The term "Rolling Off" in mixing....

[Scratch n Beat]

Yeah so I'm trying to step up my mixing game. The only thing I know is to keep Kicks and Basslines around 50 khz...other than that I'm lost and kind of just play around with stuff until it sounds decent. I read the stickys under the mixing and mastering section and it talks about instruments should "roll off" at this and that frequency...what exactly does that mean??? If someone could explain that to me, and how exactly would one go about "rolling off" at a frequency in FL's mixer, it would be greatly appreciated. And oh yeah, what frequencies would u recommend me laying the samples at the center of whatever track I'm working on? I'm basically trying to make drums and samples sound exactly the way they do in my head.

Thanks in advance.

 

[nwo504]

rolling off mean getting rid of frequencys that you wouldnt hear anyways.for example most people roll off kicks and bass about 20hz or 40hz to clean it up a bit.

 

[GjB]

Roll off kHz = Cut kHz

 

[Gutty502]

ok, you should use the 7 band eq, you'll find your frequencies there, just apply it to each channel you want to mix, derranged has a real nice mix tutorial on here explaining which instruments need what

 

[MrHope]

50 Hz you mean, not 50 kHz. 50 kHz is way beyond human hearing and into bat hearing frequencies.

Rolling off means a little bit more than cutting frequencies. It means gradually cutting more and more as you go from a certain frequency out to the edge of what is audible. It's about EQing.

If you roll off the highs, it means gradually getting more and more quiet as you go up in frequency. If you roll off the lows, it means gradually getting more and more quiet as you go down in frequency.

The call it "rolling off", because on a graph of frequency vs amplitude of what you're doing to the signal will look like a slope or a hill.

The reason why people use a roll off instead of a steep cut is that roll offs tend to sound more natural in many cases for some reason; it's more subtle.

 

[Scratch n Beat]

50 Hz you mean, not 50 kHz. 50 kHz is way beyond human hearing and into bat hearing frequencies.

Rolling off means a little bit more than cutting frequencies. It means gradually cutting more and more as you go from a certain frequency out to the edge of what is audible. It's about EQing.

If you roll off the highs, it means gradually getting more and more quiet as you go up in frequency. If you roll off the lows, it means gradually getting more and more quiet as you go down in frequency.

The call it "rolling off", because on a graph of frequency vs amplitude of what you're doing to the signal will look like a slope or a hill.

The reason why people use a roll off instead of a steep cut is that roll offs tend to sound more natural in many cases for some reason; it's more subtle.

NICE chart

Starting to understand....in FL for each mixer track there's knobs for high mid and low that I can set at whatever frequency...do i set them all to the same frequency, or only one of them??

 

[nwo504]

NICE chart

Starting to understand....in FL for each mixer track there's knobs for high mid and low that I can set at whatever frequency...do i set them all to the same frequency, or only one of them??

no you set them according to whatever you place in the mixer track. those knobs are part of the eq.

if track one has a kick you might roll off some high freqs so you can let track 2(hi hat) breathe and roll off lows on track 2. i dont know if anyone else does it that way but it makes sense to me.

 

[R2B]

Rolling off is the technique Mr Hope described but only at the top or the bottom of the spectrum. Any EQ change in between is usually called cut or boost.
For rolling off lows like in the graphic you would typically apply a high-pass filter, and for rolling off highs a low-pass filter. Those filter types attenuate all frequencies below (or above) the frequency that you set on the parametric EQ in a more or less smooth curve. How smooth or steep the curve will be depends on the Q value. The higher the Q is the steeper the curve and the less adjacent frequencies will be cut.
Different filter characteristics cut/boost frequencies in different ways.

I reckon a good start to get familiar with EQ is to fire up a parametric EQ that has a graphic display of the frequency curve. I don't remember if FL has one like that. You can play around with the different EQ characteristics and parametres, cut and boost frequencies and see how the curve changes.

As you said you want it to sound like it sounds in your head. That's always the best approach in music in general IMO. For that though you have to train and use your ears. It's impossible to tell you exactly which frequencies to change to get the sound you're after.