Chapter 22 Exercises

EQ is the chapter where listening skill and tool skill finally fuse, so this set leans hard on doing. You'll need: your own mix-in-progress (the session you gain-staged in Chapter 21), at least one old mix from before this book, your three reference tracks from Chapter 4, your DAW's stock parametric EQ, and your listening journal. Two ground rules govern everything below. First: every comparison happens at matched loudness — if an exercise asks you to judge a move and you didn't gain-match first, the result doesn't count and the exercise isn't done. Second: solo to find, mix to decide — any exercise that ends in a keep/undo verdict gets that verdict with the full mix playing.

Selected answers and worked examples appear in the back-of-book Answers appendix. Exercises marked 🎧 are focused listening; 🎛️ exercises need your DAW open. Budget short sessions — EQ judgment is the first casualty of ear fatigue (Chapter 4's hygiene rules apply doubly here), and several exercises explicitly require next-morning verification. Spreading this set across a week is the design, not a compromise.

Part A — Conceptual

A1. The vocabulary, from memory. Without looking back: sketch (by hand, roughly) the four filter shapes — high-pass, low-pass, shelf, bell — and label what each does to the spectrum. Then explain Q in one sentence including the direction trap (which way "higher Q" goes), and state the rule of thumb connecting bell width to job type. Check yourself against the chapter's filter gallery and note what your memory bent.

A2. Three reasons, three sentences. State the subtractive-first doctrine, then defend it with its three reasons — masking, headroom, and the boost-bias trap — one sentence each. Then add the boundary clause: what keeps "cut first" from curdling into "never boost"?

A3. The lemming defense. A YouTube tutorial says: "Pro tip — high-pass every track at 100 Hz. Instant clarity." Write a two-paragraph response: first paragraph, what's right about the advice (why HP discipline is the highest-value habit in EQ); second paragraph, what's dangerous about the number, which specific sounds get hurt at 100 Hz (name at least three with their approximate fundamentals), and the by-ear method that replaces the number.

A4. Anatomy of a committee. Explain, mechanically, why mud at 200–400 Hz is the most common mix problem on Earth, using at least three of these ingredients: where fundamentals live, where low-order harmonics land, what recorded room sound contributes, how masking spreads, and why solo interrogation acquits every suspect. End with the one-sentence reason the fix is distributed (several small cuts) rather than concentrated (one big cut).

A5. The law, verbatim and operational. Write out the Matched-Loudness A/B Law from memory, then list the four steps of the ritual and the three verdicts. For the third verdict — different-but-not-better — explain why bypass wins by default, and name the theme (T1 or T2) that rule enforces. Bonus: explain why the law matters more for boosts than for cuts, even though it applies to both.

A6. Both answers, with receipts. Your bandmate asks: "EQ before or after compression?" Give the complete answer: the case for before (with the high-pass/detector example), the case for after (with the presence-boost example), and the sandwich that resolves them. One paragraph, no hedging walls — both answers are right for stated reasons.

A7. The two lies of the solo button. Name them, explain the mechanism of each, and state the working rule that survives. Then connect: which of the two lies cost Jaylen his three days in the chapter hook, and why is "the crime only exists in the sum" the precise description of a committee?

Part B — 🎧 Listening Lab

Every exercise produces journal entries. Use Chapter 4's band vocabulary in every note you write — the point of this lab is welding that vocabulary to the EQ moves it now controls.

B1. The archaeology dig (your old mixes). Open the oldest mix you still have from before this book — the rougher the better. Loop its busiest section and run a low-mids-only listening pass (one question per pass, Chapter 4 style): where between 200 and 500 Hz does it congest? Now do the committee census by ear: name the three tracks you believe contribute most to the blanket. Write the indictment in your journal: each suspect, its approximate crowding zone, and your confidence. Keep this entry — exercise C4 executes the fix and grades your hearing.

B2. Mud audit, professional edition. Play your three Chapter 4 reference tracks back to back, listening only to the low-mids. For each: how much 200–400 Hz energy does the mix carry — lean, moderate, or rich? Does it ever blanket, even for a moment? Then play your current mix at matched loudness (pull the references down to your level, never yours up) and place it on the same scale. Journal the gap in one sentence per reference. This is theme T4 doing EQ's homework: their low-mid policy is your genre's contract.

B3. Presence vs harshness discrimination. Find two records: one whose vocal feels close, articulate, and comfortable at full listening level, and one (any era, any genre — your collection has one) that makes you want to turn it down within a minute. Listen to each at the same moderate level, attention on 2–6 kHz only. Describe the difference in band terms: where does the comfortable one carry its presence? Can you localize where the fatiguing one bites — low side (2.5–3 kHz glare) or higher (4–6 kHz glass)? Write both descriptions; this discrimination is the tightrope section made audible, and you'll need it every mixing day of your life.

