Sharp Practise
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4/7/2009 5:32:40 PM
Problemsville UK
Just when you think it’s all going smoothly, you hit problemsville UK!
Not so much on the big ballad Girls Don’t Look. That was fine to mix; in fact I had too many parts available to choose from and in the end found that a less is more approach worked well. I’m very happy now with an uncluttered mix that, had the song been put into a cheesier arrangement, could have boy bands all over the world interested in covering the song!
No, the problem was the bass guitar on Bring On The Summer. It sounded fine when I recorded it. It sounded pretty good when I was overdubbing vocals. But somehow it sounded terrible when I came to mix.
So, out with the toolkit. First, let’s look at the precise issue here. The bass, in the context of the other instruments, sounds boomy. OK, is it because the mix or the sound of another instrument is wrong? Let’s take all the bass part. No, everything else is fine, in balance and sonically grand.
Let’s home in on that bass then. It doesn’t sound right. The part’s fine, the volume’s fine in relation to the other tracks, it’s just boomy. Must be an EQ thing. So, it’s out with the trusty parametric and time to sweep across the frequencies on full boost. Yeah, here’s the little blighter. At this frequency the bass booms! So, let’s use the Q setting to determine how wide that frequency band is…pretty narrow.
So, the troubleshooter’s solution. Apply parametric EQ at the rogue frequency with a narrow bandwidth and bring that boom back into line. A few hours’ investigative work and problem solved. Phew!
I’m off to lie down in a darkened room until the next time.
See ya,
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