I'm sure many of you have heard about Hi-passing many of your mix elements to make room for kick n bass... I know I have.

Found an interesting youtube vid that helped me be a little more judicious about this approach.


I hope this can be helpful to you all.

 

I've never heard that but it sounds like bad advice no matter what.
If you're going to cut frequencies,use an e.q.
The only time i use a filter is if i'm trying to "lessen" a certain end of a sample or i'll automate it to do different things with the hook/chorus.

Peace

 

I'm just an "ordinary" pianist, who just happens to love the idea of composing and arranging music; using various VST elements to create multiple instruments. By no means am I an "audio engineer". These kinds of helpful tutorials, have allowed me to put together tracks that do not sound like garbage. Back in the day, it was no problem gathering competent "Jazz" musicians together in a studio setting to record. Nowadays, it's too expensive (and the older guys, and occasionally, gals) simply can't find the freakin' time. Bottom line? I appreciate any worthwhile information that makes for a decent final production. "Mixing" tracks is truly a technical "art form". And, the difference between songs that sound like crap, and songs that convey what you originally had in mind in the first place.

 

seriously.. i checked out these videos and he is quite good in some aspects, but not very good in others.. he takes a lot of half truths and tries to go against the grain to establish his credibility too many times... and the claims he makes are questionable at best


for instance he said ... "highpassing everything around 400 is a way to get things instantly weak"...the answer should be "it really depends on the arrangement.." pop music that is sparse often does a lot of aggressive cutting, both low and high cut...

load up a spectrum analyzer that goes all the way down to -72 dbfs and you will see some instruments dont have much information below 400.. like a flute or piccilo.. or a piano in the higher registers... hipassing that will not make a difference... it will not make it 'weak'

another example... highpass a piano at 400 makes it weak?? uh... how am i supposed to know if i have no idea what notes they are playing..if the piano is playing all high note leads, then there won't even be much information below 400 anyway

to expand... what happens when you have a huge kick and bass that goes all the way up to 400.. and it is the MAIN bass feature of the song. and no other bass is in the song.. a good producer will probably have kept that in mind and made all of the notes of the instruments above G or G#, and even made the key signature A.. which safely corresponds to 440... high passing everything below 400 will only remove the even and odd harmonics that are below the fundamental frequency that are conflicting with the bass and probably will NOT ruin anything



..it depends!! That is the answer you should be getting in most circumstances...and then a good detailed explanation as to the situations where you would and would not...

I think the guy knows a lot of good material.. but his generalizations will hurt you and limit you...

if you really want to know about things, understand psychoacoustics and its relationship with aural sound staging...that alone will help eliminate all of the BS myths out there

 

a

and EQ IS a filter... ever load up an eq and have the points ask you what kind of filter you would like? bell filter, highpass, lowpass, shelf filter... they're all filters...

the "filter" are you are referring to is probably something with only high pass and low pass filters...and in which case.. why would you not want to use that for simple cutting off of lets say low frequency rumble on a microphone or the 50-60hz hum cycle of a noisy console.

 

a lot of people hi pass in the digital domain because analog gear naturally reduces low end. i've seen analog mixers go, "I never hi pass" ... but its not relevant advice for digital mixing.

 

I'm not so sure about that statement.. but there are indeed a lot of analog gear that diminish lowend, but there are many that enhance as well as decrease the very low end

for instance. if you look at neve consoles, they typically have roll of at around 20-mid 20s... but they have a very wide bump at 50 .. the result is very low end is removed and primary sub freqs are enhanced

the API and SSL also frequently display this trait but at different Qs and different points in the spectrum, thus giving the 'sound' of each brand

API for hard pointing knocks (rock)
SSL for harder hitting material (edm and pop)
Neve for when the bass needs emphasis but with mid range clarity (hip hop and r&b)

another thing i noticed is that a lot of the analog gear rolls off the super high end .. which may be a limitation of the physical components of the gear, as the gear that can reliably produce or even affect those super high frequencies (20khz+) are generally more expensive.. like the Manley Massive Passive or the Sontec MEP -250X

digital does not have that weakness and can produce frequencies well above the Nyquist with full fidelity .. perhaps because it is not limited by mechanical parts and relies simply on math

vst analyzer and analog gear can be fun

 

Never noticed but when i hear filter i think of highpass,bandpass etc.
E.Q. isn't the same to me.But hey,just my opinion.

Peace

 

I was mixing a tune the other day and all of a sudden I noticed the vibe of the room changed. I wheeled around, and sitting in the other seat in front of the mixing desk was God. So I say to God, "Hey God, what is the secret of the perfect mix?" God looks at me with the most beautiful and kind face I have ever seen and says to me, softly and with the voice of an angel, "Always...I mean never...."

 

you make some valid points; however, even if a fundamental note is hi-passed, you can still tell its a "low" note, because of the harmonics... and the fact that are brains have been programmed subconciously, and so we can tell that the note is low.

