ProSoundFormula EQ Made Simple TUTORIAL
Welcome to EQ Made Simple. It’s great to have you here. Thanks for taking this next step with me and I’m pretty excited to get started. You know what, EQ is probably the most powerful tool we have to transform our tracks. If you just think about it, all the favorite songs that you love to listen to, they’ve all gone through a ton of different EQs to get where they are. But as powerful as EQ is to transform for good and make things sound really great, it can equally do the opposite and transform things for the worse.
So it’s a really powerful tool if we know how to use it. If we don’t, then things can go wrong pretty fast. It’s like giving a teenager a Ferrari to practice their driving. Not the best idea in the world. So I just want you to know that no matter how frustrating or confusing you found EQ perhaps in the past, that’s all about a change.
We’re going to start at the beginning, we’re going to go over the essentials, we’re going to cover all the basics, you’re going to know exactly why we use EQ, what it’s for, the different controls, all that stuff, and I’m going to show you practical sessions where I’ll show you how I approach using EQ for all the major instrument groups, drums, vocals, bass, guitars, that kind of stuff.
And not only that, but I’m even going to give you the session files so that you can load these up in your DAW and you can practice the same things that I’m showing you. Because something happens when you actually put this stuff into practice and you see and you hear for yourself that you know what, I can do this. It’s not that difficult.
So, I’m just going to give you a quick tour of the program now. I’m going to show you what’s inside, what’s installed, how we’re going to go about this, and then we’ll get right into it.
So here we are inside the EQ Mate Simple program. By the way, I’m just showing you around the downloaded version. If you’re watching this online in your members area, exactly the same thing, same video, same everything. It’s just a little bit quicker for me to jump around this one. So you’ll find a couple of things in your main folder or your main menu. You’ll find the EQ Mate Simple Summary, which is a summary of basically all the key points in the whole program. You’ll find this video, which is the one you’re watching right now.
You’ll find part one which is EQ essentials and basics, two is EQ mindsets and principles, three is examples and practice, four is using EQ in a mix, and then fifth you’ll find your resources folder. So I’ve just numbered them over here to make sure that they stay in order.
So starting out with part 1, you’ll find the essentials and basics of EQ. Video 1 is called EQ Essentials and in this one you’ll find out what EQ is, where it came from, what it’s for, the reasons we use it, all that stuff. I really want to make sure that we cover the absolute essentials.
So that’s the first step. Then in video two, we’ve got the EQ basics, and here I’ll just be showing you EQ practically in a session, just take you through the different controls and how those work and stuff. Now, it is very, very, very basic, so if you are a little bit more experienced, you might want to skip this one, but I just want to make sure that, you know, if you’ve had doubts about some of this stuff before, I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page moving forward.
Then in the third video, we’ve got the five major reasons for using EQ, which I’ll tell you about in the EQ Essentials, but in this video over here, I’m just going to give you some practical examples of that. For example, one of the reasons is to fix frequency spectrum problems. So what does that mean? Well, I’m going to show you practically a couple of examples.
And then finally, we’ve got the three simple EQ methods. And these are the three approaches that I use when using EQ throughout a mix. So just three simple things that you can follow. Yeah, just really useful. Then in part two, we’ve got the EQ mindsets and principles.
And here I’ll be sharing with you my 16 laws of EQ. These are just the kind of things that, you know, no one tells you but you wish that someone had down the line. So they’re kind of just 16 nuggets of wisdom, ways of thinking about EQ that I think will really help you.
Then moving on to part three, we’ve got the EQ examples and practice. And here I’ll be showing you actual sessions and how I approach EQing the major types of instruments. So bass, drums, guitars, keys, vocals. And I’ll be taking you through kind of the key zones to look out for and where and how to EQ different instruments. I’ll actually be showing you the EQ cheat sheets, which you can find in your resources folder.
And I’ll be taking you through each one of these kind of zones and showing you how this affects that specific instrument. I’ve also included practice files, so practice sessions over here, which you can actually follow along and do the same things that I’m showing you. So I haven’t included the entire mix because that would just get messy and it would be extremely large to download, so I’ve bounced down the mix, so you’ll find, for example, in the bass folder over here, mix without bass, and then you’ll find the bass without EQ, so you can use that one to practice on, and then I’ve got the one that I’ve already EQed so you can pair to that, and I’ve even included the screenshot of the EQ so that you can review back to that and model that if you want to. So I’m really just going to show you all my best stuff. Everything I know about EQing all these different instruments, I’m going to show you.
Then in part 4, we’ve got using EQ in a mix. And here I’m just going to take you through a mix session and kind of give you a broader approach to EQ. So I’ll show you how I approach using EQ throughout a mix on all the different instruments together. And so here you’re just going to see all the concepts, the techniques, the principles all come together and you’re going to see how it actually applies practically in a mix.
And then finally, we’ve got the resources folder over here, which just has a couple of things inside it. I already told you about the EQ cheat sheets and the practice sessions. And by the way, the practice sessions are separate downloads. So if you’ve just downloaded the program, you won’t see those in your resources folder. You’ll need to download those separately.
Then first up we’ve got this EQ comparison video over here and here I just wanted to give you an idea of how different EQs actually sound. So I’m going to play them on the same track and compare them one to the next so that you can actually hear for yourself, you know, this is the different character and the different colors and tones that each one of these has.
Then there’s an EQ controls overview, just showing you all the main controls. There’s a printer-friendly version of that as well. And then there’s the sonic consistency EQ chart, which I mentioned in the program. This is just going to help you balance the overall frequency spectrum of your mix and make sure that it sounds great no matter what system you play it on. And then finally, there’s just the sound terms glossary over here.
You know, when we try and describe sound, we use all kinds of funny terms and things, so I just want to make sure that that’s clear, so that when I’m describing a kick drum as fat, for example, I’m not saying that it’s morbidly obese, I’m saying that it’s got good low end, the bass response is good, it sounds thick, that kind of thing. Now that one’s pretty obvious, but some of the other ones might not be quite as obvious, so you might want to check that out.
And that’s it. I hope you get a ton of value out of this program. If you go through this, if you put these things into practice, it will help you to dramatically improve your sound. Because EQ really is the most powerful tool we have to shape the way our mixes and our songs sound. And when you learn to use it the right way, it really is amazing what you can do with it. And with that said, I’ll catch you in part 1 and session 1, the EQ essentials.
