0:01 People ask me in comments all the time,
0:04 "Scott, how do you EQ guitars?" And
0:06 honestly, the first answer that comes to
0:16 EQ. All right. No, seriously. Today in
0:18 this video, I am going to give you the
0:21 keys to the Lamborghini, the secret to
0:24 the sauce, a workflow based in logic and
0:27 lots of experience. In this video, I'm
0:29 going to give you the exact steps I
0:31 pretty much always follow when I'm EQing
0:33 guitars. Be they black metal, death
0:35 metal, grind core, doom metal, grammar
0:37 core, crab core, whatever core metal,
0:40 whatever. Just guitars. Now, as I show
0:41 you these steps here, I'm going to use
0:45 the Aurora DSP Laboga Diamond Sound
0:47 demonstration track that I created. And
0:50 that's because Dan again has graciously
0:52 sponsored this video. I got to give Dan
0:54 big, big thumbs up. He's been supporting
0:56 the channel a lot lately. He's a really
0:59 awesome guy. Aurora DSP have very good,
1:01 high quality plugins that are very
1:03 affordable. I've left a link down to
1:05 Aurora DSP in the description. Go check
1:07 it out. And obviously, we're going to
1:09 have a big long look at how Diamond
1:11 Sound here sounds in this demo track as
1:14 I EQ the guitar tones. Remember, the
1:17 goal of EQ is not to make the guitar uh
1:20 sound good. You already should have
1:22 pretty much a great guitar tone. The
1:25 goal of the EQ is to kind of remove the
1:27 things that are making it a bit cloudy,
1:29 bit honky, some of the really nasty
1:31 whistles. And we're we're going to try
1:33 and bring out the guitar tone that
1:35 you've already created as much as
1:38 possible with EQ. So remember, EQing
1:40 guitar is not about taking a shitty
1:42 guitar tone and making it sound good.
1:45 We're taking an already good guitar tone
1:47 and making it sound better. So that's
1:49 step zero. Make sure you have a good
1:51 guitar tone. If you have no idea how to
1:53 do that, you can use my presets if you
1:55 want to use them or on my website or you
1:57 can take the metal guitar tone workshop
2:00 which is also on my website. So now you
2:01 have step zero out of the way. We need
2:03 to move to step one. Let's just remind
2:28 Okay, that tone has no EQ on it
2:30 whatsoever. It's just the preset that I
2:32 created for Diamond Sound. Already
2:34 sounds really good. You like it? Yeah,
2:36 that's the importance of step zero. So,
2:39 step one, we are going to do some
2:40 filtering. All right, I'm actually going
2:43 to use the stock EQ plugin here in Qbase
2:44 just to prove that you can do this with
2:47 any plugin. All right. So, step one is
2:49 filtering. You might know it as
2:51 highpass, low pass, or high cut, low
2:53 cut. It's kind of interchangeable,
2:55 although the lexicon would mean
2:56 different thing. It really doesn't
2:57 matter. But anyway, you want to start
2:59 with filtering. And the reason why you
3:00 want to start with filtering is you want
3:02 to get the guitar out of places that it
3:04 just should not be to begin with. You
3:06 want to start containing it because if
3:08 you have a guitar tone that is too
3:10 broadband, meaning that it's in every
3:13 freaking frequency spot, it's going to
3:14 fight with everything else in every
3:16 frequency spot and it's probably going
3:18 to win and that would be a bad thing.
3:20 So, the very first easiest thing to do
3:22 is we start bringing the guitar in. We
3:24 start containing it and getting it out
3:26 of the way, getting it out of the way of
3:28 areas that it just literally does not
3:30 need to be. So that's going to be a high
3:33 pass and a low pass or a low cut and a
3:36 high cut. All right. And again, I'm just
3:37 using frequency 2, which is a stock
3:39 plugin that comes with Qbase. I like to
3:43 do a 48 uh dB per octave slope, which is
3:46 just the how much slope you have on the
3:47 frequency. You know, this is a very
3:50 gradual slope of 12. This is a much more
3:52 steep slope. And the reason why I do
3:55 that is because I will just I go to 100
3:59 hertz. I pretty much very rarely do I
4:01 really change this, but at 100 Hz I
4:03 pretty much do my filter because the
4:06 guitar tone has nothing of value in my
4:09 opinion below like 92 Hz. It literally
4:11 doesn't matter. You have a bass guitar
4:12 for a reason. Let the bass guitar do
4:14 bass things. That's like I don't even
4:16 think about this. I don't even care.
