Shelving below 120 hz

[djglenn]

I came across this interesting article a week ago....

http://www.eqmag.com/article/positively-bt/jul-05/11520


Towards the end of the article, BT gives away one of his 'biggest tricks'. Says he shelves everything below 120 hz except the kick and bassline; essentially, allowing those two to come through clearly, without the mud.

In theory this sounds good, but I've read some comments saying that doing something like this will "suck the life out of some instruments".

Anyone do anything similar to this? What's your take?

[admin]

It's a good idea to do that but like everything you have to take it with a grain of salt and don't just assume you can cut everything but that frequency and be ok. As you said if its over done then it can weaken a mix. It depends a lot on the interaction of all the elements, arrangement and source sounds etc..

[przechuy]

yeah,it certainly depends what kind of track you want to do .

and it is nothing innovative i would say.it just depends what is your aim.

For example some more tribal tracks sound not bad when zou do not eq,but use sidechain of some drums,with kick andzou get a nice pumpin rhzthm


(at least i love to earlier record a loop with drums sometimes near kick bottom frequencies and then sidechain it with kick )

but if i search for more space for kick for example i cut down bottom freq of pads for example or synths


another good thing if we talk about low frew and using them in songs is keeping them in mono,it was alreadz described here on this board as i browsed it a lot yesterday .

But for those purposes i use nice free software called monomaker.easy and free

[przechuy]

sorry for typing errors

i wanted to edit ,but forum did not allowed me,i mean it hanged everytime when i pressed edit button and didnt loaded

[Edel]

It's a good idea to do that but like everything you have to take it with a grain of salt and don't just assume you can cut everything but that frequency and be ok. As you said if its over done then it can weaken a mix. It depends a lot on the interaction of all the elements, arrangement and source sounds etc..

Totally agree on this.. Each mix is unique on its own.. As such, shelving at 120hz may and might not be the best method/alternative for the mix itself.

[admin]

I'd also point out that many times you need to go a higher than that, not for every sound though. But I would agree that 120 is about where I start to look to cut but then perhaps higher in many cases.

[djglenn]

So I'm wondering why he would make a blanket-statement like that? Anyhow, doesn't matter. I tried that with a track I'm working on just to see the difference and honestly didn't see much of a difference. Will try it with a few more tracks....maybe this one didn't have many probs in that range....

[admin]

Who knows maybe he actually did shelve them all like that. Some people do make a 'highpass' buss and route everything that needs cutting to that one buss and take off the low end there. I prefer to do it on a track by track basis.