EQ is a shaping tool. In the same way a sculptor use a chisel, in the same way women use makeup to change the shape and appearance of their faces, we use EQ to shape and chisel the presentation of our instruments.
Sometimes we’re not only altering the shape of a sound, but instead correcting the tonal imbalances within a particular instrument or sound.
You might have an instrument with too much bass or too little treble. In this situation you would use EQ to correct these imbalances.
So EQ has two primary uses:
To achieve this result there are two main approaches to EQ:
Your primary mission with EQ will be to create a pleasurable sounding balance between instruments. In order to achieve that, we want to follow our Front and Back Paradigm.
By deciding which sounds are going to be in the Front and which ones will be in the Back of your mix you’ll immediately become more exacting with your EQ decisions.
In the following sections I will show you the specific ways to use cutting and boosting EQ to achieve a proper Front to Back mix, but before we dive into that we need to understand ‘4-Zone Mix Theory.’