4:18 Now, when it comes to the high cut or
4:22 low pass, um I do typically will I will
4:25 start very commonly at 7K. All right?
4:27 And this is where 7K is right here. It's
4:29 not automatic that I'm going to leave it
4:33 at 7K. All right? Maybe I can go 8K or
4:36 8.5K, but you don't need a lot of this
4:39 upper high-end literally white noise or
4:42 hiss that's coming from the IR or the
4:44 speaker that you're using. It's just
4:46 contributing noise and it's it's not
4:48 doing anything musical up there. You
4:49 don't need it up there. Plus, your
4:51 vocals are up here. Your symbols are up
4:52 here, okay? And it's just going to be
4:53 getting in the way of these other
4:55 instruments. So, these are the very
4:57 first two steps or the one singular step
4:59 that you're going to do, which is
5:00 filtering. So, if we solo what we have
5:02 right now and just have a listen,
5:03 there's not going to be a huge
5:16 not not shattering here, but we're just
5:18 getting it out of the way so the other
5:20 instruments can come through. Now, the
5:22 second step, we are going to look at the
5:24 upper mid-range first. The reason that
5:25 we look at the upper mids first and
5:28 mid-range in general is that mid-range
5:29 and upper mid-range, we're very
5:31 sensitive to that as humans. And
5:33 everything that we do in this range is
5:35 going to have a major impact on how we
5:38 interpret the sound. The second reason
5:40 for doing this is that when you clean up
5:42 the gunk and you make things more clear
5:45 and you get like the guitar tone from
5:47 being under a pillow, you're going to be
5:51 able to much more accurately understand
5:52 how what the high end and the low end of
5:54 your guitar tone is doing. You might
5:56 think right off the gate like a guitar
5:58 tone is not bright enough and you'll
6:00 start cranking all the brightness and
6:01 then you'll scoop the mids and then
6:02 you're going to be like, "What
6:04 happened?" And more often than not,
6:05 you'll go back down up to the brightness
6:07 and kind of like bring it back down a
6:08 little bit. Why do that way? You can
6:11 just go to mid-range first, clean up the
6:14 gunk that's making it cloudy, muddy,
6:16 maybe a bit honky, and then you'll be
6:18 able to really hear what's happening in
6:20 the upper range and the lower range.
6:22 Now, I consider upper mid-range to be
6:24 like 700 hertz all the way up to like
6:25 3K. And there's a number of different
6:26 things that we're going to find here.
6:27 We're going to find honkiness,
6:29 cloudiness, and we can even start
6:32 finding some resonance issues. All
6:33 right. So, let's have a look. Let's just
6:35 see. I'm going to engage number five
6:37 here. And let's have a [Music]
6:41 [Music]
6:44 listen. Great example of a just like a
6:46 honky muddy frequency that doesn't need
7:06 [Music]
7:07 And you'll notice the dynamic of the
7:09 tone has actually changed as well where
7:12 it's sounding a bit more mid-range honky
7:14 forward. We just do this one little dip
7:16 here and all of a sudden, oh, it cleans
7:18 up and oh, we have a lot more highing
7:20 information perceptively. All right, so
7:21 it's very important to start with the
7:23 upper mids. Let's see if we can find
7:26 anything else up here. [Music]
7:38 [Music]
7:39 So, we are finding a resonance and
7:41 that's fine. We can take care of it.
