FAQ Friday is our weekly episode where I answer your most frequently asked questions! How do you get your question answered? Leave thought provoking, conversation starting questions or comments on the videos! If you’ve been wondering about something, ask away!
As usual, we have a ton of great questions! I’ve been hearing a lot about this next subject in particular lately.
Did they high-pass back in 1979?
Yes!
I get so many questions about high-passing! There’s so much confusion and misinformation out there.
We’ve done quite a few videos where we take a kick drum and we high-pass it up to 20Hz and it gets louder!
People say “Oh, well you don’t hear it” well, you don’t hear it through your studio monitors but you’ll definitely hear it through a PA, and more importantly it will impact your mix.
Every professional mixer high-passes.
So did they high-pass in 1979? Yes they did! Not only did they do it, they did it a lot! Going onto tape produced a lot of low end and low-mid build up!
Going through consoles in those days (in the 50s, 60s, 70s) that had transformers on the mic pres, transformers on the line amps, transformers on the monitoring section, and tape! You had low-mids and low build up like crazy!
They had to shape that low end a lot more effectively because they didn’t have access to equipment that had as much high-passing that we do now. They didn’t have millions of plugins and parametric and graphic EQs like we do now.
High-passing has been around forever and it is the secret to a good clean mix. Nobody should high-pass up to 500 Hz; that’s silly! But taking super super low end rumble out of microphones across the board, shaping the low end on guitars, bass guitars, keyboards, vocals, and drums is really really important to get a really loud punchy mix
During this episode of FAQ Friday I answer the following questions:
• I’ve got a very important question for you: PG Tips, Twinings, Tetley or Yorkshire?
• Is there any truth to trying to tune your kick drum to the key of the song to somehow make it set better with the bass guitar?
• I have a drum kit in a small room, is it possible to get good results with 2 sm57s when recording the full kit?
• Which plugins do you use to align drums to grid?
• So is this a quick master tool? – Referring the LMC
• Did they high-pass back in 1979?
• Can a room be TOO flat for mixing and mastering?
• I start university in September and will be studying music production. Do you have any tips or ideas that might help me maximize my learning?