B4. The air census. Using your best playback (and then earbuds, for contrast): play one modern, expensively-produced track in your genre and one decades-older record you love. Attention above 8 kHz only. Which elements in each actually carry air — vocal breath, cymbals, room, synth shimmer? Is the older record's top missing, or different in character? Now the honest question: in your own current mix, is there anything real up there to magnify, or would an air shelf amplify absence? Journal the verdict — it decides whether your air move this week is EQ or (eventually, Chapter 26) saturation.

B5. Before/after at the source. This one trains the ear that hears moves. Take any loop or track you know well. Make one deliberate, described EQ move from this list, bounce before and after versions gain-matched, then listen to the pair blind the next morning (shuffle them; don't peek): (a) -3 dB wide at 300 Hz; (b) +2 dB high shelf at 10 kHz; (c) HP at 120 Hz; (d) -4 dB narrow at 2.8 kHz. Can you tell which file is which, and name the move from the sound alone? Repeat with a different move each day this week. Score yourself in the journal. When you can reliably name a 2 dB move blind, the chapter has become hearing.

B6. The negative-space hunt. Professional mixes are defined as much by what's absent as present. Play a dense pro mix in your genre on a phone speaker. Notice how intact it sounds despite the speaker reproducing almost nothing below ~300 Hz. Now listen on your best system, attention low: how little low-frequency energy do the non-bass elements carry? Can you hear the high-pass discipline as a kind of cleanliness under the mix — the absence of fog? Journal what the kick/bass pocket sounds like when nobody else is in the basement. Then play your own mix on the phone and write down what the comparison teaches.

B7. Genre accents, three ways. Pick one song each from three genres with different low-mid contracts (suggestions: a trap record, a rock record, a folk or acoustic record). One listening pass each, low-mids and presence only. For each, journal: who owns 200–400 Hz, and is that ownership a problem or the genre's signature? Where does the vocal's presence sit relative to the instruments? End with one sentence per genre completing: "In this genre, the EQ verdict on mud is ___."

Part C — 🎛️ DAW Lab

C1. The filter-shape tour. Instantiate your stock parametric EQ on a pink-noise generator or a full-mix loop. Build each shape and listen to it move: sweep an HP from 20 Hz up to 500 and back; do the same with an LP from 20 kHz down; add a low shelf and a high shelf at ±4 dB and slide their corners; create one bell at +6 dB and sweep it slowly across the whole spectrum; then park the bell at 1 kHz and sweep only the Q from 0.5 to 10 and back. Two required discoveries to write down: the frequency at which an HP sweep starts audibly thinning a full mix, and what a Q of 8+ boost does to the sound as it narrows (the ringing the chapter promised). Thirty minutes, once, properly — this is the alphabet drill.

C2. Sweep-and-destroy, with discipline. On a vocal or other featured track from your session that your normal listening has already flagged as honky, boxy, or harsh (if nothing's flagged, skip to C3 — that's the discipline): run the four-step sweep exactly as diagrammed. Find up to three candidate frequencies. Convert each to a small cut (-2 to -4 dB, slightly widened), then convict or acquit each one separately with a matched-loudness A/B in the full mix. Rules: maximum two convictions survive; log every candidate, its frequency, and its verdict in the session notes. If you find yourself wanting a fourth cut, stop and re-read the Swiss-cheese warning.

C3. The high-pass pass. Execute HP discipline across your whole session, the chapter's way: track by track, in context, sweep each cutoff up until the track audibly thins, back off until whole, park it. No numbers chosen in advance. Log every cutoff in a simple table (track / cutoff / surprise?). Required reflections: which track earned the lowest cutoff that wasn't bass? Which earned a far higher cutoff than you expected? Compare your 2-bus peak level before and after the pass (Chapter 21's meters) — write down what the pass bought you in headroom.

C4. The committee fix (graded against B1). Return to the old mix from B1. Verify your by-ear indictment: pull an analyzer onto the 2-bus as a hypothesis check, then run mute tests on your three suspects. Were your ears right? Execute the 60-second fix: one wide bell per guilty track, -2 to -3 dB, centers slid by ear between roughly 250 and 350 Hz. Gain-match, A/B the whole mix against its pre-fix bounce, and write the verdict. Then the grade: how many of your B1 suspects were actually convicted? Two or three means your mud-hearing is ahead of schedule; zero or one means repeat B1/C4 on another old mix this week — this is the founding example, and it's worth over-practicing.

C5. The complementary carve. On your own track's low-end pair (kick/808, kick/bass, or kick/sub — whatever your genre runs): identify each instrument's defining zone by ear (sweep a narrow boost across each, solo briefly, find — then un-solo). Apply the complementary cuts: each instrument dips 2–4 dB where the other reigns. Verify three ways, all at matched loudness: full mix on your main system; mono; smallest speaker you own. Log the moves case-study-1 style: frequency, gain, Q, verdict, and one sentence of why. If your genre fuses kick and bass into one instrument, write the one-sentence explanation of why this exercise doesn't apply — that's a real answer.

