EQ/Mixing tips for native Renoise effects

I was wondering if the more seasoned among you could offer some advice on getting the most out of the EQ, filter and so on for Renoise specifically. I have been high passing most things (except kicks and bass), but I can’t seem to really get the hang of using the EQs to effectively sculpt the sound (especially low frequencies).

I rarely boost. Instead I make a 6 dB’ish cut in the middle freqs and sweep around listening. And eventually find a position or two where it sounds less muddy/honky/whatever. Then fine tune it. Obviously depends on the sound. Once you suppress the shit bits you can boost the volume a couple dB’s if it’s needed. Also gotta make sure what you do works in the context of the track.

If you really feel you need more hi’s/mid’s etc, exciter can work great. Just gotta watch your levels as it sometimes boosts volume quite a bit.

For bass stuff, you need to pay extra attention to your sub level. Here’s a great article by Fanu:

http://fanumusic.com/production-get-your-sub-bass-right/

No expert or anything. Just how I do things recently… Hope this helps!

I’m not so seasoned at all. But I remember being in a very big helplessness when it came to compressors and eqing in my process of trying to learn the tools.

I think I’m making progress with this. My way is simple. I fool around with the effects a lot and learn with my ears. Also from wild mistakes. Not only your ideas on how to use effects can grow, but also your hearing will become more acute and analytic with experience piling up. One or another “right thing” to remember happens by this now and then. The more experienced you are, the more fruitful this experimentation will be. I also watched videos or read texts on the internet about all kinds of things in music production. Often stuff isn’t explained well in tutorials, but you can try to repeat a workflow, and then have some pointer to how other people use the effects, what it sounds like, and you can experiment with the parameters. With time you’ll know what will help here or there, know in advance how an effect would roundabout change the sound. And also be able to listen to other people’s music in an educated way, and try to mimic certain sounds, or at least try to and then learn in this process. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, it’s software and it can be reverted, and also most probably you aren’t going to sell your stuff in the beginning anyways.

Of course there are some do’s and don’ts, and collected knowledge (like what eq freqs will boost/cut certain psychoaccoustic effects in different types of material, or certain soundwise standards that can be different between genres) - so don’t be shy to google around a lot and follow links in forums to expand your knowledge and get more ideas for experimentation.

Also I think there isn’t “the way” to deal with renoise native effects. They are just eqs, filters, compressors etc. like any other of their kind. So strategies in using them should be roughly the same as any other eqs, filters etc. Only thing that makes them a bit special is they are kind of very plain in sound character and also very low on cpu load. Read: don’t just look for renoise tutorial, look for any tutorials in music production, even if it covers hardware effects, and try to translate the knowledge to renoise, with wit and ears.

It’s more effective to cut things than to add

Don’t over think, an EQ and Compressor are deceptively simple

Just make sure your ears are good, meaning them and your mind click.

All you need

Oh, and experience!

:slight_smile: