| | | Hey Friend,
Do you know what EQ is?
EQ is an abbreviation for equalization, which is a fancy term for balancing out the different frequencies of a signal. For our purposes that means being able to balance out the various instrument sounds in a recording.
At least that's an oversimplified way to think of a pretty complex process...
I've said before that on most song recordings, it's not just one guitar you're hearing. In fact, many instruments are recorded in layers.
Let's explore that a little further...
When a guitar track is laid down, a lot of times thee engineer will have the guitar player play a part multiple times, recording each take of the part. Not only does this allow them to pick out the best take, but they can layer two or more takes to make the guitar part sound bigger and fuller.
But they'll also record guitar parts using different chord voicings.
For example, the producer might want some snarly power chord low end frequencies to make a song gritty and dark. So they'd record one track using said chords.
But then they want to add some higher frequency notes to make them stand out a bit more, so the record another track with the same chords, just using a different inversion of each chord higher up the neck (don't worry, I'm a gonna cover this stuff extensively in Chord Clinic!).
Now you have two separate tracks on a song playing essentially the same notes, one with low pitches and one with high pitches.
Our ears aren't necessarily going to hear any of the differences - they'll just hear a slamming guitar track.
That brings us back to EQ.
Because you're a talented guitar player and you want to be able to play each guitar part from that song you're learning, you need to be able to tell there's more than one.
With EQ you have a much easier time isolating a frequency range to pull the track of a particular instrument out in front of the rest of the mix.
When recording, we have a number of equalization tools in the toolbox. But when you need something quick, Song Surgeon to the rescue.
I'll open a song in Song surgeon and find the approximate frequency range for the guitar part I'm trying to isolate. (Here's a great resource for instrument frequency ranges so you know what you're looking for.)
Once I make the adjustment so the frequency band, I can hear the part more clearly over the rest of the recording.
Makes it a lot easier to figure out what I should be playing!
Just another cool benefit to using Song Surgeon for learning music. Go get the demo here and try it for yourself.
Peace~
Dave |
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