Unnatural High

[khameln]

Hey, so I've been producing and mixing, and doing a lot of A/B. I've noticed that a lot of hip-hop beats have exaggerated highmids/highs in the range of about 4-8K. When my tracks come out of the sequencer/sampler, they sound a lot more "flat", so I've been boosting this area on a lot of things when mixing, like drums, especially high hats, strings...

So I'm wondering, for those of you that work out in the industry: Are the mixing engineers actually boosting that severly in that range on a lot of the instruments, or is the mastering engineer (or possibly even the mix eng.) saying "this is a hip hop record" and EQ'ing it that way across the board on the 2-mix?

I've been trying to decide whether to keep doing it to individual instruments, or just wait and do it to the mix as a whole before or after 2-bus comp, or if I should just leave it (or some of it at least) for Mastering. Curious to see how you guys work.

Thanks in advance

[the russian]

You want it to sound as much like the final product as possible before it hits the mastering lab!

[matucha]

just mix it right...

if you think that you need to accent 4-8k, do it, if you think it makes things too agressive, don't do it (too much).

I'm trying to get natural blend most of the time... with big lows and smooth top and with great care about things in the middle, not to burry it with too much cutting and meanwhile not allowing the mud to pile up.

And mastering? All I want is a bit more glue, a bit of loudness and maybe some tiny bit of saturation... no big EQ stunts.

[khameln]

Alright, so assuming you're creating this overhyped high-mid sound I'm hearing on all these records in the mixing phase, is it being done instrument-by-instrument or on the 2-bus?

[matucha]

could be, but you can also do it on groups or even on the 2buss if you want to, it depends what you want to do, you know it is EQ nothing else... so if you want to add the same kind of edge to everything, eq your 2buss and it is done... but if you want more variety, eq the groups or single tracks, or do a combination... there are no rules

[filterayok]

the range your talking about is really the "SMACK" of the snare/clap/stick, and the "cutt through" of the vocal... usually if these are equ'ed bright enough, you probably wont have to add it on the 2 buss.. its all about A/Bing