# Mixing The Orchestra - EQ & Compression



## Noam Guterman (Oct 15, 2017)

Hey everyone,
There have been extensive threads about reverb when it comes to orchestral music.
But what about eq & compression? What are some of your tips & tricks when it comes to sculpting the orchestra's tone further, after you've found your correct sound to work with. Do you find that after picking the library (trailer vs classical sounding library) it's pretty much ready to go?


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## ghandizilla (Oct 23, 2017)

It's pretty much ready to go, indeed. And you can do an entire orchestra mix just being careful with ER and revebs to match the spaces of the different instruments, and nothing else.

But a wise use of EQ can clarify your mix. Usually, I do the following :
- a low cut on the master to avoid subbass build-up and therefore muddyness on your low end
- on each bus, I do a gentle Q-Bell pinch to clean up ringing frequencies (it's often around 2200hz)
- sometimes, I do a match EQ on some instruments to alter their tone and "customize" them
- I sidechain a Trackspacer instance on each "family" bus to make them more cohesive and distinct from each other

And that's just it. I don't put compressor on the master so I can keep the natural dynamics. I just put one instance of SlickHDR to push upfront details of the sound. You may use a gentle compressor on your master when scoring so the music always remains "audible" under the dialogues.

You can also clarify your high end with a touch of distortion.

Orchestral music is about orchestration, so your mix is all about clarity. If you do hybrid stuff, you may use more compressors, distortions, the EQ in a more "radical" way, because it would not be about the believability, but about wether it sounds good or no.


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## John Busby (Oct 23, 2017)

harmonic distortion and imaging
guys like Alan Meyerson rarely use EQ and compression on orchestral elements for film anymore


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## JeremyWiebe (Oct 23, 2017)

I found this commentary from OT's help desk to be very useful when I started learning to EQ my orchestral mixes.

http://www.helpdesk.orchestraltools.com/hd_reverberation_and_placement.html


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