EQ and mixing

[Dan3JAY]

Hey peops!
Maybe the stupidest question ever, but, Im mixing a new track. Would it be wrong of me to automate the eq at different points in a track from section to section in the same song? would this take away some common feel to each individual track?

It may not be apparent to the general listener but more so as a rule of thumb?

Any tips would be helpful

[turnitto11]

Do whatever you gotta do to get the sounds you're looking for!

[rtcardinal]

Not wrong at all. Do what you have to do.
Personally, I probably automate EQ more than I automate everything else.

[Broomptish]

If its cohesive of course I think. Ive started doing that quite a lot recently, triggering e'qs on at certain parts, today I put one on the master and turned the eq on at a break and eq'd the whole thing together, another bassline also had its own seperate eq that also came on at the break, if its working why not??

[Khazul]

I wont general automate EQ on master unless I have a mix that need some fixing and I don't have the parts to EQ on specific parts. Even then, I may often prefer a dynamic EQ (or multiband or band specific compressor).

However automating EQ on individual parts makes a lot of sense. In a dense mix, often lots of sounds layering across the whole spectrum can just sound muddy and clutter everything up and often for all but the most important parts the rest are better off being aggressively EQd back to their essentials. Often you can be really aggressive with this and the end result is the whole mix can gain a lot of clarity.

However when fewer parts are playing, then it makes sense for sounds which might have been quite aggressively EQd in a dense part of a mix to be relaxed and allowed to fill up their natural spectrum again.

I often bus most lead/pad/arp synths etc through a high pass eq so that when kick+bass is present, then I may crank up the cut off so they don't clutter the low end, then drop the cutoff when no bass is present etc - this is a simple way to de-clutter 100-300Hz region. Even do it on the kick and bass to reduce their spectrum overlap a little - sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't.

As an alternative to eq automation, sidechain multi-band or band specific compressors can be really good when you use a part or submix to duck a specific frequency range in another part or submix, for eg the common one is using a vocal mix to duck lead instruments slight in the center of the vocal spectrum which just help with clarity of the vocals while still allowing the instrumental to seem relatively loud as well without drowning the vocal. My current favourite tool for this job is fabfilter pro-mb, but you can also quite easily construct a sidechain band specific compressor in a rack with some EQ8s, phase invert utilities and the live compressor (in Live 8/9).