/muprod/ - Electronic Music Production

EQing is one of the most basic skills a music producer has. EQs have many many uses, both for creative uses and for mixdown purposes. Ill go into the mixdown in a later post.

My favourite EQ is Pro-Q 2, but there are alot of good EQs out there, FL studios Parametric EQ is fairly decent.
In this picture, there is a bell curve cutting out the frequencies at 100-200hz, which is the bass to mid bass range. The gain is the amount of dB (volume) you cut, the Q is the gradient (or slope) or the curve and the FREQ is the freq you wish to cut. You can EQ in whatever way you like, the general rule is music production is that there are no rules, and that if it sounds good, then do it. I however do not recommend Additive EQing. Additive EQing is when, for example, you boost the high frequencies on a lead to achieve more highs, this distorts and thins out the lead, a much better way in my experience is to build another lead layer specifically for the high frequencies.

Additive EQing however definitely is useful. I use it creatively when distorting to change distortions in the sound, but Ill get into that later.

Again, if its sounds good, just keep it. These are just tips.

Subtractive EQing is when you remove frequencies, rather than add them. This is useful when mixing (leveling the sounds and making them even), and for removing unwanted frequencies from a sound. The picture here shows subtractive EQing.

>>31
Ok, so this post is about basic mixer layout. Most mixers are pretty similar, with the exception of FL, which is slightly different, and I think Reason (havent used it).

This is the Cubase 7 mixer. The Red Tracks are standard audio tracks, ones that you would put your vocals or kick drums. I have routed those to the Yellow Tracks, which are their 'Buses'. This is where I like to do my mixdown stuff, the end stuff like stereo imaging and stuff. Ill get into that later.

The Buses (Yellow) are then sent to the SUBMIX, which is what everything is sent to, it acts as a Bus before the final Stereo OUT bus, just so i have control over overall volume a bit more.

The Purple Buses are called SENDS. That is what the little window on the right is showing. Its showing the signal from the RED TRACK 1 is being sent to T1 FX. This means the signal goes to T1 FX AND TRACK 1 BUS. The purpose of this is to add extra FX such as reverb and chorus and delays. The SEND BUS makes is so that the reverb doesnt go over the entire signal, but only a controlled portion. It was also first designed this way due to the limited power of computer years ago. This way you could put one reverb unit on a single send, and send multiple signals to it, rather than having one reverb for each unit.

I then route the FX channel to the corresponding BUS. So in this case, T1 FX → TRACK 1 BUS → SUBMIX. I do this so I can control the FX with a compression, along with the original signal.

>>241

The only limitation is that computers can't reproduce real life instruments. They can only make a very accurate simulation of one, but nothing as the real one.