[MUSIC] Once you've gotten a good balance with volume and pan, there might be some other parts of your mix or your recordings that you need to effect a little bit further to get the perfect sound. These effects are called plugins or inserts, and you're going to add them in the Insert section on Pro Tools that we created in our first template. That section is located here in our edit window under, Inserts A-E. Remember, if you don't see this and your template looks a little bit different, you can go up to the top left corner and change your Edit window view. By clicking on this little box and choosing, Inserts A-E. We'll be going over some of the most common plugin effects in the next few video segments. And, in this one, we'll start with EQ or equalization. After that, we'll go into compression. And, then finally, we'll go into reverb. An EQ is used to manipulate the frequency content of the sound. We already talked about a type of EQ called a filter when we did our video segment on synthesizers. And that filter was a low pass filter or a high pass filter. Which basically manipulated how many low frequencies we hear or how many high frequencies we hear. An EQ allows you to manipulate any frequency in the sound. And it allows you to change the frequency content to make something sound brighter, or make it sound duller. Once of the most common areas that you'll use EQ is on vocals, and that's why I'm going to demonstrate this with Amy's vocal from the previous video. Because we want to EQ first, we're going to add this in the first insert section. So go up to your, Inserts A-E. And in the first slot choose EQ. And depending on what types of plugins you may have, this could look a little bit different. But you want to go for the EQ3 7-Band because this comes with ProTools and ProTools first. They call this a seven band EQ because it has seven possible bands of frequencies that you can affect. And a band is a range of frequencies that you can either turn up or turn down for your EQ. When we look at this EQ you're going to notice there's the HPF and the LPF on the left. And those are the high pass filter and low pass filters that we already discussed in the synthesisers lesson. And then on the bottom we have these different colored bands. And each of these goes up through the frequency spectrum from low to high. In the black box you're going to see that there is the number 20 on the bottom left and it goes up to the number 20k, or 20,000 on the right. And that's basically the range of human hearing. From low on the left to high on the right. Up and down, we have a measurement of DB or decibel values. Which is basically how loud each one of these frequencies will be if we boost it, or how much the volume is going down if we cut it. In order to use the EQ effectively, it's important to really listen to the sound and find out what it is that you don't really like about it. A good way to do that is to imagine in your mind what that instrument or voice ideally should sound like if that person was in the room with you. If it has some low rumble that you don't like so much, or it sounds way too bright or hissy. You want to be able to recognize that, and then you can use the EQ to help fix it. So let's listen to this section of Amy's vocal. And we can kind of evaluate what maybe we don't like about the sound, that we could fix with the EQ. >> [MUSIC] >> When I listen back to that section, I hear a buildup of low rumble and air around the word can't, on the letter c. So listen to it again really closely and see if you can hear that. >> [MUSIC] >> Because of the low rumbly boom that I hear from that, I know that this is a low frequency that I'd want to fix. One of the most common EQ effects that you used on a vocal is actually a high pass filter. And what it does is it cuts off low frequencies and it gets rid of some of those low rumbles, pushes of air, or what are called plosives which are p's and b's. The reason that p's and b's cause such a problem with vocals Is because it's actually blowing air toward the microphone. On your EQ click the, in button to turn on your high pass filter. And when you do that you can see that the EQ starts to slope off in some of the lower frequencies. For a vocal, you can set this high pass filter at about 125 hertz. You can either click and drag this on the graph, or you can dial in the frequency you want. If we want this slope to be a little bit steeper. We can change whats called the Q, which is basically the range of frequencies the EQ is affecting. Let's listen back to that and see if this frequency choice is going to work for Amy's voice to get rid of that low frequency around the word can't. >> [MUSIC] >> In my opinion, that's still not drastic enough. So starting at 125, we can move this frequency a little bit higher until we start to hear the can't low frequency disappear and before we get to the point where the vocal starts losing the quality that makes it sound like a vocal. And I'll demonstrate what will be too far in this instance. So let's start moving the frequency up. >> [MUSIC] >> So that's at about 224 hertz. And you can hear how the [SOUND] low frequency has gone away by doing that. Now if we make this frequency of the high pass filter too high, this is what it sounds like. And it completely ruins the sound of the vocal. >> [MUSIC] >> Because this is a high pass filter, it let's the highs pass through and cuts the lows. So when you set the frequency too high, it cuts out a lot of the low frequencies and totally changes the sound and makes it really bright and tinny. So let's bring that back down to 224 where we liked it. If you want to use EQ as an effect for that telephone quality filter, you can bring that high pass filter way up and that's absolutely fine. But if you're trying to emulate the sound of a real live vocalist without the effect then you want to make sure that you're not compromising the sound of the vocal. Once we've added the high pass filter, we can focus on some of the other frequencies that might not be as nice if it's vocal, besides that low frequency on can't. But sometimes it's hard to find out where that frequency is, and with an EQ we can do something called a peak and sweep. Which will allow us to target the frequency that we don't like, by turning it up really loud until we find out, and then cutting it away. And I'll demonstrate how we do that. On one of these bands that you're not using at the bottom, I want you to turn up the gain all the way. And gain is basically another word for loudness. Then remember that Q which was the bandwidth or the range of frequencies around it? I want you to turn that up, which makes it more narrow. This is going to target the frequencies and make it easier for us to hear what we don't like. Then, bring the frequency all the way up. And as we play through this part of Amy's vocal, we're going to keep listening and move the frequency down as we go, starting at the highest and then going all the way down. Once we hear the frequency that we don't like really really loudly, then we can just cut it away. And that's what's going to help us shape the sound more into what we need. >> [MUSIC] >> So that area right there is really, really not very nice. It's just got a really resonant frequency to it. And it's also what you probably have heard of if you've ever heard someone talk about EQ called the muddy range. What that means is a lot of instruments have their resonant or primary frequencies there. And it's really difficult to have all of your instruments have that area of frequencies and still have balance and clarity in your mix. So once you find something that you don't like, cut it down by reducing the gain and widen the Q to make it a little bit louder. You can keep adjusting this to make sure that it helps with the sound of the vocal and doesn't hurt it. It's only going to make sound a little bit nicer. >> [MUSIC] >> You can also increase brightness by adding on the EQ instead of cutting. Do this the same way with your peek and sweep until you find the frequency that really enhances the sparkle of the vocal. I'm going to do this with a yellow band. Turn up the game, narrow the queue, and then sweep. >> [MUSIC] >> That area is helping her vocal come through sound more clear and be able to understand the words that she is saying better. Once you've got it, bring down the gain, widen the cue, and listen back. >> [MUSIC] Now lets listen to before and after. Here was our vocal before >> [MUSIC] >> And here's the vocal after EQ. >> [MUSIC] And that's actually really cleared it up, made it more present in the mix. And it's gotten rid of some of those low frequencies that we didn't like. For more information about certain frequency ranges of instruments, just in case you haven't heard any of these before, you can check out the frequency graph reading.
