datamusicata

My sister Pamala (www.pamalastanley.com)  and I were talking about mastering and premastering and she was telling me how she had to go thru an entire stereo master track and take down the kick drum every place in over modulated.   I asked her why she didn’t just use a parametric eq and dial in the offending frequency and then diminish that by a db or two.

She told me that she didn’t really know how to use the parametric.   Now I have become an engineer by default and I invite anyone to correct me or to add to the discussion here, but let me tell you what I do.

I  have two tricks, if you will, that I use when it seems I have to fix something like Pamala described above.

First I load in a parametric eq then patch the track or master tracks to run thru it, so I am now listening to those tracks (or track) thru the parametric.

Then I go to the boost and I boost it 1 db.  I do the 1 db boost to make it a little easier to detect the offending frequencies.   

Then I slowly sweep the entire bandwidth from 20  to 20,000 hz and try to determine which frequency or frequencies are the offending ones, and I make notes of which ones those might be.

Now I go back to the boost and I subtract 1 db and I slowly do the sweet again and I listen carefully again, seeing which frequencies clear up the mix and make note of which ones actually diminish the impact of the mix.

I do this to find which would serve the song better.   Where I have done the boost, and found the offender, I go back to the track set the dials flat and I decrease that offending frequency by 1db less.  And then I listen.  If that’s too much I undo and then do a .5 db decrease.    If it’s not enough I begin continue to decrease in .5 db increments until I’ve done what I wanted to do or discovered that this just isn’t going to work.

Using the parametric to dial in the offending frequencies and then decreasing them until the mix sounds balanced.  

You can, of course, do the same thing inversely if you feel something is missing from the track.    And in this world of digital recording there is always the UNDO command.

Saves a lot of time that use to be spent going thru various mixes on various machines and comparing or crawling around on the floor looking for pieces of tape.