I've spent a lot of time hopelessly reading the Frequency Analysis in Cool Edit Pro...so it's nice to have a chart.
As the author of those charts (yes, plural, there is a second full-sized chart in there too
) I hopefully am allowed a little self-criticizm here. I truely appreciate the compliments it constantly draws. I do not wish to look a gift whore in the mouse, but to be honest, it still amazes me to this day just how "helpful" people really find that instrument chart to be. Truthfully, that indicates to me a bit of a problem, because too many people seem to be getting far more out of that chart that they really IMHO should be.
The #1 thing I get out of that chart myself is that practically all instruments share the same majority of frequency range; and that *should* be the #1 lesson that thing teaches.
The #2 lesson, and the reason I included the bottom two areas - the adjectives and the EQ bands - is that being able to tell what to do with your instrument tracks has nowhere near as much to do with the nature of the instrument (because of #1), but rather with what you
hear it doing, and how what you hear relates to the actual fundamental frequencies involved.
One should not be disappointed that they're not getting a lot out of a frequency analyzer. Frequency analysis is fine for troubleshooting specific problems that one can't necessarily hear (finding low frequency buildup troubles, harmonic distortions, transient frequencies, etc.), but they do a lousy job of telling one what they actually are hearing. And it's not until one understand what they are hearing that one can make heads or tails out of a frequency analysis anyway.
My instrument chart can be a useful guide once one has the frequencies themselves pretty well ID'd in their heads as to what they actually sound like, but if one can't, for example, tell with just their ears whether a particular sound is closer to 200Hz or 400Hz, or pretty much tell that a certain sound is eminating from closer to 3khz than it is to 6kHz, and so on, even the best visual chart in the world (of any type) isn't really going to help very much.
Sit down with an EQ and some good program material and spend a week just learning the frequency bands. That'll get you 90% of the way home. *THEN* the frquency chart can help take you the remaining 10%. Reverse that order, and that chart will only give you a slighly bigger stick for swinging at an invisible pinata.
G.
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