In our first lesson of creative mixing we learnt about the cornerstones of mixing, EQ and compression. While I knew a little about both of these already, I find the ability to use them as both ‘fixing’ tools and ‘tonal’ tools really interesting.
For instance, the ‘tonal’ use of EQ immediately jumps out at you in any queens of the stone age song, in which an EQ pedal boosting mids went into an amp boosting further mids, and after being picked up by the mic, had the midrange further boosted at the console. This created the iconic tone used on Songs For The Dead, and perfectly exemplifies the use of EQ as an effects and artistic choice instead of something to just fix a mix.
However, we learnt a great mixing technique using EQ as a ‘fixing’ tool in which we applied a low pass to focus on these frequencies. We then soloed the bass and bought in other elements of the song individually to see if they clashed with the bass and used an EQ on these individual elements to remove any of these problem frequencies. This is a great example of EQ being used as a tool to fix a mix, creating space for each individual element.
We were then told to consider reference tracks. When producing or mixing, it’s always useful to have tracks that capture what you want, to then compare against your mix and see what could improve. For example having a track that you think has great industrial drums or distorted punk guitar, and that fit really well within the produced and mixed final track that you can compare to.
This got me thinking about a list of songs that I think do certain things perfectly that I want to compare my own work against, so I started making a reference track list. So far its not too big but a few examples are:
- WOVENHANDs ‘long horn‘ for twangy, spy-theme style guitar
- The Cure’s ‘fascination street‘ or ‘holy hour‘ for super prominent, gothic bass
- Bauhaus’s ‘passion of lovers‘ for vocal reverb
- Nick Cave’s ‘your funeral my trial‘ for the piano within a whole band context
In conclusion, I found the EQ technique to focus in on certain frequency ranges really helpful, and the idea of reference tracks is something I really want to expand upon and use whenever possible in the future