mixing, EQ primer for newbs?

is there a text or online primer you guys would recommend for learning how to mix, EQ?
a friend's band recently recorded some songs, and the rough mixes came back sounding very unexpected to them,
and i would like to indulge a fantasy of becoming some kind of novice engineer to the rescue. thanks!

I've been looking for something like this too, but I can't help really, sorry

i learned through trial and (many) error, comparing to other recordings etc etc. biggest thing to keep in mind is not to EQ things out of habit or reflex

also: high pass and low pass are very powerful

"biggest thing to keep in mind is not to EQ things out of habit or reflex"

This is very true.

Also a good tip is to cut away to make room rather than boost to push through.

if you catch my drift.

Tweak's Guide is an old site that I learned a lot from. It covers a ton of different recording/mixing topics.

newb thanks to you all -- please continue posting tricks + tips

http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Mixing-Techniques-The-Series/dp/1860742831

by the editor of the great Sound on Sound mag, lots of solid info on the basics.

imm, what's your EQ'ing workflow?

right now i'm at the point where i have a whole record done and rough-mixed. i do reverb/effects/compression/panning as i go, so now it's time to go through every track and do final EQing and tweaking. i've already put low passes and high passes on everything as appropriate.

at this point my usual method is to figure out where each track 'lives' frequency-wise and bump that up a couple dB, and maybe dip any frequencies that seem annoying (highs) or muddy (low mids). however, i feel like i should be paying more attention to giving each instrument its own space without competing for frequencies (this is easy for the bass but trickier in the mids & highs)? then again, a lot of that is already taken care of with arrangement + panning.

also i never mess with multi-band compression. i've always been intimidated by it since EQ and compression were always the parts of mixing i felt least comfortable with, but maybe now's the time to tackle it.

i find myself EQing less and less these days as my tracking gets better, but i will usually always pull lows out of guitars and lower mids out of vocals. brighten anything that needs to stand out and rolloff anything that needs to sit back, including delays etc.

then crank the hell out of the 'air' knob 8)

tbh i consider the "notching to give instruments space" thing to be a bit of a wank - if two things are truly fighting for space in the mix due to sharing frequency range it is worth asking if they both need to be there. i know that is a pretty simplistic way of looking at it and is more a general way i look at it rather than any sort of hard and fast rule

i wouldn't even dream of using multiband on anything i had the multitracks of..

thanks, that gives me confidence in what i'm already doing.

also, when making sample-based music, "when to compress" is sometimes an interesting question. like, if i were dealing with a live drum track, i would clearly be applying some degree of compression to everything. but when i have the kick drum on its own track where every hit is exactly the same sample, there's no need to do for dynamics, just to change the sound. i've been compressing snares and higher-pitched percussion, but generally leaving kick drums alone. i also haven't been using much compression on synths, unless it's for sidechaining.