TIPS TO BREATHE LIFE INTO YOUR MIX

Is your mix uninspiring, and boring? The solution may be to use an effect or some ear candy that doesn’t necessarily “need” to be part of the mix but one that adds a bit of spice!

- AKARSH SHEKHAR

Dynamic EQ

With this trick, listeners probably won’t be surprised when a lead vocal, a drum track, or even the whole mix sounds like it’s playing through a telephone, since that trick has been done so often. Here’s a less overused way to have fun with EQ.

Equalization plug-ins have some variant of an AM radio or telephone sound, but you can create your own version:

• Set a high pass filter around 400Hz–500Hz, and a low pass filter in the neighborhood of 4kHz.

• Add the EQ plug-in after all of the other processing on a given track.

• And rather than going for the obvious lead vocal, drums, or whole mix route, try using the telephone effect in other places, the background vocal bus, a piano, or even an acoustic guitar (or some combination of all).