Analog EQ collection I: Console EQ - Logic Pro Tutorial

- There are a million plugins out there but logic has a really cool Pultec-style EQ that can add a lot of vibe. Well, the Channel EQ is certainly the most versatile EQ. It doesn't have a ton of character. We are typically working with the Channel EQ with what we're given with the track. And that's great especially for cleaning stuff up but I want to take a look at some of the equalizers in here that are going to give us a little bit more character. So, let's check out this live vocal. It needs a little bit of work. (singing) - Come dancing me on the land and in the sea. Time to let - And it was recorded in a fairly, let's say rustic way. And you know it needs some Dsing. It's got some room in it, things like that but I think we can sweeten it a little bit. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to pull up the vintage EQ collection. Okay? And we're going to start with the Console EQ. Now you may recognize some of these knobs. This is meant to be a Neve like EQ. The most famous microphone preamp EQ I would say ever created is the Neve 1073 microphone preamp equalizer. Now what this channel strip allows us to do is sort of emulate the drive or the saturation or the harmonics. However you want to say it of the preamp. We have a low cut filter. Okay. Which is one and the same as the high pass that we talked about. And then we've got two shelves. We've got a low gain, a high gain for low and high shelves. Now we've got the mid gain for a bell like band that's similar to the Channel EQ and we can set the frequency of the low shelf here. And we can set the frequency of the mid bell. We can have the high gain sort of touch where the mid is or we can use the mid gain independently. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get this going. I'm going to use a little filtering to get rid of some gunk and I'm going to activate that by clicking here. (singing) - Come dance with me on the land and in the sea time. Time to let. - So you can hear the three hundred's a little high. (singing) - Come dance with me on the land and in the sea. Time to let your body free. - Okay. Cool. 160's working for me. I'm going to go into the mid frequency. I'm going to get rid of a little bit of schmutz that we have in the mid band. (singing) - Come dance with me on the land and in the sea. Time to let your body free. Turn around and feel the beat. Move with the breeze. Let the rhythm set you free. Life is just a pool party. Turn around and feel the the beat. - Now, you know, this mid game band is a little bit too wide. It's affecting too many things. If I want to go ahead and reach in and grab a frequency I'm going to use the Channel EQ. So let me just pop that in here. And I'm going to change the order here. I'm going to have the Channel EQ first. (singing) - Come dance with me on the land and in the sea. Time to let your body free. Turn around and feel the beat. Move with the breeze. Let the rhythm set you free. Life is just a pool party. Turn around and feel the beat. Come dancing me on the land and in the sea. Time to let you body. - Alright, cool. So, we've done a little bit of surgical stuff with that Channel EQ. I'm going to go back to my vintage style EQ and I'm going to just use the high gain and maybe some mid gain. We'll see. (singing) - Come dance with me on the land and in the sea. Time to let your body free. Turn around and feel the beat. Move with the breeze. Let the rhythm set you free. - No, we don't want it to be too hoarse. So I'm just going to add a little bit and then let's see what happens if we add a little low gain. If we get a little warmth out of it. (singing) - Come dance with me on the land and in the sea. Time to let your body free. Turn around and feel the beat. Move with the breeze. Let the rhythm set you free. - A little more exciting, a little bit more bright. Let's see what this drive does. And we've got different output models here. We've got silky, punchy, smooth. Smooth is a word that's often associated with Neve-Style pre's and EQs. Some people say it has a very sweet sound, a nice smooth top phase. We're going to leave it natural. Sometimes a linear phase is nice because what it does is it devotes extra processing to keep all the phase as intact as possible. And this can be helpful especially when you're recording acoustic instruments or when you're using something like this on the MixBox. It does use more horsepower though. Meaning it will use more CPU. Let's work this drive. Let's see what it feels like. And I'm going to temper that output using this output volume here which is just more or less transparent trim that we have on the output. (singing) - Come dance with me on the land and in the sea. Time to let your body free. Turn around and feel the beat. Move with the breeze. Let the rhythm set you free. Life is just a pool party. - Alright. That's pretty settled. It's giving us a little color though. I like that. That's feeling good to me. Let's jump over to this guitar which we already did a little Channel EQ on and I'm just going to grab the vintage console EQ. (mellow guitar music) - Yeah, let's give a little more meat. (mellow guitar music) - Okay, that's cool. (mellow guitar music) Let's push it a little bit. (mellow guitar music) - I want it to pop in the mix just a little more and let's see if we can give it some more attitude. Emphasize that pick a little bit more at the rhythmic aspect of the guitar using the mid gain knob. (upbeat guitar music) - Well, when I took it away we lost a lot of possess didn't we? (upbeat guitar music) - Oh, that sounds, I don't know. Somehow more guitary. That makes sense to you. Let's listen to it in the mix. (upbeat music) - Come dance with me on the land and in the sea. Time to let your body free. Turn around and feel the beat. Move with the breeze. (upbeat guitar music) Life is just a pool party. Turn around and feel the breeze. - That guitar is working so much better and it's actually able to compete with some of the other instruments that are in there. And that's really what additive EQ is all about for me and EQ in general. So we've got the Channel EQ doing it's thing. We've got the console EQ doing it's thing. The Neve sound is really nice for giving some sweetness to the top and a little tubbiness to the bottom. It's very handy. And we've got these settings over here on the right where we can add some extra harmonics some saturation and just really dial it in and get a lot of character out of the sound.