Help - How do bands get that "Balanced" sound?

[georgestrings]

sounds like an eq problem to me. sounds like the classic case of everyone scooping their mids out. try turning the guitars' mids up and their bass down. you can stay nice and scooped or you could try add some low mids. you might wanna turn up the high mids on the vocals but your guitars should dominate that middle range, imo.

I was going to post something like this - inexperienced players usually need to learn the difference between "bedroom EQ" and "band mix EQ"... For guitars, it typically means cutting some lows, and adding some mids and maybe highs... For bass, it usually means adding mids instead of volume if you can't hear yourself well enough...

I typically dial in a tone that I like, then once the band starts playing, I end up adding some mids and maybe some highs - what I end up with doesn't sound that great by itself, but kills in the mix...


- georgestrings

 

[Ben B]

I was going to post something like this - inexperienced players usually need to learn the difference between "bedroom EQ" and "band mix EQ"... For guitars, it typically means cutting some lows, and adding some mids and maybe highs... For bass, it usually means adding mids instead of volume if you can't hear yourself well enough...

+1. I think the key word is inexperience. I know a couple guitarists that are very talented that have played for many years, but not a lot of experience in working bands. They never learned the difference between playing in the bedroom and playing with a band. In addition to not understanding the "band mix EQ", they also feel that they must hear every nuance of their playing (even during rhythm parts), so, they turn up louder than the rest of the band. As others mentioned, speaker placement is good, but I feel that you need to hear generally what you are playing, but you do not hear to every nuance--except maybe during a solo. My 2 cents.

Ben