Audio Masking: Drop and Cut Technique

Transcription of the video above

For a mix engineer, masking is one of the first things you contend with when you start learning how to mix — and ironically, it never stops showing its face.

The masking problem is simple. Two things happening at the same time, the same space, occupying the same frequency range creates clutter. It’s like hearing two conversations at the same time — indistinct at best, cacophony at worst. And every minute of playback in your mix session is a doomsday clock that ends with fatigue or inadvertently overworking a mix.

There are really only a few ways to solve it. Carving out time and space is the most straightforward — pan things to opposite sides, mute, sidechain, or just make your arrangement better so it’s not a problem in the first place.

But frequency masking is the one that usually trips people up. The prescription is clear: differentiate one track from another with EQ. The problem is that if you boost, you risk losing headroom, and even just searching for the frequency can tire your ears and drain your objectivity.

And that’s why I like to teach people to isolate frequencies using the drop and cut method to isolate, subtract, and stay fresh.

It’s not immediately intuitive, but the good news is that it’s dead simple. Actually, the windup probably just took way longer than the pitch. But if you’re still watching, try this.

Take one of your competing tracks. Pull the fader down a few dB. Now go to its competitor and start making cuts until that first track reappears.

That’s it. Now you’re EQing tracks to complement rather than compete. And you’re doing it with more precision, less fatigue. And if you know someone who belongs in a Beat Kitchen class, share this post, because we prefer to tell you this kind of thing face to face.