Guest composer Diana Lawryshyn Exploring EQ as a Creative Tool

Script

Hi, my name is Diana Lawryshyn. I'm a painter, composer, and a teacher. My practice as a composer involves composing electronically, and so this involves me using EQ or equalization. It's a great tool. I think it can be used for a lot of practical contexts, as well as for things that are creative. So my process involves starting off by taking recordings of different things in the environment, and these are often very unpredictable sounds. And so EQ becomes a really great tool, not just to fix my audio artifacts, but I also like to use it creatively to help, you know, make my compositions flow in a way that they couldn't otherwise. There was one instance where I was recording some water crashing by the waterfront, like waves, and that's a very noisy sound. It takes up a large part of the, you know, frequency spectrum. And so there was a sound amidst the waves of, like, this bird chirping, and it was kind of annoying, and I wanted it out of there, right? And so what I did was I went in with the EQ with this sharp kind of bell curve to remove just that one frequency, but I noticed that by removing that, it made the water sound kind of weird. So to keep it sounding natural and, you know, like it fit in, what I ended up doing was I automated that bell curve to kind of slowly fade in, and then I automated it to slowly fade out when the bird was finished doing its business, right? And so that was what kept the recording sounding organic and natural, which is what I go for when I compose. So I have this one piece. It's called "Borsht," and the first section of it, my whole objective was to try to make one instrument sound diverse, like a variety of instruments, like an orchestra. What I used was a violin, and I was able to record it with different variations. It's a very versatile instrument, but to really take it to the next level, I used some EQ to make it sound like different instruments. So for example, there's a flute sound in the piece, and it's actually derived from the sound of a violin. I just played a high note, and to really, you know, really take it to the next level, I used EQ, and I boosted the high end and the low end a little bit, and that created this effect that sounded almost like a flute blowing, right? So combined with that high-pitched note, it created this amazing illusion. And what really, I think, makes it interesting is when I take sounds like that that are illusions, and then I actually slowly fade in the real version of the sound, and I think it creates this, you know, this space within the audience where it's like magic, and they're not really sure if what they're listening to is an actual flute, or is it a violin, or is it something synthetic? You know, it creates this really interesting middle ground, and it just makes me so excited as a composer, and these tools are just, EQ is great for doing stuff like that. So there's so many different plugins out there for when you're starting out. You don't need to go for an expensive EQ. In fact, I don't even use an expensive EQ in my work. Everything that I apply is very subtle, and so I can do everything that I need to do with just the built-in EQ plugins on my DAW. EQ is just a fantastic tool at any stage in your compositional career, and I definitely recommend learning about it and getting to know it if you're going to take this path.