From the course: Ableton Live 10 Essential Training

EQ8 - Ableton Live Tutorial

From the course: Ableton Live 10 Essential Training

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EQ8

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- [Instructor] The Ableton Live 10.1 update introduces a couple of new plugins. Let's start by taking a look at channel EQ, a three band EQ that's especially useful at making quick adjustments to the sound of a track. So I've got exercise one from chapter two open if you want to follow along. And let's work on the mid pad track, so I'm going to select that. Solo it. And then let me click the first clip here on the track to set the playback point. So channel EQ is over here in the audio effects category of the browser. So let's grab that and drop that down here in device view on the track. As I mentioned, this is a three band EQ, and we can see that in the low, mid and high frequency controls. Starting with the low, if I increase this or decrease it, you'll notice that it has what's referred to as a shelving filter shape. Meaning that past the cutoff frequency the band of a frequency that's being adjusted is being done relatively equally. Now, perhaps more useful than a shelving filter is a high pass filter shape, which we can engage by clicking on this HP80 hertz button. The 80 hertz referring to the default cutoff frequency. Now, as I lower the level on this high pass filter, I want you to notice that the cutoff frequency increases. We can see it moving to the right here. And also the slope is going to get steeper. The mid band is a little bit different. Now, this is referred to as a band pass filter. And in this case it's fixed, meaning that we can't change the Q or width of the frequency band around the center frequency. Now, we can change the center frequency by grabbing this parameter here and dragging down to lower the center frequency. And pushing it up to increase the center frequency. And we can both raise or cut that mid band area. Over on the right, we can work with the high frequencies. And again, if I increase that we see that shelving filter shape. But interestingly, if I decrease that, it automatically goes into a low pass filter shape. And here the cutoff frequency starts at the top of our hearing, 20 kilohertz, and then gradually reduces down to about eight kilohertz. You'll also see the slope get a little bit steeper as I do that. Now, in this case I want to EQ this track to get it to sit a little bit better in the mix. And right now the overall sound is a little bit big. Now let me disable the plugin by hitting the activator button here in the upper left hand corner. And I'll hit play so you can hear it. (electronic tones) It's a little big sounding, especially on the low end. So I'm going to reactivate the EQ. And then as I play this, I'm going to work with the low frequency option here to shape that low end. (electronic tones) This case you can see the high range isn't doing much, because there really isn't anything that's up there. So after using channel EQ for a while, I really like it. It offers a quick, simple way to adjust a track where you don't need the complexity and functionality of a plugin like EQ8.

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