How to Reduce Track Masking with Dead Soul Revival

If you’ve been following my “first single release” journey for my new band deadsoulrevival.com you know I’ve been examining how we recorded, mixed, and promoted our upcoming release.  You can download  Black Roses and Down for the Last Time at the link above.

Today let’s continue with reducing masking. This is the phenomenon of one element sonically covering up another. We can  reduce this and give each instrument it’s own space with eq.

For an in depth look at EQ pick up a copy of my course EQ Secrets.

Let’s say you have a guitar and bass in the same frequency range. They will either create a composite, or blended tone in that area or one will dominate.

If you give each one their own areas of the frequency spectrum to poke through and be the winner in that battle, you get the best of each instrument and don’t feel like you are missing anything out of either.

This is the real secret weapon of eq’ing. It is really an audio illusion because our brain will fill in the missing details of the instrument. As long as we get enough information to let our minds fill in the blanks it works.

This is the major reason why when you hear an awesome mix you can hear all the details clearly. Nothing sounds muddy or lost. Always fight for that standard and you will produce great recordings.

In many sounds there is at least one frequency range that is either clouding the sound or is not going to be heard in a mix anyway. Those are the areas I’m looking to cut/reduce.

On guitars for example watch out for the 500 hz area. It can sound boxy. In fact this is an area of the frequency spectrum that I would examine on most sounds, particularly drums.

Sometimes a radical cut in this area on drums will open the sound up like you won’t believe.

If you have a masking issue happening, try cutting frequencies from one of the instruments in that frequency range.

So for example, let’s say the bass and guitars are competing in the 200 hz area. Try a cut on the bass in that area.

You should then start to hear the guitars poke through and be more distinct. Most amateurs will boost in this scenario instead of cutting. Burn this into your brain!

You can do this by ear with an eq or use a plugin with a side chain that is made specifically for this purpose. TrackSpacer is one that comes to mind.

The one caveat to all this is that is possible to overdo it. You still want the bass in the example I used before to sound natural.

The compromise between the two competing tones is often where the magic is. You want your tones to work together as a team.

Until next time…

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Also, in case you didn’t know, I mix singles, EPs, and Albums for Rock and Metal bands. You can check out my work and get more info at mattclarkmixer.com/secdir/ as well as get prices, etc.

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