#97 - 17th July 2024 - WahEQ

Equalizers! The fist of god! The sharpest knife! And the destroyer of sounds.

Do you know these people who push bass and treble to the max in rental cars? Deaf morons, the whole lot.

Unless you‘re in jazz or classical music, everything should be EQed. It cannot be emphasized enough.

But the sequence is important! Start with subtractive EQ on single sounds, move quickly to de-masking in the context of a mix and only then boost specific frequencies in instruments or parts that should be emphasized. Consider mid/side EQ when doing so.

A very invasive and therefore effective way of EQ‘ing is to go with a bandpass, lo-pass or hi-pass filter. Those really carve through a sound and change it drastically.

A wahwah is usually a bandpass or hipass filter set in a specific frequency range. Whilst it is mostly used with guitar, it is an effective way to make any mid-focused sound sit very neatly in a mix. Ableton has a wahwah sound effect with some great presets.

Run synths through it, a snare, vocals, a sample choir. Do it twice with different frequency sweeps and pan the two variants. Record live and dictate the energy curve when opening and closing the wah. Make it a rhythm!

Don‘t do the Tom Morello and use it all the time. But use it!