thewhippinpost's blog

More "slap-on-the-wrist" things to beware of when fondling your EQ knobs (oo-er!).

OK... first of all, before applying and/or messing about with any EQ or effects etc... you should be just setting the relative volumes of each instrument, in order of the importance they have in your song, simple enough?

Seeing as we've used the term masking a few times, I thought we'd better add a few words to describe what it is and how to handle it.

Frequency Masking

Frequency masking is where the frequencies of two (or more) instruments are battling it out for space - ie... they share the same frequencies - and is probably one of the most common problems encountered when mixing.

Another easy trap to fall into when feeling tired and lazy is the tendency to boost an instrument in the mix via the EQ, when in fact - unless for creative reasons (like deliberately altering the sound to achieve an effect or whatever) - cutting should be your preferred option. Here's a few reasons why...

Simple and quick one today: If you want a thumping bass, keep it centre-stage, together with the kick-drum.

Bass Central

By setting the panning of bass and kick-drum to the centre, you utilise the power of both right and left speakers equally, giving you more punch for your buck.

If you're concentrating on a song-part for too long, your ears become quickly tired. You will sit there, and you will think: '...nah'; and you will convince yourself everything is fine. But what you've probably done in fact, is over-compensate without realising.

This is cool and qualifies as one of those, 'Oh why didn't I think of that!,' simple ideas that change the way people do stuff.

Let it be known that henceforth, TheWhippinpost was officially "relaunched", live, on 20th Nov 2006, BO!

Welcome to the all-new and improved TheWhippinpost!

After many years it was finally decided to neatly pack this site up into a database and produce the all-singing, all-dancing dynamic website you see before you.