I even ran into that situation last night. I have stringish-synth pad. its hi-passed (of course lol), anyway, I was curious how the pad would sound with the rest of the mix if I lowered the octave... and despite the fact that the fundamental was now moved (and was below the cut-off) you could immediately tell that the sound was an octave lower... try it.

 

I think theres a LOT of overthinking regarding this.

 

this is not quite accurate..

in sound.. pitch for a non sine/singular-tone source is the result of the average spread of frequency vibrations of the fundamental, odd and even harmonics... that is why most instruments if you play an "A pitch" but but do a notch filter on 440, someone can STILL tell it is an "A pitch" because the AVERAGE of all the frequency vibrations and their sympathetic harmonic resonances still heavily points to the average distribution of the ratio for the note A and its fundamental multiples

and maybe im misunderstanding you, and if so please let me know if i did.. but whether a note is "low" has nothing to do with subconscious or what the fundamental is. it has to do with the cycles per second that the sound wave vibrates.. an A-pitched note will NOT be low at 3520Hz, nor 7040Hz... but it will still be an A-pitch.. just a high one...

heck I could make a pitch vibrate at .pi, which would not correspond to any note, but it would be a "low note" because of its very, very low rate of cycles per second and probably a very looong wave length.

i think you may be mistaken here ... the fundamental does not move when you lower or raise the pitch by an octave (an octave is an expressed music ratio that ALLOWS you to retain the fundamental frequencies, therefore tonal characteristics of a of pitch, when moving up or down -- that's why if you notice all notes up and down an octave correspond to an EXACT mathematical ratio)... playing an A note A at 440, 880, 220, etc does not change the fundamental PITCH information... which is why you can play the note "A" and retain all the tonal characteristics of the note "A" in many octaves

This is ALLL part of music.. and it's only barely the surface guys...

read this
http://acousticslab.org/psychoacoustics/PMFiles/Module05.htm

seriously guys.. i implore you to do independent learning and take control of your learning.. i have wasted so much time listening to half truths.. when i learned the basics of pitch and frequency and how it relates to Music theory and how music theory relates to FREQUENCY information, it just opened the doors to sooooo many things...

and sorry if i'm coming off a bit pretentious... I don't profess any greatness in me at all, and I simply only know enough to not be hoodwinked by youtube 'experts' .. "nanos gigantium humeris insidentes" --- we are all in this together guys...

 

I run into this statement a lot.. and in most cases, it's the same people who say music theory makes music soulless, or that music should be about expression and less about technical work


That is totally BS... would we have told Leonardo Da Vinci .. "dude you shouldn't dissect cadavers to understand the muscles in order to draw them better.. you're over thinking it"

or would we say to Beethoven or bach... "dude.. you are doing way too much research on the circle of fifths and orchestration.. let it flow man"

or even more modern examples.. "Hey Bob Moog, you're overthinking it dude.. there's not gonna be a major difference between solid state and tube"

creativity takes thought... and refined thought!! if you see how the greats make music, they spend thousands of hours improving their craft..that is what it takes.. there is no secret... you gotta love what you do, you gotta be smart about it, and you gotta be able to do it better and more reliably than the next guy


sure.. everyone makes music differently.. if you can make it without thinking too much, I congratulate you.. it is a rare and valuable gift that many would love to have...

but if you can't.. well.. then...perhaps you SHOULD think about things more deeply to try to understand them..

 

e.g. if you think better your music becomes better
DON´T YOU ENJOY MAKING MUSIC

 

Geez, he could at least have cut the lows on his voice. Spoken word without HP is really disturbing. Sounds like Günther and his obsession with his tralalala/his dingdingdong
If you listen closely and filter his tirade of cursewords there remains something like "don't highpass by default" and "don't highpass blindly"
That is not bad advice. But it's kinda funny how he comes to this conclusion through a lot of bs, to use his words.

An EQ is a filter, there is no room for opinion there.

 

I wish he would of given actual examples in his demonstration when he was talking about the you dont need 80Hz etc. Or he should have specifically prefaced the video with the context in which genre he was speaking about. I hate all this "madness" bull people keep proclaiming about. The only fucking rule is, if it sounds good, it is good. People get so anal about their mixing formula. There is no, "it will indefinitely sound bad if you EQ certain frequencies specifically for a certain intrument or sound". Talk about creative barriers... I do however agree with the point he made about the phasing, and bussing your channels to avoid this problem. Overall good advice on the last part.

 

That V.O need highpassing anyway (he should have done that BY DEFAULT!).

Half-truths and loose ends, informational/factual-wise. I'll keep on highpassing like I've done for years, thank you. Works for me.

 

hello, audio lovers,

depends on loads of factors, but usually what is done here is to throw one high pass, one low pass, filter on nearly every channel, in order to define their window from below, from above.

further equalisation might or might not be done at the later sculpting stage.

this also is not one rule to follow in each and every case, just one possible way to do it.

all the best, keep up the required filtering, equalising, always for the better sounding results...

 

Last edited: Aug 14, 2015

If I hit the note "a" on a piano (the octave where 440hz. is THE FUNDAMENTAL), then lower the piano an octave, the FUNDAMENTAL is now 220hz.