Mixing: EQ lesson – resonances
In this video, I'm finding resonance on a vocal and also a drumloop, and I'm doing manual work and also using a trusted resonance tool.
I want to be talking about EQing a bit and do a few lessons.
I thought I'd either do one megalesson – or a few shorter ones, and decided for the latter.
So let's start by talking about finding resonances with EQ and also check out bloom VST real quick.
A lot of times it's fairly simple: you only need decent ears and a good clean digital EQ that allows you to solo its bands to find a resonance and take it out.
In this video, I'm finding resonance on a vocal on master, and also on an old drumloop, and I'm doing manual work but also using a trusted resonance tool.
A very common resonance spot is around 3K on vox, instruments, etc.
I was asked to do quick feedback (remember: I have feedback tiers if you want it!) on this rap mix/master (the song you hear was not treated by myself), and one thing that stuck out to me was the vocal resonance, so wanted to show you how I find it and how I'm taking it out.
Remember, when you're cutting a master signal, you may be cutting into everything, so be mindful about where you cut and how much.
In this vocal scenario, I'd ideally go to the vocal and cut the rez there instead of master – as i think this may be cutting a hair too much into the snare (which I actually found a hair loud, so in a sense, it's helping a little in that regard, too) but this is not my mix or master, but I still think I can help the master resonance in this one.
After all, I master stuff all the time and it's my job to find resonances.
I can't sing high enough praise for bloom or soothe by Oeksound, so wanted to use bloom a bit here on an old whistley-sounding drumloop.
Comments (8)
In your opinion, how much does taking out resonances add up to the overall appeal of the track? It seems like something that is easy to skip potentially, but especially with vocals it seems to make such a night and day difference in how appealing it is to listen to. I wonder if listeners subconsciously register mixes as amateur because of annoying resonances as well. Also, how do you feel about Soothe on the main bus? I saw Disclosure do it with the "balance to the grammy awards" preset and sometimes I do that but never feel super confident with it honestly
Thanks as always for the awesome knowledge bombs 🙏
Love a 3k dip!
Countless times I’ve dipped at 2.9K exactly and thought wow that did a lot
We love to speed/stretch drums up with drum & bass. Beter to look for resonances before you do that or after? Sounds can change drastically.
In general I’d say process the final sound, but if you know there’s a resonance in the signal, prob best to remove it before any further processing, because any processing such as timestretch that degrades the signal prob just makes any existing problem worse.
So would this be what the Phil Speiser plugin is doing?
Kind of yes: it's very similar to Soothe (which is kind of similar to Bloom, but Bloom can also boost for the sake of correcting the tone, while Soothe and Smoother can only cut).