Using the Equaliser on Ableton live 8

Hello, this is assessment 5 for introduction to music production on Coursera.

In this tutorial, I'd like to show you a basic demonstration of how to use the equalizer in your DAW.


The gear I will be using is:

• Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB audio interface
• Mac mini 
• Ableton Live 8 lite DAW

I have recorded the drums, bass and guitar from the intro of the song ”A light that never goes out” by the Smiths for this tutorial, all tracks are performed by me, so forgive my sloppy playing especially on the drums. I've used a Yamaha DTX-400K electronic drum set with its own module sounds (No VST).

Once I've done the recording, i've added some slap back delay to the guitar track, and reverb to the entire mix (these are not in the context of this very tutorial). 

Very soon after adding the first two effects, I found out that the drums sounded a little different than what I desired, with the hihat being very high and the snare drum very low. Then I picked an EQ eight (Ableton live's built in EQ), and started playing with it. Here's the video that I've made, make sure you watch it in HD:

Briefly what i've done is; choose the drum channel and pick up a spectrum analyzer to check the snare drum and hi-hat frequencies. Then I add an EQ eight and change the frequency gains. Later on i've shown how to save the preset for this specific DAW.

I hope this was helpful. I'm planning to make more videos on using the slap-back delay for guitar widening, and reverb for the whole mix, but that's it for now.

Thank you