My Vocal EQ Starting Point | Live Mixing Basics
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- Опубліковано 7 сер 2024
- ►► Get the 9 EQ Pivot Points found in my audio toolkit:
www.producedbymkc.com/audioto...
Ever chased your tail on a live vocal with EQ and realized you've basically cut every frequency by 12dB? We've all been there?
My simple, yet effective approach is sure to get you results in the field FAST. Just four filters in four very intentional places.
Today I lay it all out in a short video:
We'll cover:
Where should you place your EQ filters to remove mud and create clarity
Why I landed at just four filters, two of them at the SAME frequency
How to think of your tonal balance as just that, a balance
I’ve been mixing for a while now and this the first time I’m seeing this kind of EQ curve for vocals and I can’t wait to try this at my church! Thank you for this tip!
Give it a shot!
I tried moving up the HPF higher for some recordings and it still sounded good. I'm so glad to get rid of more of the low end on vocals.
Glad to hear that! The proximity effect is alive and well : )
Brilliant! Finally someone explains clearly what Boxy and Presence means!
My first festival gig doing FOH, a person from the audience pointed me out that the Vocal lacked Presence, my noob answer was:
What are you talking about the Singer is Fully present on Stage.
Glad I've brought some "clarity" to these adjectives, no pun intended : )
Haha, that's a great story. Describing sound is very hard. Make sure and check out the 9 EQ Pivot Points PDF in my audio toolkit. It helps with communicating audio, for sure.
Excellent! Thanks Michael. I'm going to try these on vocals this weekend.
How did it go with the EQ change?
@@MichaelCurtisAudio - The low end cuts were beautiful. Cleaned the vocals up nicely. The high shelf above 1k, not so much.
I had 3 vocal mics open and set it up during sound check. It all seemed to be working perfectly. Had it setup almost verbatim with what you show in the video. Sounded great.
...... And then I opened the channels to do the actual show (a wedding dance) and all high frequency hell broke lose! Thankfully I was able to pull the squeal out of the mains in just a few seconds. I then went in and pulled down the highs on all 3 vocal channels. Keep them all but flat above 1K. Went well after that. The band was happy. I had many complements on the sound from the attendants and I think the band's vocals sounded better than I've ever had them sounding before.
I'm convinced I can roll off vocals WAY higher than I have been (around 100Hz). I had them set somewhere in the 160 range and had the 2nd filter rolled off about 3db from 1K down. The vocals just sounded clean! Seemed to cut through the instruments (4 piece country/rock band).
Also, this was a walk on gig where I used the band's equipment. Maybe it will work differently on my system.
I am going to continue using some form of your vocal EQ settings. I believe you're on to something here Michael. Thanks for planting that idea in my head!
@@joelglaser5657 I'm sorry you had the feedback trouble at the top of the show, but i'm glad the subtractive EQ ended up working out!
The high shelf is the one I ended up not using the most often. Just like in your case, the high pass filter and the low shelf cutting out low end gets me a ton of mileage, but if the vocalist is still "eating" the mic, I'll need to dig out some top end above 1kHz.
Thanks for giving it a try and I'm glad you'll keep some of what you learned for later gigs!
Help please. Your vocal EQ technique works great on two out of 4 members in the band. The two that is not warm enough is a male and female with high frequency voices….. what’s the best way to warm them up??? Grateful thank you 🙏🏻. I’m using CM311A and works amazing…. Drummer is using Bets 56A and works well.
The other 2 are on SM58’s.
Would condenser mics be better choice to warm the other two??? Recommendations please.
SM58's have a pretty bump in HF content from 3-8kHz, so I'd maybe reach for a mic with a smoother HF response, or use some up to dip out some of that range.
@@MichaelCurtisAudio up = EQ I’m thinking lol. Auto correction lol
But got you….. subtract EQ on highs Vice adding some lows. Dang. I for got my basic EQ rules of subtract EQ vs adding EQ. Thank you kind sir for taking the time out for me. Appreciate you and your content here 🙏🏻😁