Basic EQ Techniques for Church Volunteers
In my decades of teaching churches to do audio better, I have heard a pretty good collection of misinformed ideas about how sound works, and nothing seems to attract more bad practices, confusion, and sheer guessing than channel EQ. It’s the most misunderstood part of mixing, and yet it’s one of the most vital components of a good mix. It’s also the hardest part of audio to teach because it relies on developing a critical ear that distinguishes between different frequencies and tonalities and understanding what instruments should sound like. That doesn’t happen in one session or overnight.
Let’s start at the beginning. There is a myth that says we can “fix” anything with EQ, and it’s just not true. Good audio begins with tuned, quality instruments. I tell my classes all the time that if you start with a quality, tuned instrument, put a decent mic in front of it (in the right spot), run it through a quality preamp/console, and amplify it through a system designed and tuned for the room, you shouldn’t have to touch the EQ. It doesn’t even have to be expensive. There are plenty of decent quality mics, speakers, and mixing consoles out there, but they’re not the cheapest ones you can find. There’s a huge spectrum of quality, and performance usually correlates with price.
Tune your drums. Take your acoustic guitar to a reputable guitar shop to make sure the pickups are installed correctly and “tuned” up. Don’t buy cheap vocal mics. Play with your drum mics to find the sweet spot where it captures the best sound possible. I have put a kick drum mic in some strange spots to get the sound I wanted, but the proof is always in what your ears hear. Use microphones that are appropriate for the application and remember that you get what you pay for. Check out my blog on mic selection and placement for a quick primer.
Churches are notorious for expecting a studio quality mix from a volunteer behind a Behringer mixing console with powered Mackie speakers, the cheapest Shure mics available, and no acoustic treatment in the room. It’s a recipe for disaster and it sets up your volunteers for failure rather than success. Pastors and Administrators, please manage your expectations. If you want to recreate what the big churches are doing, your budget has to follow proportionately for the size of your room. If you don’t have the budget, at least hire someone that knows how to help you get the best bang for the buck. It’s worth it.
I’ll step off my soapbox now.
A quick primer on EQs: EQ is short for equalizer, so named because its purpose is to equalize or balance out frequencies. It’s a device that modifies the amplitude of a range of frequencies in a signal. On old consoles, we had pairs of knobs that allowed 3 or 4 frequency ranges to be adjusted, and you got to adjust amplitude and frequency with a fixed width–usually about 3 octaves. With digital consoles, you get parametric EQs, meaning that there are more parameters, with the addition of Q or width. So far we’ve just been describing peaking EQs, but we can also do shelving EQs, which change the amplitude of all of the frequencies above or below the selected point. In addition, a high pass (or low cut) filter drastically cuts off low frequencies, and a low pass (or high cut) filter drastically cuts off high frequencies. The term “filter” is often used to describe the tools that adjust a single band of frequencies, not just high pass or low pass.
The first step in using an EQ is to understand what parts of the timbre of an instrument or voice are represented by each part of the frequency range. There are some great resources on the Internet, including charts of frequency ranges and videos, that are a good starting point. Let me caution you against making “rules” about what should be done to certain instruments and/or vocals and encourage you to use your ears. These charts are a great place to start, but every voice, instrument and microphone is different, and you MUST use your ears as the final authority.
A great way to start learning what EQ does is to plug a microphone into your church system and sit and play with the EQ as you speak into it. You can also use pre-recorded tracks or canned music. While you’re learning what the EQ bands and filters do, make big changes so you can hear the effect clearly. Crank the gain up on the low mid, make it kind of narrow (Q or bandwidth) and slowly sweep through the frequency range to hear what it does, focusing on what each frequency band sounds like.
A quick primer on frequencies: The range of human hearing is from 20Hz (Hz = Hertz = number of vibrations/cycles per second) to 20,000Hz or 20kHz. Frequencies and pitches are exponentially related. The A below middle C on a piano is 220Hz, the A above middle C is 440Hz, and another octave up the A is at 880Hz, etc. The lowest note on a piano is 27.5Hz and the highest is 4186Hz. The primary pitch we hear as a note is called the fundamental. What makes a piano sound different from a clarinet is the harmonics generated along with the fundamental. Each instrument creates different harmonics that give it a distinct timbre. When applying EQ, we have to take the harmonics into consideration.
Here are some general ideas of what you’re going to hear when you play with EQ:
Subs - from 20Hz to 80Hz you should just be in your subs. Subs are both felt and heard. It’s where the kick drum, floor tom and bass guitar live. It’s also where wind noise, including when someone breathes into a mic, lives. That’s why high pass filters are often used on vocals: it helps keep that unwanted breath noise out of the speakers.
