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Me and my brother spent a very long time recording our first song under the impression that "what doesn't sound good now will be fixed in the oh-so-amazing cool edit pro, with eq."

Boy were we wrong.

Now we know better: eq=devil. But still when we master our recordings sometimes the low-end (for instance) might sound like the bass drum and b. guitar are just going to town and you can't really make it out very clearly. Do i just need to shelve the low-end instruments more? I've been experimenting with cutting the bass guitar at a few hundred htz to leave room for the bass drum and such.. it sounds better, is this the right idea?
(btw we use Cubase now, yay)

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saemskin Mon, 05/01/2006 - 17:28

You sort of answered yourself with "it sounds better".
You're trying to clear up the mud, theres not really any one way to do this. What frequency space is your kick drum occupying as opposed to the frequency space your bass guitar is occupying?

Techno-ish music is going to have a much deeper kick than bass, so you want to make room as such. You can shelf or cut entirely the bass guitar below (for example) 100 Hz, and vice-versa LPF the kick around the same range. If it sounds un-natural, then adjust.

Classic rock-n-roll style has the reverse, where the bass guitar is usually much lower of the frequency chart than the kick. So eq accordingly so they arent fighting for low end space.

You are right in at least trying *something*, but you cannot expect a clear cut answer because everything must be taken case by case. Just know that mud exists between 180-600 Hz, so start looking there. How about and audio snippet of this kick/bass combo, then we can begin to get specific.

Michael Fossenkemper Mon, 05/01/2006 - 19:52

yes, but from mud comes life. It's easy to suck the life out of a mix. Mastering in this case will probably be less productive then revisiting the mix. eq doesn't equal the devil, if you aren't getting satisfactory results, the look at the eq you are using and how you are using it. experience is the only thing that will tell you when to crank the knob and when not to. In other words, crank it and listen, crank it less and listen. Then try a different one. try a different freq. They do it all over again on different monitors. 9/10 times it's the monitors that are leading you in the wrong direction.