7:50 like. Cool. So, like a metallic honk
7:52 clank that we're getting rid of. Now,
7:53 let's double check what this sounds like
7:55 in the context of everything. I'm
7:56 actually going to turn the leads off cuz
8:04 now. Definite improvement. One thing
8:07 I'll tell you right away, also
8:08 definitely a good idea to do this with
8:10 music playing. I'm obviously soloing
8:12 this for demonstration purposes, but if
8:13 I was doing this in real life, I would
8:15 be doing it with the music playing. And
8:17 that's why you'll notice that when I'm
8:20 doing this in solo, you can still hear
8:22 the attenuations that I'm doing. You can
8:24 still hear the honkiness and stuff, but
8:26 I just know through experience that when
8:27 the mix is playing, you're not going to
8:29 hear this. So, [Music]
8:36 listen. It's still faintly there. You
8:38 can still hear it, but when the music is [Music]
8:41 [Music]
8:43 playing, it's not there. You're also
8:45 going to notice when you start attacking
8:47 the mid-range that where you had placed
8:49 the guitars in volume, more than likely
8:51 you're going to have to turn them up
8:52 because we are reducing a lot of
8:54 mid-range energy that is eating
8:56 headroom. All right. So, we can actually
9:05 here. Excellent. All right. So, I can
9:06 already see this and I can already hear
9:07 it. So, I'm going tohead going to go
9:09 ahead and attack it anyway. There is
9:11 another Oops. Let's put that back. There
9:13 is another little bit of a honky spike
9:15 happening and I'll just go ahead and
9:17 take care of that right now while we're
9:18 looking at it. So number seven, bring
9:42 So, just to give you an example of what
9:59 moves. Sounds pretty cool. Step three
10:02 now is going to be the low mids as you
10:04 were expecting. So, we're going upper
10:06 mids to low mids. Now, pretty much
10:09 arbitrarily, I typically like to start
10:11 with my secret EQ move, and that is
10:14 generally going to be 400 htz minus
10:16 2dB. And we'll and we'll see what
10:18 happens. So, I'll have it disengage, and
10:33 [Music]
10:35 You'll notice that not only did the
10:37 guitar tone become a bit more clear, but
10:39 it's almost like the bass guitar went up
10:41 in 2dB of loudness. All right, it's this
10:43 is why it's vitally important to really
10:45 attack the mid-range first in this in
10:47 this instance so we can really start to
10:49 understand what balance changes we may
10:51 need to do as well. So, after the 400 uh
10:54 hertz cut here typically, now this is
10:56 now this is where things get a little
10:58 genre dependent and tuning dependent.
11:00 I'm basically doing black metal and
11:01 standard E here. There's not going to be
11:04 a lot of low end. After this, I probably
11:06 would just opt to use the Andy4 any
11:08 Sneep C4 trick. But let's see what we
11:24 here. Okay, around 230, 250. Not
11:26 unexpected. You might be able to bring a
11:28 a little a little bump down. Or
11:31 alternatively, you could turn this into
11:34 a dynamic EQ, which you can do here with
11:44 [Music]
11:47 well. Cool. So, now we've tightened up
11:49 the guitar tone a little bit. Definitely
11:50 not muddy anymore. It's coming through
11:53 loud and clear, which leads us to our
11:56 last step. And the last step, of course,
11:58 is killing nasty resonances. All right,
12:00 so we need to load another EQ because we
12:02 don't have enough here. So, let's go
12:03 ahead and do that. I'll just load
12:05 literally another instance of frequency.
12:07 No big deal. And now we're going to
12:10 focus primarily on trying to find nasty,
12:12 ugly whistles. Now, word of warning
12:15 here. Do not waste your time trying to
12:17 find and hunt every single na nasty
12:19 whistle. Guitar tones are full of
12:20 whistles. You're never going to get rid
12:22 of them all. All you're going to do is
12:24 you're going to have nine points of, you
12:26 know, surgical EQ and then you're going
12:28 to be like, why does my guitar tone
12:30 sound weak and like That's why the
12:33 object here is just to find one or two
12:35 or three at the most that are just
12:37 egregious, really annoying, that are
12:39 really stabbing you in the ear and are
12:41 really making the guitar tone sound
12:42 shitty. And that's what we're going to
12:44 do here. Let's just take all these off
12:46 so I don't get confused. We'll start
12:49 with number six. All right, number six.
12:52 Now is what we do. We press
12:57 play. Make a generally narrow bell here
13:49 Okay. And that's pretty much your guitar
13:51 tone. Again, don't go crazy. You don't
13:53 have to pull them down as much as you
13:54 think. You notice I'm doing it with the
13:56 music playing cuz it's a habit at this
13:58 point. But this is a really important
14:00 reason to have the music playing is you
14:01 just want to pull it down just to where
14:03 the point where it's not a problem
14:05 anymore. And that's it. The ironic thing
14:07 is that these things need to exist in
14:08 the guitar tone to some degree in order
14:10 for it to sound like a guitar tone.
