
This will amplify what you hear in certain ranges and you might notice a resonance. You want to play them roughly at the same level to see exactly where the resonance is in the spectrum.Īnother way to identify a resonant frequency is to take your EQ, starting with a wide Q of about 1, and boost it by 5dB then scroll through the frequency spectrum. With the help of a FFT or a great EQ plugin like Fabfilter Pro-Q3, I can then “see” the frequency of my note and compare it to my sound. When I hear a resonances-which sound a bit like a delay with too much feedback-I would try to play the note on a keyboard with a sine oscillator to mimic what I hear. One trick I found useful in developing my understanding of resonances is the use of a keyboard and a simple oscillator (note: Ableton’s Operator will do). I find it useful to mute a problematic sound and listen to an oscillator on its own, to train your ear to recognize that kind of frequency. Problems can also arise from the acoustics of the room which might overload certain frequencies, creating resonances that aren’t in the mix itself, but from the room, which results in people cutting valuable frequencies from their mixes and sounds. It’s like wearing glasses with a stain on them you’ll see it everywhere. Bad referencing is counter-productive, as you might expect. Why? Probably because of how they hear things at home with their speakers/headphones. When I remove them, I hear no difference in my studio. I often see multiple cuts, very sharp and very low. I’d say roughly 90% of my clients’ projects have bizarre EQ correction(s). Training your ears to detect resonancesĮar training is the most important part of EQ’ing and it is also the most difficult to develop it demands practice and guidance. Surgical EQ cuts are the exact opposite, as they are difficult to really explain-especially through a simple blog post-and can be a bit of an esoteric subject. Using shelving EQs to correct tonal issues is one of the most misunderstood concepts in mixing and it is also, in some ways, probably the easiest to fix. In past articles, I’ve referred to the benefits of shelving EQs in certain cases to fix tonal issues in a song.

If you’re an advanced audio nerd, I recommend you carry on with your online searches for EQ tips.
AUDIO OVERLOAD PROGRAM HOW TO
In this post, I will provide a very high-level outline of how to identify resonances and to fix them with surgical EQ’ing.

Yes, there are things that you can do consistently that will make a difference, and yes, in some cases, cutting at a specific frequency can help, but there are other ways to EQ, too. The thing about EQ’ing music is that one simple solution cannot apply to every case-it’s more complex than that. Recently, I clicked on one just to see what they had to say, and was very disappointed to read stuff like “ if your track sounds honky, you need to cut at 500hz…blah blah blah…”, as if a simple cut at a specific range would easily solve everyone’s EQ problems. Once in a while, I see ads in my Facebook feed that claim to reveal some “secret” EQ tips. EQing resonant frequencies can be a very difficult task.
