Synth EQ

[Downtuned]

I've just began recording some songs for a power metal project I have going. It's coming along fine but I'm wondering the best way to go about fitting the guitars in with the keyboards in regards to EQ?

When I say keyboards I mean synth sounds in the form of echo drops, pads and some airy vocaly sounds, not orchestras. To be more precise a pad sound for chords and a twinkly bell type sound for melodies. I never have them playing at the same time, it's either the guitars doing something a bit flashy and the pad or the guitars doing heavy chords and the twinkle.

The guitars are definitely meant to be the driving force in the mix with the synths more like background padding. I'm getting some not bad results but I'm just wondering how to make it a bit better. I've highpassed all the synths to within an inch of their life without sacrificing the actual sound (still it's pretty brutal though) lowpassed a bit to make room for the cymbals and kept them fairly low in the mix. Guitars are pretty standard, high and low passes, notch out at 2kHz and a small dip at about 800 hz.

I compressed the twinkly melodies like a snare with a 10-20ms attack and fast release to get the initial note clarity and the washy pads I compressed just a touch to catch peaks (if any) on lower notes or shriller higher ones.

If i'm gong to cut anything more it'll be from the synths mid range but I have no clue really where to cut for maximum effectiveness because I still do want to hear them.

When I experiment the synths eq usually looks like a big Mcdonalds 'M' and I'm pretty much doing it at random.

I don't know whether to cut some high mids off the synths to make room for the guitars bite or low mids to make room for the 'chunk' of the guitars.

The best band example of what I'm after would be Lost Horizon's first album 'Awakening the World' Really dark chunky guitars but complimented and backed up by background synths.

Thanks!

 

[Mikaël-ange]

I haven't listen yet to the Lost Horizon album you refer to, but mixing more and more pop oriented stuff I can give you some kind of idea about synth pad, and synth usual trick.

First of all, you figured out where is your vocal point (guitar in your case).
First thing I would recommend to do find the right panning position for all you synth. For that you need to do it while checking your mix in mono (sound kinda backward but try it, when it jump out of speaker that the right placement).

For your twinkly bell type sound, approach it like a rhodes: saturation is your friend (Kush UBK-1 work great for that, but Phoenix or any saturation plugin you like to use could work). Warm it, roll off some low end and add some air with an ssl g serie eq or a 2055 for hardware (plugin wise waves ssl g channel (use the x3 button) do the trick, or for 2055 use Filterbank, or any clean eq plugin you have put in shelving mode).

For synth pad if those are true stereo you are lucky. Most of time synth aren't true stereo so you need to make your own stereo with various processing (can be really short delay on one side, completely opposite eq filtering for each side (HP at 200hz/LP at 500hz, HP at 600hz/LP at 8khz for example)...etc. Search about Haas effect).
After that color your pad with some saturation, cut some mud and add some air.

Now for balancing you need to ride your fader a lot...

Good luck, and remember it's just a way to doing it

 

[Downtuned]

Thanks for the reply, that's a brilliant amount of great information for me to try out. I'll report back with some results.

BTW it's the Korg M1 plugin I'm using for synths (Paul Hertzog and Van Damme in the 80's ruined me for any other type of synth sounds!)

 

[blue_fAng]

Synth sounds are super easy to mix for me, I dont compress not even low pass because the way I aim my mixes: low end: bass guitar, kick drum's bass and a little thump of the distorted guitars and snare. Mids: Guitars, distorted bass, vocals, choir/string synths, snare, reverb in general. Highs: A little fizz from the guitars, kick drum's click, vocals, snare, overheads, synths in general. I always high pass (200 hz tops) synths that are not meant to sound bassy like high pitched strings or pads. It cuts through the mix really well without eating other instruments. Remember that hp/lp can kill the instrument my advice is to not to overdo it.

 

[smy1]

My favorite way to mix two instruments that are clashing:

1) Solo the instrument you want to fit in
2) Solo the instrument it is clashing with
3) Sweep an EQ-cut on the second instrument and listen to how it affects the first one
4) Done

This works very well with groups/busses too.

 

[vespiz]

Yeah the Haas-thingy works for me, when mixing pads, strings etc anything sustaining. Delay one side of the stereofile by about 20ms, check if you need to lower the volume of the opposing side by 1, 1.5dB or something to balance the perceived volumes of both sides so it doesn't go lopsided.

Cut away with EQ as much as you need, sometimes it takes a crap load of processing, sometimes you put up the fader and there it is. It happens.

 

[Downtuned]

This is excellent stuff, thanks. I'll be spending most of this week trying out all these new techniques.

 

[DanLights]

I think you're pretty much covered, I just want to say that Lost Horizon's first album is absolutely brilliant, you my friend have great taste in music.

 

[slo77y]

in my experience hi+locut is your friend with synths... virtually all of the synth/key sounds i get handed try to eat up the whole frequency spectrum..

 

[LeSedna]

I add synths at the end, when the whole spectrum is more or less used, and then I try to find where there is gap for them to fill. I'm not mixing power metal full of synth tracks though. I think synths are easy to Eq unless you get a lot of them, because they tend to be un-naturally rich in frequencies (especially additive/substractive ones imo). So you can pretty much cut and mold them into what you want. I drastically hi-pass all of them since they only add mud in the lows and low-mids, unless I'm after this when they are soloed or during an instrumental.

I know it might sounds obvious but sometimes going back into the synth itself can be useful instead of trying to EQ out something you don't like in its sound.

I choose stereo or mono pads depending on the space they are allocated, though most of the time I end up with stereo ones. Choosing real stereo sounds will make it way easier IMO, not that using asymmetrical delays or reverbs cannot work, but it just makes it more natural imo.

It's all about choosing the right sound before even trying to make it fit like a tetris brick, Omnisphere is a killer when it comes to pads and synthetic strings, you definitely want to try it !

It sounds difficult though to have both super aggressive and clear metal guitar sounds, and dense synth action, at the same time. With intense automation maybe ? I like to put subtle sidechains to help a little, sometimes. Like side-chaining an EQ to remove a little bit of the problematic frequency in the guitars when the synth signal is hitting a threshold, but so that the rest of the time the guitars are untouched. It takes 1mn to set up, it's worth a try if the synth are not present all the time in the audio (otherwise static EQ might be less complicated)

 

[amarshism]

hip ass hip ass