C6. The matched-loudness ritual, installed. This exercise builds the law into your hands. Take five EQ moves from anywhere in your session (or make five new plausible ones). For each, run the full four-step ritual: move → output-trim until bypass toggling produces no size jump → eyes-away blind toggling → one of three verdicts, written down. Required honesty: at least one of your five should land in different-but-not-better — if none did, your level matching is probably off (re-check step 2) or your moves were all huge (re-read the chapter). Finish by writing the tally: kept / undone / bypassed-by-default. Run this ritual until it's boring. Boring means installed.

C7. The full EQ pass. The Project Checkpoint, executed end to end on your track: (1) HP discipline session-wide (C3 may already have done it — verify it survived); (2) find and cut your mud committee; (3) write your six-band ownership map into the session notes — one featured owner per band for your densest section; (4) the low-end carve from C5; (5) presence and air moves only where the map says they're owed, wide and modest; (6) the audit — every move re-tested against bypass at matched loudness, with a final tally like Jaylen's (moves made / reverted / kept). Deliverable: the move log and a before/after bounce pair, gain-matched, that you'll listen to tomorrow morning before trusting tonight's opinion.

Part D — Synthesis

D1. The founding example, explained by you. Write the explanation this book promised on page one, as if to a friend whose mix is muddy: why three instruments fighting for 200–400 Hz produces a blanket over the whole mix (mechanism: distributed deposits, summed energy, upward masking), why soloing won't find it, and the 60-second fix, step by step, in your own words. One page maximum. If your explanation needs the word "somehow," the mechanism hasn't landed yet — re-read the mud map and try again.

D2. Your genre's EQ constitution. Using B2 and B7's findings plus your reference tracks: write a one-page EQ strategy document for your genre and your track. Required sections: the low-mid policy (lean/moderate/rich, and who owns the zone), the basement plan (kick/bass pocket assignments), the presence hierarchy (who's featured at 2–6 kHz, who's carved), the air policy (which one or two elements, if any), and your high-pass philosophy. This document rides along into Chapters 23–30 — every later mixing chapter will consult it.

D3. The boost defense. The chapter argued cut-first hard. Now argue the other side, honestly: write three concrete scenarios where a boost is the right first move, and for each, name the consequence being accepted and the verification that keeps it honest. (Candidates worth considering: a featured element whose character lives in a band nothing else occupies; a dull capture you cannot re-record; a deliberate genre-signature coloration.) The point: doctrine with reasons survives exceptions; dogma doesn't. End with one sentence on why the matched-loudness law matters most in exactly these three cases.

D4. EQ or arrangement? The memo. Your chorus is congested. Write a half-page decision memo, addressed to yourself at 1 a.m., on how to decide whether the fix is EQ (carving) or arrangement (muting/editing — Chapters 16 and 20). Include: the mute test as the deciding instrument, the threshold-concept question from Chapter 20, one example each of a congestion that EQ should fix and one it shouldn't, and the order of operations when it's both. Pin this memo where your future, tired self will find it.

Part M — Mixed Practice

Interleaving earlier chapters — spaced retrieval is how this stuff becomes permanent.

M1. (Chapter 21 × 22) The headroom ledger. You boost +3 dB on twelve tracks and cut -3 dB on twelve others. In gain-staging terms, what happened to your track averages, your bus levels, and your 2-bus headroom — and why isn't the answer "nothing, it cancels out"? (Consider: boosts and cuts land on different tracks with different levels and different spectral weight.) What habit from Chapter 21 repairs the damage at the plugin level?

M2. (Chapter 4 × 22) Two biases, one law. Fletcher–Munson says your ears lie differently at every volume; the boost-bias trap says louder grades itself as better. Explain how each would sabotage an EQ session run at whisper volume with unmatched A/Bs — what specific EQ mistakes would you walk away with? Then state which Chapter 22 discipline neutralizes which bias.

M3. (Chapter 13 × 22) Tune it or carve it. Your kick's body rings near B♭ in an A-minor song, and it's also crowding your 808's harmonics around 110 Hz. Two tools are on the bench: sample tuning (Chapter 13) and complementary EQ (this chapter). Which do you reach for first, why, and in what order do both get used if needed? (Hint from Chapter 13: tune what sings, leave what knocks — then ask what EQ can and can't fix about a pitch disagreement.)

M4. (Chapters 7, 11, 12 × 22) The EQ you don't need. List four capture-stage decisions — mic choice, distance, axis, position in the room — and for each, name the EQ move it can make unnecessary (example: backing off a cardioid reduces proximity-effect bass buildup, pre-empting a low-mid cut). Then the production lesson in one sentence: where is the cheapest EQ in the signal chain?

M5. (Chapter 10 × 22) What EQ cannot reach. Your mix's 60 Hz region sounds wildly different at your desk versus the back of your room, and a friend says "EQ the mix until the bass is right." Using Chapter 10, explain why EQing the mix to fix a room mode is mixing a hallucination — what's actually varying, why it isn't in the signal, and the two-part protocol (one part room/position, one part translation-checking on other systems) that gets your low-end EQ decisions trustworthy anyway.