![]() If it sounds bad, it is, so use your EQ as your first line of assistance in sorting that out. There is no hallowed setting that you’re not allowed to change. The point with EQ is that you have to trust your ears. (People soak up bass, so you’ll often need to boost this frequency area.) Remember that the presence of people profoundly changes the audio characteristics of rooms, so as a venue fills up, you may find your eQing has to change, too. So while we want to see eQ controls returning to twelve o’clock every time, maybe you’ll find the room sounds best with the bass tailed off a bit or the treble boosted as a rule – in which case your default eQ position on your mixer will be different. Ideally you want to avoid this, but it can be inevitable, because if there are no eQ controls after the signal has left your mixer (often the case with home monitor speakers, or PA systems where the amplifiers are out of your reach or only have volume controls), the last chance to change the eQ for the room is at your DJ mixer. Whether you’re at home practising in your bedroom, or in a club with its own PA system, you may need to use the eQ to get the whole room sounding right. ![]() A classic use in beatmixing is the Bassline Swap Beatmix, which I taught you in the ‘Five Basic DJ Transitions’ chapter. When you’re transitioning from one track to the next, eQ can be used to introduce and swap elements of both the incoming track and the outgoing one at points you choose. ![]() By putting your headphones on and listening to the next track, and comparing it to the currently playing one by switching between the two, you can work out any elements that may need to be adjusted. Maybe your track sounds a bit dull (that’ll be lack of midrange), or is too boomy when the kick drum starts (too much bass), or sounds a bit bright when it’s all going on (meaning there’s too much treble). Different tracks sound different to each other, tonally as well as musically. There are three reasons you’ll want to use eQ: They will turn from seven o’clock to five o’clock, and their flat setting will be at twelve o’clock where there’ll usually be a little click to let you know they’re set to neutral. Usually you’ll have three for each channel of the mixer that allow you to boost or cut the bass, midrange and treble parts of the sound of whatever you have running through that channel (it’s always better to cut than to add, though, compensating by raising the overall track volume using the gain control). Otherwise called ‘equalisation’, EQ refers to the tone controls on your mixer that we first met in the ‘Mixer Basics’ chapter and then again in ‘Bassline Swap Beatmix’ in the previous chapter.
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