Anyone have tips for eqing or general mixing for scores, ie Hans Zimmer, Brian Tyler, Daniel James. Type stuff.

Would love to have eq chart for:

Strings
Brass
Choirs
And synth

Thanks.

Apologies if there's already a thread such as this

 

It's not that easy
Every library has it different. In real recording sessions, engineers spent a lot of time just positioning microphones.
In symphonic orchestra if you want to make something sound different, you change the number of players, use different articulation, e.g.

Could you give me (us) an example where you want to do "that" and what "that" is?
EQ is about correcting frequency problems, at least I think it is

 

Actually, I'm interested in this too. I would have called it "epic/dramatic orchestra" collectively. I was planning on uploading a multitrack I made and ask others to mix it and see what everyone comes up with, along with some info about they went about it (I'm more interested in Reverb utilisation to be honest).

One thing I've concluded, although not 100% sure, is there must be some general guidelines as pretty much all of these (sampled) scores sound pretty much the same in terms of production. A thing I noticed by messing with some Two Steps From Hell scores is that they're quite bass heavy, must be using a lot of (Multiband) compression, low-pass filtering, pretty huge reverbs and probably some secret formula I haven't discovered yet. An interesting thing is that most of them seem to be lacking significant content above the 15KHz area with only some hats going above and again not that much.

Anyway, maybe it's not exactly what you're after but we'll see.

As for specific settings... Every piece is different but I would say to focus around 100-300 Hz for Basses, 400-1000 for Celi, 2K-5K for (the core of) violins, about the same for violas, Tom-toms and stuff around Celli, bassy percussion around 40-200Hz, more snary or higher pitched perc around violins and maybe 6-7K.

For multiband comp, if you use that, maybe create a Bass band up to around 200Hz, a mid up to 5-10K, and a high for the rest and play with the settings. I like that approach better that lo-passing because I want to retain the sound rather than cut and pull it down unless it's extremely unfitting or annoying. EQ, maybe I'd touch to add some low Mids (@ about 300). I like to bring up bow noises and stuff.

The highs seem to get kicked out a lot... I see a steep cut slope at 15K in some tracks I checked. It leaves room for the low mids but I think it takes out all the air. I mean, I see it but I'm not sure what exactly drives them to do it.

Also, layering! (Multiple mics count, too)

Maybe you should post some examples. I've found trying to re-create these scores helpful. Try and see how you can get there.

I think I had caught Daniel James using ArtsAcoustic Reverb. I mean, he didn't seem to have a magic wand or anything... WTF?

Maybe I should wait for someone else to chime in.

 

my track http://soundcloud.com/robbie-parker-5/until-the-end-1 awful, cramped, muddy


DJs track https://soundcloud.com/hybridtwo BEAUTIFUL

 

I really don't think rules apply when it comes to EQing and you should always do things based on the particular circumstances of the track.
However, after making a few orchestral tracks, here's what I can tell you on what to cut:
- Slight lowpass on everything except percussions allows you to let the percs come through better. Of course the lowpass will be more radical on violins than on cellos for example
- There tends to be a buildup around 100hz because most instruments have information there so do a slight bandpass on most instruments that have information that you don't want there. Again, don't just do it at 100hz but find the actual spot, could be 120 could be 90.
- There tends to be an accumulation of air because all of the librairies are recorded with the room sound, it can accumulate and create some really nasty saturated sounds. Find it and do a slight bandpass. This effect gets particularily nasty with choirs I noticed.

Then as far as what frequencies to boost, that's up to what you want from the track.

I could be wrong, if I am please correct me and explain why, I'm still learning too

 

Maybe you put too much energy in the mids. To make it airy, try cutting mids and boost a little trebles.
Another idea is to position the instruments on virtual soundstage so that they won't sound so "close"

 

by simply panning in the daw? orrrrrrrr??

 

Pretty nice track. Try to do a more thorough comparison. Some things I noticed:

- It's quite dry
- Everything is upfront but in an orchestra there are different seatings. It's a bit like it's only early reflections and close mics.
- It's quite squashed dynamically. And it becomes pretty apparent at about 1:50 where it feels like you wanted to make it rise (and it needs to rise) but it's so limited and compressed it ends up having the same impact with the rest of the piece. It's quite uniformed. It has so much impact it ends up making no impact because there's nothing to put it against
- The percussion is kinda good
- The high mids are a bit peaky

That doesn't mean I wouldn't have made it worse, if it's of any comfort.

 

Well, I dunno which libraries you use, but you can always use Altiverb with build in stage position feature.
However faster and perhaps more natural way is to mix the microphone positions that came with the library. *yes*

Typical orchestra seating is shown here

 

That's because highs in digital = digital harshness.

I downloaded your track and it's clipping. Also, you have a lot of instruments before the end, at min. 1:31, you have to make room for all of them to breath frequency wise and also on the stereo image, by panning some tracks.
That moment, 1:31, is the moment where you can make it sound big, or you can break it...too many instruments.
Your strings sounds squashed. Use less compressing, use volume automation instead.

 

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but in orchestra, the dynamics is very important, and the golden rule "less is often more" applies here as well. It needs to breathe (soft vs. loud), so I don't use any compressor/limiter at all. Of course that's my course of action, and yours could be different :dancing:

Soundtrack from MOH Pacific Assault (Main theme) - hear how dynamic it sounds.

 

While I haven't listened to any sound samples here, I've sorta found this out too , like , compression on classical/orchestral stuff sounds worse than pop music because (i'm guessing) when a compressor is triggered, it could be for a sustained period , leading to it sounding crap . It's not like pop where you typically have short trigger & release cycles . Or it could be the compression implementation, idk.

You could a different approach like volume automation as mentioned above, or a leveller/rider like MAutovolume perhaps?