Klauztrophobia

Please check out and talk to me about my latest release.

This is me playing out a gnarly synth part in one of my latest tracks. The song is called Daylight Practice.

This is the second synth part.

The full track is here:

Just a post to say I’m still around and have not abandoned this blog.

New posts coming soon, but for now, happy holidays. Here is a song I just finished pertaining to how blessed I am to have good family and friends.

If you are even remotely serious about mixing or sound engineering, you have to know what the Parametric Equalizer. Many would call it man’s best friend in mixing. I’ll go over the basics of frequencies and eq’ing at first and later, I’ll cover the massive impact it can have in making your tracks sound better as well as the most common cases of potential abuse.

Here’s a track where I used the EQ to make space in the mix, allowing every instrument and drum to “shine” in its frequency range.

As per format, I will be discussing in terms of FL Studio 10, which comes equipped with a nice eq of its called, Fruity Parametric EQ 2. Why the number 2 and not 1? Because it has a better graphical interface and it’s easier to see what’s going on as far as which frequencies are strongest.You equip the EQ in the mixer channels and it is an effect that is applied onto a channel and not to a specific instrument. Thus, you can have as many instruments as you want running into that channel and getting the effects of the EQ on it. For starters, here’s a closer look at the interface and design of the Fruity Parametric EQ 2.

Lots of colors

A great place to start is to run your instruments through the channel and see it in action. You’ll immediately see the pink columns start to appear. These are the frequencies the instrument or drum track hits. This in the image is a cello, so it is populating the mid-lows and a little bit of the mid range.

What can the EQ do:

1) Boost/ cut certain frequencies of the instruments running through the channel.

Why would I use that:

1) To cut unwanted frequencies of an instrument, especially if those unwanted ones preside in the same range as some of your other principle instruments.

2) To boost an instrument in a frequency range that would help it stand better in the mix, or just sound better in general.

How to use it:

1) Increase a band, which is indicated by the numbers in the circles, to boost in a certain region. Ex: The image shows increasing the 6 band in 3000 Hz region to make the cello have more of a presence in the upper register.

2) Decrease a band to cut. Easy as that!

tips on using it WELL:

1) Keep your ear really tuned in to see how it affects the track as you adjust the bands.

2) Cut the areas that a particular instrument doesn’t need to have like the bass end of a lead synth, or high harmonics of a bass guitar.

3) So by cut, I don’t mean roll off. Roll off is a term used to mean entirely remove. In the mastering process, rolling off is extremely imp0rtant.

4) When you boost, make sure you use it judiciously because too much boosting (above 10% in a given band) will give you a pretty bad sound that is hard to recognize for novices.

5) In general, good EQ-ers cut more than they boost. And great EQ-ers make their changes to be very precise and don’t dump it on every track unless absolutely necessary.

6) Keep your eye on the volume levels. This goes back to my Loudness War post. Cutting and boosting will affect the overall volume of a track so make sure to mix your levels accordingly.

Wrapping up, the Parametric EQ is  a simple tool to use if you get the fundamentals down and it has tremendous power in controlling the clarity and quality of your overall sound. Good luck using it and feel free to ask specific questions.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the Loudness War. If you don’t know what it is, it is the complaint that music nowadays is too “loud” which in technical terms is the lack of dynamic range. When a song has little dynamic range, it is harder to distinguish loud versus quiet sounds. I don’t really want to write out the full history of this topic but the idea is that digital music has been losing dynamic range since the ’90s or in other words, getting “louder.” Check out the Wikipedia page here at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

And here is a Youtube videofor an audio demo:

For a lot of you reading this, you are already well-informed about the Loudness War and you know how it affects every genre in modern music. Hip hop in particular is affected severely by labels requiring music to be “loud.” Hip hop is a very radio and club driven genre which requires the a song to be “loud” for it to grab the listener’s attention. The current situation is that if a song doesn’t match the excessive loudness of all the other songs being played in a club or radio mix then people will quickly turn their heads away. However, I believe this entire “war” has a silver lining for hip hop production.

This whole debate can be very useful for producers and engineers because it can enhance the number one factor that any artist, DJ or listener is looking for, “bounce.” This bounce in particular comes from the drums. The video above shows how the drums are surprisingly crisp and strong in older recordings which were not mastered for maximum loudness. I honestly believe all producers can get banging beats, if they just lowered the levels of their other instruments and kept the drums with high levels in their mix. So when it’s turned up to the desired volume, the drums simply pop when they hit the eardrum.

Here is an example where I made a lot of headroom for the drums and gave the instruments the dynamic range they needed.

Here a couple of helpful tips on how to use the Loudness War principles to your advantage.

1) Go to the Master Channel in your Mixer, and go to the settings for the Fruity Limiter at the bottom.

2) Set the Gain (Purple knob on the left) to 0 dB which should be the 12 o’clock position. In some default setting, there is Gain turned up to a couple dB because  Image-Line decided that it was automatically going to help make songs “louder.”

• Basically, when there is a certain amount of Gain on the Master Channel, this equates to all the music in your DAW being turned up that amount of dB.
• FL wants to do this because even if you have only a few instruments at moderate volumes, this Gain will help make your production sound “louder” and “fuller.”
• We don’t want this for two reasons.
1. It isn’t the natural volume of all your tracks.
2. When you have a lot of tracks, it can get loud and the last thing you want is this Gain to make it even louder.

3) Just because one of the settings here was screwed up doesn’t make the Limiter our enemy. Don’t disable the effect on the Master Channel. The Limiter is one of the best friends a producer has.

• In short, it prevents our audio from pushing past the 0 dB point, which is the audio saturation limit for digital recordings. If the previous statement went above your ahead, don’t worry about it and continue reading.

4) My volume recommendations for a banging mix:

• Let the drums have a volume above 90% (-2.4 dB to 0 dB). This applies mainly to the kick and the snare and more so on the kick than the snare, when it comes to emphasis. Go much lower (around 50-60% or -15.8 dB to -12.8 dB) on the high hat and other percs.
• For all the instruments creating rhythm and melody, set their levels anywhere between 60-75% (-9.8 dB to -6.1 dB). Obviously give the instrument which you want to highlight in the mix the 75%.
• Keep an eye on the Limiter. You want the drums to peak but not exceed the 0 dB mark, which is that line. Anything exceeding the 0 dB mark is shown as the gray area above the line, similar to the red regions in the video above.

I’ve always known about the Loudness War but most of my previous mixes are rather “loud,” but my plan is from the posted track onwards I want to make the drums really stand out, which you can only do by making the other things quieter.