Using filters can make a huge difference to the balance of the guitars and bass in your mix.
Not only will using EQ filters help clear up your individual tracks in the context of the full mix, but they’ll also help glue your guitar parts and bass parts together so you’ll have a much more cohesive, balanced sound overall.
If you’ve ever struggled with getting your guitars and bass to sound the way you want, then this video is for you…
Now, I’d love to know…
What are your “go to moves” for balancing your guitars and bass?
Leave a comment below!
professional sounding mix every time...
I like to split the guitars left and right – but not hard left and right – maybe 50% each, otherwise mono compatibility really takes a huge hit. Always like to use different guitars and different amps for each side to make each have it’s own identity. Double up and record each side twice and combine the takes. Use a phase rotator on the two takes on the left to dial in the right sound – various phase cancellation offers lots of additional tones. Use the High pass on the guitar bus around 120 hz. Use a wide dynamic EQ from 1k-4k on the guitar bus to duck this psychoacoustic frequency out of the way of the vocal. Also, must low pass to remove the digital fizz on top. Somewhere around 8k. Referencing is key and keeps everything copasetic
Some great tips here, Pat. Thanks for sharing!
In addition to your very good advice on high pass and low pass usage, I find complimentary EQ and also automated complimentary EQ helpful sometimes. If one item needs to punch through others – e.g. a vocal vs. certain instruments – you can add a gentle wide band boost on the meat of the vocal and pull a bit of that same range out of the competing instruments. To exaggerate this, you can gently modulate that cut with the amplitude of the vocal. Then you can leave that range of the EQ untouched when there is no vocal and only pull some out when the vocal needs to punch through. (I’ll admit I’ve not used this technique specifically to balance guitars vs. bass, but primarily for items that share more of the same spectrum. It may work to use the guitar amplitude to modulate down the midrange content of the bass – just have not tried that specifically…) This might cause the illusion of more dynamics than desired in the modulating track, so you might need some compression to combat that.
Interesting concept Walt. Sounds like you’re using dynamic EQ?
Hi Stephen,
This is more parameter modulation than dynamic EQ. I can’t take credit for the concept – I originally learned it from the guide for the DAW that I use – REAPER, although I believe most DAWs would be capable of this.
Let’s say for example I pick a band of a standard parametric EQ such as the one that comes with the DAW that I have placed on an instrument track. Then I tell the DAW to modulate the gain of that band inversely to the amplitude of a vocal track. Then when the vocal “volume” goes up, that band of EQ is pulled down proportionately and vice versa. (When the vocal is silent, that band of the EQ is left unaffected.) Then when the vocalist sings, that frequency band of the competing instrument is reduced – only while the vocal is present. This essentially opens some space in the spectrum for the vocal to take its place without affecting the instrument waveform at any other time except when the vocal is present.
Does that make more sense?
Thanks Walt. Yes, that makes sense. Do you think you could do the same thing by sidechaining to a multiband compressor?
Hi Stephen,
You could do something similar by sidechaining an MBC – as long as the sidechain is set up to only trigger compression of the desired band.
The result will be different when you use a plugin that includes compression than with a typical EQ, though. Since compressors only act on a signal after the triggering signal crosses a threshold, that band of the audio spectrum will only be reduced if the signal crosses the threshold and then the action is affected by the attack and release times. This might produce a more desirable effect – or it might not – that’s up to the individual tracks and what effect is desired. For this particular application I think I’d usually prefer the linear proportional nature of parameter modulation.
While sidechaining compression modulates amplitude per a threshold and ratio, parameter modulation can modulate virtually any adjustable parameter of any plugin.
With parameter modulation, for example, you could even modulate the width of an EQ frequency band, the compression ratio of an MBC, attack, release, delay – about anything – only limited by your imagination…
Parameter modulation is pretty cool that way, but I’ve never taken the time to get wild with it. 🙂
Sounds great Walt. Thanks for letting me know about this. I’ll have to give it a go!
Another excellent tutorial Stephen – but where was your usual crazy analogy? (Rotting wet fish sautéd in red wine…! 😀 )
The low end really comes through nicely in the final mix. My own personal taste would have been to cut less of the high end clickyness – just make its presence felt a bit more – though I do agree that it was too much to start with.
I knew I forgot something! More analogies in the next video 🙂
Yes, it took some time to get that high end balance right. I know you can’t hear it on the example, but those guitars were actually competing quite heavily with my overheads for space and the overheads won that EQ battle.
Good spot!