Unit 5

My assignment was to balance frequency, panning, and volume content within the box, and specifically shape frequency by using EQs. I really enjoyed reading about the box metaphor, and I feel that my understanding of how a song can sound good is greatly improved. The first thing I did was redo the panning of my Unit 4 edition of "Synchronicity II" by The Police, putting the Extras, Snare, and Bass into the left ear and the Guitar, Cymbals, and Kick into the right ear, leaving the vocal part, the lead, relatively in the center. I did this because after reading about the box metaphor I felt my previous arrangement - Extras and Guitar into the left ear, and all drums and Bass into the right ear - was unbalanced: there were a lot of low frequencies to the right and higher frequencies to the left... it sounded okay, but I could do better.

Besides the vocals, there were six tracks remaining. I looked at the Analyzed EQs of all of these. Prior to this unit, I have used EQs before in Electronic Music and I like using them for how simple they are; however, I've never really done anything with them beyond a bass boost, nothing calculated like this. By the way, Logic's built-in EQ function is easy-to-use, visually appealing, and full-featured: I really liked using it, and even experimented with its drop-down presets menu (but didn't actually use them)! What I saw in the Analyzed EQs was that the Guitar and Extras (backing vocals, except in the intro) mainly covered the higher frequency range, the Bass and Kick drum covered the lowest frequency range, and the Snare and Cymbals were in the middle. The first thing I did was move one instrument in each of these 'sets' into each ear. The second thing I did was edit each instrument's splodge by moving their EQ's bells. In the case of the kick drum, the effect was clear: the entirety of its higher-frequency content was actually cymbals and snares coming through from the original recording, so moving that bell cleaned the sound. In the case of the bass guitar, however, it basically covered a much larger frequency range and moving its bell made it sound less natural. The other tracks went without issue. After doing this, I realized there was still an issue with balance because, for example, the bass created a much stronger sound than the intermittent kick drum; however, a similar effect occured between the guitar and extras, and by alternating the stronger instrument of these two pairs I improved the mix's quality without messing with volume too much. I don't think this song is perfect yet, but it's much more dynamic than how it was when I started. If I was working on a different song I feel I could do more with my knowledge, The Police isn't really what I consider good music.

- Box metaphor: keep all audio tracks balanced within the box, in terms of panning, volume, and frequency content; fill out the box, don't fill one dimension but leave others scarce

- Splodge metaphor: a sound can be visualized as a 'splodge' across the frequency spectrum, showing to what frequencies the sound extends to

- The splodge can be shrunk or expanded with an equalizer (EQ)

- The splodges of every instrument must be balanced within the box for acoustic clarity

- By using an EQ and shrinking the splodge, other instruments will fill the gap! If there is too much overlap, some instruments will be stifled

- Bell shapes can be drawn into an EQ to cut away or boost certain level frequencies

- How wide the bell shape is is called the 'Q', high Q = less wide, few frequencies affected; high Q = wide bell, many frequencies affected

- Use the 'Analyzer' function with the Logic built-in EQ! - Human range of hearing: 20 Hz to 20 kHz

- Standard sample rate for audio: 44.1 kHz