When I started djing I felt like I picked up EQing pretty quickly. Probably had it down pat within a month. But since then I haven’t seemed to make much progress.. Here’s what I’d usually do during a set
Maybe 80% of the time I’d drop the bass of the track I’m bringing in, unless there’s something that clashes in the mid/treb or something like that, or I need the bass as there’s less in the other etc etc.. Then swap bases at the start of a phrase or whenever I want, you all know what I’m talking about..
Other than that, I drop the treb(least)/mid/bass a fair bit during breaks and stuff just as fx, or a favourite of mine is dropping the bass and pumping an echo (and sometimes a tasty iceverb if the mood strikes) in a build up.
These are pretty much the main things that I’ll do and rarely stray from them, more out of habit than anything else. Is there a decent article around about the art of eqing? Or any favourites/tips from you guys?
Something that makes a big difference in the feel of a set so I’d love to concentrate on getting better!
love
depending on the song ill EQ in ‘reverse’… take out the bass during a break down while not having any high end on the track thats coming in. but im a total noob , really it must come down to knowing ur tracks and being handy with ur mixer
When you EQ something, it doesn’t matter if it sounds awful by itself, its how it sounds in the mix which counts. It may sound thin in isolation and be ok in with everything else.
Usually, the less you EQ something, the better the resuts are; don’t push the levels too hard.
BEFORE EQing, loop the sound you are altering constantly for about a minute and listen carefully. After about a minute, you will begin to hear the annoying, pointless frequencies which you can cut.
DONT begin with boosting; cut all the pointless frequencies out first. Only then, do a little boosting.
Cut out as much as the low and high end as you can get away with. Remember the first bullet point when doing this. EQ the sound while it is playing with everything else because you will be hesitant to cut when the sound is in isolation.
Dont try and boost what isn’t there. Most stuff doesn’t go beyond 12,000Hz. If you want more high end on, say, your breaks dont pump up the high frequencies if there are none in the original sound, you will just be amplifying noise. Instead, layer another sound over it with high-frequency content to compensate.
Dont have an instant cut-off point. If you’ve got a graph which suddenly goes up or down without a steady slope, you will experience a ringing sound at that frequency.
ALWAYS switch between the Dry and Wet signal to ensure that you are improving the sound rather than destroying it.
Dont spend too long EQing something or your ears get confused and you may start thinking that something sounds good when it isn’t. I’d say dont spend more than 2 minutes on EQing. Have a 2 minute break if you need more time so that your ears are fresh when you come to do it again.
Only boost a frequency if nothing else in the mix is using it.
Stick a filter on the entire tune
Solo the bass
Low-pass your tune to the highest frequency of your bass tones
As your tune is playing, un-mute an individual element
You should hear no difference to the bass. If you do, you know that the element is conflicting with it so, keeping both solo’d, high-pass the element until you can only hear the bass tones again.
Make 3 coppies of the break
Low pass one to get just the kicks
High pass and low pass one to get just the snares
High pass the other to get just the hi hats/rides/crashes
Pitch up the kicks so that they are not at a frequency which messes up your bass
Do a lot of corrective eq-cutting with the snares, followed by a bit of distortion
Wow thanks for that. Had a look at the articles you posted and yeah they’re a bit more producing orientated but that list you gave is a winner. High/low pass filtering is a sick idea to highlight freqs, not enough buttons on my controller!