frequencies and levels

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dabluesman

dabluesman

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My mix down's are usualy bass heavy and when I cut some of the bass out, the bass guitar gets buried in the mix. It takes several remasters to get it right. Can some one tell me what the frequency ranges are for basic instruments.. bass drum, snare, high-hat's, guitar, and bass guitar. I tend to use too much bass on my guitar tracks, I like the fullness. But in the mix down, it clashes with the bass guitar and bass drum which causes an overload of bass for the song. I think it would help if I knew how to arrange the instruments by their proper frequency.

My other problem (probably related to the above) is overall volume of my mix down's. Compared to songs on the radio, cd's & tapes, I always have to turn up the volume on my stereo to achieve the same volume level. I've tried to take the mix down and amplify it a few db's but then I end up with distortion and clipping.

I want to use all the frequencies (if possible) to get a full sounding mix and more overall volume. Is there a standard volume level?

Take a listen to my mp3's to hear what I'm talking about. I'm currently working on "Hard Rock Jam"

http://dabluesman.com

When you listen to Hard Rock Jam, watch the graphic eq, the bars on the left (bass side) will pretty much allways stay at the top while the mid's jump up and down to the song and not much anything happens to the bars on the right (treble side.) I wanna see all those bars across the board moving up and down, filling up the entire eq but without clipping. Help!?! It's making me crazy!
 
I hate to ask this but... what is normalization, I've seen the option for it in Cool Edit Pro but have never used it. Reading other threads, it seems I should be using it.
 
The same problem

I had the same problem when i first started recording. I've got a lot to learn still, but I've been having some luck with my mixes lately. I think you're on the right track by messing with your EQ.

To clean up the bottom end, this is what works for me:
Bass Guitar - my bass guit sits nicely at 200Hz and 1.5kHz, so roll off 70Hz (to make room for the bass drum)
Guitar - I leave the guitar's EQ straight up during tracking and then roll off 200Hz (bass gt), 500Hz and 70Hz(bass dm) during mix
Bass drum - I also pull 200Hz out of the bass drum so the bass gt can be heard in that freq. I roll off 500Hz a little for more of a thud sound, it seems to clean a lot of the mud off the mix too.

I hope this helps. My style is a lot different than yours and I'm tuned drop Db. So, I might be well off the mark.

Good Luck
 
I hate to ask this but... what is normalization, I've seen the option for it in Cool Edit Pro but have never used it. Reading other threads, it seems I should be using it.
Click to expand...

Normalization consists on augmenting the level of your recording in a way that occupies all the dynamic range that you recording media (in this case your computer) can handle
.
For example, if your song peaks at -4dB and you using a digital recorder -which peaks at 0db-, then the computer will add to all your levels so that -4db peak is at 0db, thus making all your recording sound louder. It will also augment the noise in the track.

I think that mathematically what it does is add that db difference (in this case 4db) to every sample in the recording. But someone with better knowledge will say if this is true. Anyway, I think you understand what I'm saying.

It is not the same as compression, where you dynamic range is first reduced and then the overall level is raised (and that last part is optional).

Hope that helps, cheers
 
Chris, thanks for the links! Good 'ole Ed! I forgot all about that post, it's just what I needed.
 
normalization is like pushing up the main outs until the loudest part of your song is at exactly -0db.

as for the guitar and other instrumentation i high pass everything at 80hz except for the bass and kick. sometimes, i even cut out everything below 120hz on the guitar.
 
I played around with my parametric eq to hear the difference in cutting out some of the bass (250Hz) on a guitar track that was clashing with the bass guitar. How do you keep it full sounding while taking the lows away? The guitar track sounded very thin and small, though it did give room for the bass guitar.. As I read from Ed's post, it's better to get it right during the recording process instead of eq'ing the track later. That makes sense to me, so next time I'm gonna record the guitar with less bass but a bit more mids. Anyone know of a good meter (maybe a software one) for showing the frequency levels during recording and playback? My stereo system has one built in kinda like the one on winamp but it is not very sensitive or useful...
 
your mixes are bass heavy?... are you a bassist?!!! sounds like it COULD be a monitoring problem. what monitors are you using?
 
the low E on a guitar is 164hz (the A string (A4) is 220).

whenever i've talked with other musicians/recordist about harmonics we've always gone up... the 1rst harmonic of 220 is 440 etc...

but i must work both ways, so the first harmonic of 164 going lower is 82 and the 2nd harmonic is 41. since 41 and 82 definitely put you in harms way regarding the bass and kick, i'd get that stuff out of there.

i may be making your guitar less beefy but unless you've arranged your song such that the bass and guitar don't ring at the same time, that beefy guitar is going to infringe on your bass and kick every time.
 
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