14:12 Otherwise, it sounds like a washy just
14:15 sterile mess. So, let's do a quick AB of
14:17 where we started, which was no EQ. I'm
14:53 There you go. And that's how you EQ a
14:55 guitar tone. From here on, you could do
14:58 the Andy Sneep C4 trick or go ahead and
15:00 and do your league guitars. In fact,
15:02 let's just let's just do the
15:04 league guitars right now because elite
15:06 guitars are a little bit different.
15:08 Elite guitars, it's even more important
15:10 that they don't need to be full
15:12 broadband because there's a lot you
15:13 already have the rhythm guitars in
15:14 there, right? And the league guitars and
15:16 melody guitars have a different purpose
15:18 which is for the melody. So, in this
15:20 particular instance, you can do two
15:21 things. You can do the filtering here at
15:23 the low end, right? We could do our
15:26 filter at 100. Same thing. Now, you can
15:28 do one of two things. You can do a peak
15:30 or bell or you can do a low shelf. For
15:33 me, a low shelf makes more sense. And
15:34 basically, you just want to pull the
15:37 shelf down 3 4 dB like
15:40 this. And bringing it to about 500
15:42 hertz. And we're just basically thinning
15:43 out the low end that doesn't need to be
15:45 there with the lead guitar. So, here are
15:47 the leads with EQ off. [Music]
15:54 [Music]
15:55 We're thinning them out a little bit
15:57 because all we care about is getting the
15:59 upper mids and the upper frequencies in
16:01 there. At this point now, it's the same
16:03 process. Upper mids, low mids, kill any
16:05 harshness. Let's go number five here.
16:06 See what we got. [Music]
16:11 [Music] [Applause]
16:13 [Applause] [Music]
16:14 [Music] [Applause]
16:15 [Applause] [Music]
16:29 [Music] [Applause]
16:30 [Applause] [Music]
16:31 [Music] [Applause]
16:33 [Applause]
16:34 Let's go ahead and do our filter while
16:37 we're up here. Filtering, same deal
16:39 around the 7K or eight, whatever. It
16:46 7K. And there is a whistle here that I'm
16:48 hearing and it's very annoying. Let's go
16:50 ahead and grab [Music]
17:08 [Music] [Applause]
17:10 [Applause] [Music]
17:12 [Music]
17:14 this. All right. Now, let's put this in
17:30 [Music]
17:32 Okay. And see, it's the same exact
17:34 process. I did the exact same thing.
17:35 Basically, I just thinned out the low
17:39 more with the low with the uh oh my god.
17:41 Low shelf. Now, there's one extra thing
17:42 I'm going to show you today. I just
17:46 can't stop being awesome. It's Saturday.
17:48 Let's just do it. So, sometimes what I
17:51 do is I will start doing a coloring EQ
17:53 on my rhythm guitars. I've been doing
17:55 this for a long time. This is nothing
17:58 new, nothing out of the ordinary. And
17:59 I'm actually just going to use Aurora
18:03 DSPs 510 EQ. It's it's an API style EQ,
18:06 which is what I like to do. All right.
18:07 This is coloring. At this point, I'm
18:10 maybe having adding some vibe or some
18:12 spice to it to get more of a present
18:14 sound that I like. All right. I'm not
18:16 really necessarily look necessarily
18:18 looking to fix anything. So, let's have
18:28 here. Number four. [Music]
19:45 So, it's very slight just color to the
19:47 high end. Maybe boosting the presence a
19:49 little bit. I'm not fixing any problems
19:51 here. Obviously, this is why I do this
19:54 after I do my my regular EQ regime
19:56 because if I didn't, I would just be
19:58 accentuating problems that exist in the
20:00 guitar tone instead of making things
20:01 sound more interesting and more
20:04 colorful. So, that's it. Four steps, no
20:06 black magic. Step one, filtering. Step
20:09 two, upper mid. Step three, low mids,
20:11 middle mids. Step four, kill the
20:13 resonances. That's literally all there
20:15 is to it. That is the workflow that I
20:18 have been using for years that works.
20:21 Again, no secrets, just a good workflow
20:24 with logic. And now it's up to you to
20:26 put it to practice. So, practice a lot,
20:28 practice every day, practice every
20:31 weekend, practice EQing, and uh yeah,
20:33 that's going to do it for me. Hope you
20:34 enjoyed the video, and I'll see you in
