Outside Scoop: How to Use a Mastering EQ Effectively, Destructive Audio Design, and More

iZotope’s Jonathan Wyner discussing mastering EQs.

It’s the weekend, and you know what that means… it’s time to catch up on all the music production articles and videos published within the past week! There was a substantial amount of content that came out covering mixing and mastering techniques, so get ready to add some new tricks to your production bag. Some of the highlights in this Outside Scoop include how to use a mastering EQ effectively, how to layer synths, destructive audio design, and more.

How to Use a Mastering EQ Effectively

According to Jonathan Wyner of iZotope, equalizers were invented around 100 years ago to compensate for the high-frequency roll-off introduced to the human voice when running through telephone lines; applying an EQ helped increase intelligibility. When mastering music, an EQ can drastically re-shape the sonic structure of a mix; they’re often easy to start using, but quite tricky to master. Wyner demonstrates some great mastering EQ techniques in this video.

In The Studio with Music Producer Feed Me

Jon Gooch, better known as Feed Me, walks through his track Satanic Panic from his album High Street Creeps. He shares some excellent FL Studio workflow enhancements and creative production tips. Some of the topics he covers include drum processing, phase alignment, consumer speaker compatibility, and sound design.

Top 5 Mixing Mistakes with Warren Huart

Warren Huart of Produce Like a Pro discusses five of the top mixing mistakes that music producers and audio engineers make. These mistakes include failing to high-pass instruments, applying EQ to your mix bus to compensate for problems at an individual track level, using multiband compression on the mix bus, and more. To learn about the rest of the mixing mistakes, you can watch the video here or read the blog post here.

How To Layer Synths For Huge Productions

Landing on the Outside Scoop radar yet again is Austin Hull from Make Pop Music. He’s created a high-quality half-hour video on layering synths to create heavy-hitting productions with enhanced body and clarity. Learn how to turn sparse arrangements into full, vibrant songs that fill up the frequency spectrum.

4 Essential EQ Techniques to Get Clean Mixes

Black Ghost Audio published a blog post this week that covers four essential EQ techniques that will help provide your muddy mixes with clarity. Some of the more notable techniques include how to deal with resonance using frequency fishing, and some great ways to take advantage of dynamic processing. This article wraps up with some bonus content that covers general purpose EQ tips.

5 Mastering Tips for Hip Hop, Modern House, Trap & Dubstep

Multiplier offers up some exciting mastering tips with a bit of a creative spin on them; for example, he recommends adding effects to your master, like a delay or a reverb. Some of these tips will make old school engineers squirm, but if the finished product sounds the way you want and is formatted appropriately, you’ve succeeded at mastering your music.

Destructive Audio Design With Graham Reznick

Graham Reznick is the creator of the horror series Deadwax, and he has some great philosophies on sound design, especially for film. Reznick runs through some creepy mixing techniques using a handful of Waves plugins that completely transform the bass recording he’s working on.

Years of MySpace Music Has Been Deleted

Remember MySpace? It was a popular social network before Facebook surpassed it just 10 years ago. Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music explains how MySpace lost 12 years worth of music uploads and makes the case that “you shouldn’t count on services to be the only copy of your stuff. These services generally have no obligation to keep things accessible.” Read the full article for an in-depth look at this MySpace crisis and how you can prevent losing music you’ve uploaded in the future.

4 Core Concepts You Must Know To Mix On Any DAW

Graham Cochrane of The Recording Revolution explains four key mixing concepts that include balance, EQ, compression, and referencing. He believes that mastering each of these concepts will allow you to work fluidly between different DAWs. As an audio engineer, you sometimes find yourself working in different studios and on different computers, which makes being able to mix on any DAW a life saver.

Charles Hoffman is a Mixing and Mastering Engineer at Black Ghost Audio. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with an English degree, Charles completed his education at Icon Collective in Los Angeles, CA.

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