How do I give each sound in a mix its place with an eq

[classic]

Tell me if I am right.

On each instrument canal, I place an EQ
And on each canal I just lower the frequency of the instrument that are supposed to be used by another instrument.
This way, I go through the song and make sure, that no instruments is using the same frequency place at the same time with any other instruments.

Am I right?

[DJ Warmonger]

Nah, this will make instruments sound thin.
I do the opposite - flatten their spectrum so they all become wideband signals, taking all usable frequency range. Only on top of that I may do some highpass or lowpass when they are clashing with more important sounds and don't add anything to the full mix.

[lotus2035]

You have entered a world of pain my friend.

[Dirtgrain]

For the sake of learning, the OP's idea is a decent start in learning to hear what is going on in a mix, but it takes the idea of minimizing masking to an extreme. Also to be considered are panning, making instruments mono sometimes, sidechaining, and also applying these ideas to the reverb (and/or delays) and EQ-ing reverbs for tracks distinctly (I have not messed much with panning reverbs and shrinking their stereo range, but I can see it being useful).

But before mixing, consider what sounds might go together well. Some timbres of instruments can stick out without having to make much room for them. Sometimes I wrack my brain imagining what sound would fit well in a track at a certain octave (to avoid masking).

Many of the cool-sounding basses and sub-basses that are featured in preset packs are mostly distinguished by what goes on with them in the higher frequency ranges. Those ranges can clash with the distinguishing parts of pads and leads and snares/hihats/cowbell/whatever. Often I find myself cutting out everything above 300 or 400 Hz, but then that sick bass loses most of its distinguishing features. It's not a problem for a song, but it does make me realize I don't need to get caught up too much in making fancy basses as often as I do.

Alternatively, one might dive back into the compositional phase and orchestrate things so that the sick bass plays alone, in all its glory covering the whole frequency range. The ADSR of the bass is damn important to mixing then. These kind of decisions are at play with all instruments and voices.

There aren't clear-cut, universal rules about mixing; genre and desired overall sound dictate all sorts of mixing and compositional choices. That's obvious, but I hear all sorts of ambient music that is quite comfortable with washy, muddied reverbs. That won't do for some rock songs or a EDM songs. Then again, contrasting muddier parts of a song with clean parts can make nifty emphasis.

The more I've gotten into it, the more I've started focusing on listening for mixing decisions in songs I hear on the radio. It can be eye opening.

[imrae]

Tell me if I am right.

On each instrument canal, I place an EQ
And on each canal I just lower the frequency of the instrument that are supposed to be used by another instrument.
This way, I go through the song and make sure, that no instruments is using the same frequency place at the same time with any other instruments.

Am I right?

You have the right general idea, but there are no hard rules. You can decide what will work best for a given mix. It is ok for some elements to share some frequency ranges, but limits how loud you can push them.

Consider kick and bass: in a jazz band mix they might share some low-frequency range, but not be especially loud. In a rock mix you might scoop the kick for big subs at 50Hz and a high click, leaving 100-400Hz dominated more by bass guitar. In an aggressive dance music arrangement, perhaps the kick and bass both have a wide bandwidth - but never play at the same time!

(Dirtgrain's post above also covers these ideas.)

[classic]

Seems to be a wide field of knowleg:)

[melomood]

I'll dip my toes in and add that for me it's a mix of eq, panning (sometimes a dab will do) and sidechain comp. Whatever sounds like it's working

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

There is a great PDF on the net that is well worth reading. It is a collection of forum posts. Its called.
Why my recordings sound like ass.
The chief poster is Yepp.

Those post are not only informative but make a very entertaining read as well.

[BazJacuzzi]

Depending on where you're at with production you might be better off not worrying about it too much. Concentrate on picking sounds that already work well together, and gently rolling off a bit of low end or high end if necessary.

Despite the impression you might get from hundreds of youtube tutorials, instruments clash all over the place, and so they should.

[ramseysounds]

You’ll be able to answer your own question in about at least 10 years. Have fun

[zrslv]

Try the reverse approach – leave the instruments were they are initially, listen to the mix, decide if all the elements can be heard as clearly as you want them to be, if not – decide which instrument is less important and make an EQ cut in the clashing range – as little as possible, just enough to let the "main" element sound good.

[Spin Boyz]

You probably just have balance and panning issues. Disabled those eq’s, comps and distortion then move the faders and pans until everything sounds good. Print that mix and see if it sounds better than what you had before.

[jamcat]

It's pretty common to carve out a notch in a kick for the bass to sit. The idea is that the key components of a kick are the low thump and a high mid snap, and a lot of cardboard you don't want in between.

It's also very common to cut all the unnecessary lows from your instruments with a high pass EQ. Just move the frequency up until the part starts to thin out, then nudge it back down a touch. Generally, you want to keep all your high frequency content. Use a low pass or high shelf to cut only if something is too bright or hissy.

Just doing these things will clean up your mix tremendously and give your instruments a lot more room, while still sounding natural.

Use pan to get instruments in their own space left to right.

And here's the real trick for getting instruments in their own space front to back:
Send everything to a single reverb. Not some big space special-effect reverb, but something subtle and transparent that you don't even notice until you mute it. And use different amounts of pre-delay on each send. This will probably require sending each track to its own intermediate group/send channel where you put a delay like Voxengo Sound Delay before sending it out again to the reverb. This kind of delay has no dry signal and no repeats. It just moves the sound later in time. To bring it up front, decrease the delay time and send amount. To push it back, increase the delay time and send amount.

[classic]

It's pretty common to carve out a notch in a kick for the bass to sit. The idea is that the key components of a kick are the low thump and a high mid snap, and a lot of cardboard you don't want in between.

It's also very common to cut all the unnecessary lows from your instruments with a high pass EQ. Just move the frequency up until the part starts to thin out, then nudge it back down a touch. Generally, you want to keep all your high frequency content. Use a low pass or high shelf to cut only if something is too bright or hissy.

Just doing these things will clean up your mix tremendously and give your instruments a lot more room, while still sounding natural.

Use pan to get instruments in their own space left to right.

And here's the real trick for getting instruments in their own space front to back:
Send everything to a single reverb. Not some big space special-effect reverb, but something subtle and transparent that you don't even notice until you mute it. And use different amounts of pre-delay on each send. This will probably require sending each track to its own intermediate group/send channel where you put a delay like Voxengo Sound Delay before sending it out again to the reverb. This kind of delay has no dry signal and no repeats. It just moves the sound later in time. To bring it up front, decrease the delay time and send amount. To push it back, increase the delay time and send amount.

That sounds interresting
I will check this out for sure at the weekend:)

Thanks a lot, to all of you.