Kill Me Sarah wrote:
Forgive me if this seems a little basic. KMS' picture is a
graphic EQ. These are popular in consumer grade equipment, partly because they are relatively simple to use, but they are not particularly useful in a recording studio environment. (*)
What you really want is a
parametric equalizer. They are harder to use effectively but you need to learn what you can do with them. It is well worth a little effort. A parametric EQ has, typically, four controls: type, centre frequency, Q and dB.
There is probably a better name for "type," but what I mean is a choice between (typically):
- high pass
- high shelf
- bandpass
- band cut
- low pass
- low shelf
This lets you choose the basic "picture" of the EQ curve. A high "pass" eq lets everything above the centre frequency go through unchanged, but stops low frequencies, and a low pass is just the opposite. A high "shelf" applies a cut to everything belowe the centre frequency, but that cut is the same for all the lows. Bandpass is a combination of high pass and low pass: it cuts everything far away from the centre frequency (in both directions).
"Q" is a measure of how sharp the EQ curve is. It's hard to visualize, but a Q of about 0.7 is a reasonable number for a baseline. Lower Q means a very sharp curve: a band cut at, say, a centre of 60 Hz and a Q of 0.1 is a good way to remove hum from your power supplies (in America) without affecting nearby frequencies too much.
The "dB" measurement is just how much you cut or boost. As a rule of thumb, don't boost more than about 3 dB unless you really can't help it; stronger cuts are usually safer. High (and low) pass filters don't have this; the drop-off is a function of the filter (you'll often see something like 12 dB per octave).
Finally, most parametric EQs are either three- or four-band. Each band is a separate equalizer, but often you won't have the full range of choices for each band. Typically you will have a low-pass, a high-pass and two band-pass/cuts.
I'm sure if you look around online you can find more details about how these things work. A good place to start is to find any post by deshead, read it carefully and then follow whatever links are in his signature. Hell, if I was sober I would just direct you to him without wasting my time typing any of this crap.
So what's that all mean?
When Ken says "cut everything below 100 Hz" he means you want a parametric EQ with a high-pass filter centered around 100 Hz. The end result of this is that sounds at 100 Hz will get about a 3dB cut, and everything below 100Hz is going to be cut significantly more.
And, why is this okay (and even good)? A typical electric guitar, in standard tuning, has a fundamental frequency of around 81 Hz. That's the open low-E. (Almost) everything below that is just noise. Sound energy is also a function of frequency; lower frequencies have much more energy. So it's important to get rid of all this junk that you don't even hear because it is silently dominating your mix. The results may surprise you; you'll be able to turn up the volume on your tracks without overloading anything and your song will sound both louder and better.
You can simulate this effect on your graphic eq by setting the lowest two bands all the way down, and maybe lowering the third band a little, but it's not really ideal.
Finally: signboy: another way to accomplish this is to sidechain the kick into a compressor on the bass track, so the bass is compressed more when the kick is active. This is (prehaps surprisingly) easier to do in hardware, because a lot of software compressors don't have sidechain inputs.
(*) They're okay; I've used graphic EQs for recordings before. I'm not saying they are useless, just that a parametric is more likely what you need.
