3/23/15, 1:23 AMThinking inside the Box: a complete EQ tutorial - dnbscene.com

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ContentsPart One: IntroPart Two: The boxPart Three: EQ: Thinking VisuallyPart Four: EQ: Practical Applications 1: Layering and adding soundsPart Five: EQ: Practical Applications 2: Subtracting soundsPart Six: EQ: Practical Applications 3: Mixing and making it fit

This article was originally written and published on dnbscene.com in 2003.

Part One: Intro

To begin: an anecdote.

I started making music with Impulse Tracker. After a few years of gaining decidedly unprofessionalresults with that, I moved onto Buzz. Yippee! Effects! I happily threw my sounds into a ton of reverbs,filters, delays, distortions, phasers and so on. In some ways, of course, this was an improvement. Mysounds at least had a bit of depth and character. But somehow the real fundamental problem, an

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Thinking inside the Box: acomplete EQ tutorialTutorials 26th November 2010 | 158,913 views Comments (84) 1.5kLikeLike ShareShare

3/23/15, 1:23 AMThinking inside the Box: a complete EQ tutorial - dnbscene.com

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"unprofessional" sound, was still there. My tracks sounded weak, thin, and simply a lot quieter thanprofessional stuff; the mixes always sounded wonky, elements not really fitting with each other.

Slowly I came to realise the problem. I was not really using, or even being aware of, any EQ orcompression. After all, they were both a bit scary, I didn't really understand them, and besides - theywere boring, compared to my funky range of drastic FX processing. Silly me. I should have realisedthat...

EQ and compression are simply the two most important tools in music production.

Think of it this way. You are building a house. Exciting things like flangers and filter-delays are like thedesigner purple wallpaper or expensive thick-pile carpet. They make your house look welcoming, orfashionable, or comfortable to live in. EQ and compression on the other hand are making sure the bricksare mortared together and the walls are strong enough to support a roof. And at the end of the day,sure, your designer wallpaper may be lovely, but if the kitchen has collapsed into rubble and thebedroom door is only three inches wide, your house won't be much cop.

My mistake - and, I think, the mistake made by many learning producers - was to be tempted by themore exciting task of choosing the colour schemes and leather sofas, when my walls could be knockeddown by a sneeze and my roof was made of paper. Get the fundamentals sorted first! Otherwise thefrilly stuff actually just gets in your way and makes it harder to even work out what your problems are!

Hence this tutorial.

Now I could simply do a lightning quick tutorial on compression - I could say, for example, "for basslinesit's best to compress at a ratio of 3:1, threshold -6db" or whatever (that's a totally fictional example bythe way). But this is only so much use. Of course, I encountered a lot of advice and information aboutEQ and compression while I learned. But I know that I never began feeling truly confident in suchengineering matters, never really felt I understood any of it, until I put all the pieces together, joined thedots, and worked out that these 2 subjects, and so much more, are all deeply inter-related. So, it ismy ambitious aim to map out this whole territory. I present not a strictly practical tutorial, but rather away of thinking, which I personally found led to a greater understanding, which in turn had manypractical benefits.

My central concept is that producers in the digital domain are effectively working inside a box. In thistutorial I will define the box, explore a few fundamental concepts and highlight some of the limitations ofdigital audio.

A word of warning. I have no qualifications. I don't know the difference between dBu and dBv. I don'tunderstand Fast Fourier Transforms. So if you want rock-solid theory and maths, you may be let down. Iaim instead to explain the basic concepts, such as they are useful to the practical matter of producingdance music. Naturally, being dnbscene.com, this will relate to drum&bass, but it relates just as well toany form of dance music. In fact, it pretty much relates to any kind of music whatsoever, although youwouldn't want to treat a folk ensemble recording in the same savage fashion you can get away with intechstep.

Anyway - enough disclaimers... Let's discover our box (no sniggering at the back please)...

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Comments on this article (84)

Marc on Saturday 27th November 2010, 11:38pm

Even after all these years, this is still the best EQ tutorial I've read anywhere. It's the only

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3/23/15, 1:23 AMThinking inside the Box: a complete EQ tutorial - dnbscene.com

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one that made sense, and I still think of mixing in terms of splodges on the rare occasionswhen I do actually put down a track.

Maybe one day the infamous compression tutorial will materialise too? Hope so, but this

is great for now

pdahtyrw on Monday 29th November 2010, 11:00pm

mindblowing read tbh. It is opening the eyes of so many newcomers who's mixes aren'tthat good.

CyanoType on Wednesday 1st December 2010, 3:15am

Wow, lots of great advice.

Id really like to see a faux- 3D spectrum analyzer plugin that displays sound as being inthe "Box" you described, that would be immense.

kindafunky on Thursday 2nd December 2010, 4:21pm

@CyanoType: Try voxengo glisseq

doearfunk on Thursday 2nd December 2010, 4:55pm

good stuff !

Marc Crouch on Thursday 2nd December 2010, 5:22pm

Quote

@CyanoType: Try voxengo glisseq

That looks like a complex parametric EQ with helpful visuals but I couldn't see any 3Drepresentation. Does it do that?

kindafunky on Thursday 2nd December 2010, 7:27pm

Got to admit i didn't read the question properly! But being able to show several sounds inthe same analyser while being able to eq is about as close as any analyser gets afaik

Noah on Friday 3rd December 2010, 11:26am

Mucho thank you.

Fishy on Thursday 30th December 2010, 6:19pm

Great article:)

nigol on Friday 7th January 2011, 12:45am

You've just made a huge positive change in the world by putting this tutorial out. Thanks toyou I've now come back to tracks that I was about to delete because I couldn't equalizedthem properly and have now finally mastered those compositions to perfection. Overall,your tutorial works for more than just drum and bass music since, Im more of a minimalambient artist. Thank You!!!

SLASH on Friday 4th March 2011, 7:30pm

Great article. Nicely written.

Epik on Tuesday 3rd May 2011, 4:52pm

"sound-munging tool"! awesome. In all serious I agree altogether the best article I've everread on EQ I'm sure it will help a lot of people

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uncle tom on Friday 26th August 2011, 3:23pm

you are a fucking legend

recon on Friday 2nd September 2011, 2:58am

The best in the internet for learn !!!

uncle tom on Thursday 29th September 2011, 4:40pm

http://www.voxengo.com/product/glisseq/rocks

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Had fun while reading :D Awesome

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