world

Ill call your bluff and show you a kick drum made from one sample for the hi end, a separate sample for the low, different samples for the verses vs the choruses, sine waves generated and enveloped in for that "oh so consistent 50hz wave" and all manner of other pornography

what a lot of people here are up against is that THIS is how many people believe bands sound, and you need to find ways to make them sound like that, you will NOT do it by accurately capturing the sound of the real instrument. The band will leave, their parents will want their money back, and they will drag your name through the mud all over town

documenting a band is NOT what you are supposed to be doing in so many cases, and to be honest, metal is probably the one genre you could get closest to pulling it off with.

You CERTAINLY arent going to get the call back accurately capturing a modern country, rock, pop or nu metal band!

Are we going to argue next that that weird metallic note yanking sound of autotune can be made by microphones "accurately capturing a performance " as well? Whehter or not a singer is out of tune, the autotune sound is expected to be there in many cases

you wont get this by busting out your shoeps
 
Ford Van said:
Jeezit fuck man, you are arguing that point with an engineer that has worked with Megadeath! Read some of the other names on his resume dorkwad!
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Hey Ford, give me your mailing address, I want to send you $5 so you can buy yourself a clue.

I don't care if pipeline is the second coming of Christ himself, giving a rookie the advice that the only way to get his mixes to sound good is to bend and distort his tracks all over the place with project studio-level processers in mixing is just stinking awful advice, no matter what genre he's working in or who's saying it.

G.
 
Raw-Tracks said:
Hey Pipeline,

I read the discography at the bottom of the above link. I see that on Cheryl Crow's "Sweet Child o' Mine" you were the assistant. I first heard that song when I was assisting David Schiffman on a session in Nashville. He pulled a DAT out of his pocket and said he had been working on that a day or two before. Did he track and mix that tune or did he just track that tune. I remeber when I heard it that day, I was blown away. I was always was a huge G N' R fan, and I liked Cheryl Crow too. I was blown away when we listened to it before the session I was working on.
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Holy crap are we going to be able to finally put together one of those lawn gnome picture threads?

We got the vocals with Rick Rubin and some bass guitar. The drums had been done at the studio prior, though they were overdubbing some toms.

Ii was going to nashville after that, I wonder if you guys had the next stop! We need to find some guys before and after us and finally link this damn chain together
 
pipelineaudio said:
Are we going to argue next that that weird metallic note yanking sound of autotune can be made by microphones "accurately capturing a performance " as well? Whehter or not a singer is out of tune, the autotune sound is expected to be there in many cases

you wont get this by busting out your shoeps
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{knee to the groin} OUCH !!
 
pipelineaudio said:
Holy crap are we going to be able to finally put together one of those lawn gnome picture threads?

We got the vocals with Rick Rubin and some bass guitar. The drums had been done at the studio prior, though they were overdubbing some toms.

Ii was going to nashville after that, I wonder if you guys had the next stop! We need to find some guys before and after us and finally link this damn chain together
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No, No , No. I wasn't assisting Schifman on a Crow session. I was assisting him with a different band. He just played us the tune before our session. It was pretty complete. If my memory wasn't so shitty, I would say for certain, it was the final mix that I heard that day.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
My fault, I forgot entirely that this board is only for 20-yr-old head bangers and booty chasers. And I also forgot that it doesn't matter a rat's ass that it's metal, that heavy processing of the kick is still not a necessity.

I'll bow out now. My mistake.

G.
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So whats with hating on metal and hip hop man?
Thats total bullshit SG.
It takes some FUCKING SERIOUS knowhow to get a modern metal mix that stands up against whats out there these days.
Just because YOU dont do metal and aggresive rock dosent mean you should be walking around here pissing on the people who do it well.

And BTW im COMPELLED to hear a clip of your work.
I dont recall you ever posting any.
 
im not tryin 2 get involved. Just gotta question.

what would be a decent setting (eq) for making your vocals stand out, but not overpower the track? Is that a "give and take" situation, where, when you apply eq for presence, you take away fader level for volume? This might be a very inaccurate way of asking this, for the fact i really dont know how to truly ask it; if that made any damn sense.


and if it matters, the vocals are rap/hip hop, just in case certain eq frequencies play better with a specific style of music
 
as an experiment try to make the vocals just about exactly as bright as the snare drum, and about as dynamic as the brightness part of the snare drum and see what you find out
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Hey Ford, give me your mailing address, I want to send you $5 so you can buy yourself a clue.

I don't care if pipeline is the second coming of Christ himself, giving a rookie the advice that the only way to get his mixes to sound good is to bend and distort his tracks all over the place with project studio-level processers in mixing is just stinking awful advice, no matter what genre he's working in or who's saying it.

G.
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Well, I have plenty of clue to go around, and that is about what I am doing here! In fact, if you send me your address, I will AGAIN try to GIVE you a clue. But you don't seem to be taking charity! ;)

This dood is using Sonar 4. I would say that it is capable of pretty decent results! I mean, it is arguably as good as any ProTools system! So, I would have to say that the tools available aren't just "project studio level processers (sp? come on man...PROCESSORS)".

He has quite advanced tools available to him.

Every time you fight this Mr.Glen, you just show how little you actually know. I bet I could find a thread where you said something like "there are no "rules" in producing audio". Yet, here you are saying one should never apply more than a few db of cut/boost via an eq to achieve a better sound. LOL Man, you could go read article after article of big time engineers talking about some of the most extreme eq manglings they have done to achieve sounds that will work in the production.

If you won't accept the free "clue" I am giving you here, maybe you should "bow out" like you said you would earlier and start investigating more ways to approach production. It is obvious that you have a VERY narrow approach!
 
what about cool edit 2.1?

Hey, Ford? You just made a comment and said that sonar 4 is very capable. Would you happen to have any opinions on CEP's capabilities? As far as being able to handle major eq applications, such as the ones you guys are mentioning?
 
Ford Van said:
LOL Man, you could go read article after article of big time engineers talking about some of the most extreme eq manglings they have done to achieve sounds that will work in the production.
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And usually you can find 10x more articles where those "big time engineers" say that they only applied +/- 1dB of EQ or compression gain reduction. The fact is, that's the bullshit. I've worked with some of those engineers. They are doing more "suregery" than they will admit to in public.
 
xfinsterx said:
And BTW im COMPELLED to hear a clip of your work.
I dont recall you ever posting any.
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Something tells me you never will either!

And I totally agree that you have to have some MONSTER mixing chops to compete against modern rock mixes! It most certainly ain't about capturing the sounds that way! That was a 70's thing! LOL

You gotta mangle the shit to make it behave! The more I learn, the more I find out I have so much more to learn.

But it isn't just about "learning" really. It is about not closing our minds to trying different things.

Chris, you are probably familiar with Kurt Bevers, owner of Brownell Sound. Years ago, when he was assisting me with building a mobile studio, he used to say something to the effect of: "Learning how to do great audio is about doing a bunch of things you will never do again". :)

I never took that as all the stuff I had tried earlier was wrong. Nope, I took that as I did what it took at that time to make things right for the production. I knew that what he meant was that every project will have unique things to it. There are NO rules in producing great audio. You do whatever it takes to make it sound good. This model of working is WELL documented by engineers that are much better than any of us here!

SouthsideGlen, you are SERIOUSLY restricting yourself from achieving much better results in your productions if you truely follow the advice of never applying more than a few db of cut/boost on a eq. I mean, I really feel bad for your clients if that is your approach!
 
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