EQ or equalizer is a tool to equalize the frequencies on a track. EQs came in tons and tons of flavors, ranging from affordable to utterly pricey VST/AU plugins but they all function the same; boosting and cutting any given wanted or unwanted frequencies. Puzzled? We'll take you through the basics.
Remove Unwanted Frequencies
The human ear could approximately hear frequencies as wide as 20-20Khz. These remarkable numbers enable humans to differentiate between wide varieties of sounds. When combined together, these will create a bunch of noise that sounds pleasing to the ears if they are treated well.
In digital mixing, the EQ's main purpose is for removing any unwanted noise or artifacts, resulting in cleaner and better mix when applied to all music elements throughout one composition. Let's take EQing a kick drum for example.
The kick drum is the low-frequency percussive sound. It acts as the foundation of a track's groove. They sit really low in the mix and requires good treatment, especially when it comes to electronic and dance music in general because the kick drum determines the track's groove.
Before starting, we have to know the range of the kick drum's range in the frequency range. To do this, EQ's built in analyzer came in handy. The Analyzer helps to visualize where the sound sits in the mix. See the following screenshot:
As you can see above, the kick sound occupies a large amount of frequency presence around 50 - 200 Hz.
Depending on how you want the kick to sound like, you can filter and cut out inaudible frequencies those are visually present in the analyzer to achieve the body and thump of the kick and providing space for other instruments to sound freely. Here's an example:
Alternatively, you can decrease the amount of the filter to increase the Attack / Snap of the kick itself. looks something like this:
Boosting Inaudible Frequencies
You might encounter an occasion in your production when you want to boost some frequencies those are inaudible in the mix. to do this, you can simply do the opposite; boosting the frequencies you wish to boost.
By: Najmi Ismail