Low mid - from 100Hz up to 500Hz is where much of the vocal range exists. Too much here and the signal will feel boomy; too little, and it will be thin. One of the most common mistakes is to thin out a vocal instead of just notching out the problematic boomy or ringing frequencies. You want the richness of a vocal that shows up in this range. You also want the richness and warmth of an acoustic guitar in this range when it’s playing solo.
High mid - above 500Hz to just past 2kHz is where the boxiness or nasality lives. There is often a primary harmonic that lives in this range and notching it (narrow band EQ cut) will clean up your input. Vocals and guitars often have something in this range that needs to be “pruned”.
“Essssssy” range - Depending on your vocalist, somewhere between 3kHz and 8kHz will be where you hear a more pronounced “s” in vocals, often caused by compression. If your s’s get more pronounced, don’t just cut the whole range!! It will be different for each vocal, but cutting a semi-narrow swath and then sweeping it through the range will help you find it. You may have to make it wider to help, but avoid taking out so much of the highs that you lose the sparkle or the crispness in the voice. Definitely DO NOT use a low pass filter. Don’t laugh; I’ve seen it. (NOTE: If you have a de-esser or a dynamic EQ, that’s a much better tool for this job.)
Highs - Above 8kHz is where much of the sparkle, attack and sibilance happens. To avoid making things sound dull or muted, don’t cut this range unless you have to. In fact, I often bump up everything above 8kHz with a high shelf to improve the sparkle or intelligibility of vocals or the attack/brilliance of an acoustic guitar.
Remember that these are not rules to follow, just ideas about what you’ll find in each frequency range and, more importantly, permission to play with them appropriately to affect what you hear. Your ears are the authority, not, “This is the way I’ve always done it,” or, “This is what Troy said to do.” If you press the bypass button after tuning the EQ on a channel and it sounds better, then you haven’t improved the sound with your EQ. Clear it out and try again.
Notice that I haven’t talked about using an RTA yet. Most modern digital consoles have a feature built in called a real time analyzer (RTA). It graphs the amplitude of the frequencies in the signal and overlays them over your EQ window so you get a real time look at what the frequencies are doing. It’s very helpful for beginners and old dogs alike in that it helps you pinpoint frequencies accurately and quickly. Start without the RTA when you’re just learning what the frequencies are doing, but don’t be afraid to use it if you have it.
Some consoles have libraries of EQ curves for specific instruments and vocals. That can also be a great way to get started when you don’t know how to EQ, but the same rule applies: It’s a starting point. You must use your ears because there is no cookie cutter for EQ.
Here are a few other EQ snafus to be aware of:
You can’t boost a frequency that doesn’t exist. If you find yourself wanting a bit more sparkle, warmth, intelligibility, etc. and go to boost the appropriate range, only to find that it doesn’t make a difference, it’s probably because those frequencies don’t exist in your original signal. You might have a damaged mic capsule or cheap pickup that needs to be addressed instead.
I generally use a broad (wide) EQ for “flavoring” and steep or narrow notches for fixing. The reason is that it’s easy to remove too much with an EQ that is too wide. You want to retain as much tonality of the instrument as possible while still removing the offending frequency, so start narrow and widen as needed when you’re fixing issues. If you start wide to find the offending frequency, don’t forget to narrow it up so you’re pulling out as little as is needed.
There is a tendency in less experienced audio operators to feel like they have to be busy at all times. I’ve watched guest operators EQ the life right out of a band because they felt like they had to be “busy” to earn a paycheck, or appear like they knew what they were doing. Remember that you may not have to fix a quality instrument with a quality mic going through a quality system. Listen critically before diving in with your EQ, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
Practice so that you can do EQ quickly. In simple setups, changing the EQ will change the timbre and the amplitude of the signal in their monitor or ears. You don’t want to hold up practice for half an hour while you make fine adjustments during sound check, but you also want to get close right away so your fine adjustments later don’t make too much of a change in what they hear.
The last pointer I have for learning how to EQ well is to seek the advice of others that are doing it well. That could mean asking to shadow someone from a larger church with good sound, it could mean looking for videos, though it’s impossible to tell how someone mixes on YouTube. You can also find a local company that does audio professionally for big shows and ask them to send someone with good ears to do some training on your system. That option might be expensive, but you’d be surprised at how many of those guys have a heart for teaching and will discount the service for a non-profit.
One caveat: Don’t just assume that big church audio people, professional audio people, or the “out of town” expert can really do the job. I’ve seen way too many cases where outside “experts” are brought in, but they just copy what they do elsewhere and can’t really mix outside of their bubble.
I’m afraid that I took a lot of space here and just muddied the waters a bit. However, learning how to EQ is of primary importance for mixing, and it’s not a simple endeavor, but it’s worth it! Whether you’re a volunteer or paid staff member, spend the time to hone your craft.
