General EQ question

[Drastic Measurez]

Hello I've finally decided to join this forum after a long time viewing and I have an EQing question for you. I'm a beginner producer and have been studying production for about 1.5 years or so. Something that has never been 100% clear to me:

When EQing a synth sound or any sound for that matter...Should you monitor the whole melody/arrangement that is playing equally while EQing?

For example do you constantly play the entire part of the melody for a lead while you are adjusting the EQ? Because the notes and therefore the frequencies are bouncing around you can't just sit on one part of the riff while cutting/boosting, right? Is it a matter of making certain sacrifices to one part of sound in the melody so the dominant section sounds perfect or is it more important getting the whole thing equal? Basically I am finding EQing difficult when focusing on a wide moving riff. How is the best way to go about getting a balanced/even sound when different notes are playing? At the moment I try to balance it as best as I can but I give priority to the root and most frequent section of the melody and then for example make a sacrifice to a high bar or whatever if cutting/boosting that part is going to have too much negative effect on that root part mentioned.

Is there a guideline you guys follow for EQing a varying sound such as this? Another problem I've encountered when EQing such an arrangement is having to make many adjustments because there are many parts of the melody. Therefore I find myself doing what I think to be far too much cutting or boosting to try and get the section even. I find it a little difficult on knowing when to stop and when the sound is correctly balanced. Is there something maybe I could be doing first, like compression which could help?

Hopefully you guys can understand where I'm coming from, it was a little hard to word this question I will greatly appreciate any knowledge you can share. Happy to finally be active on this forum!

[ChristianHardstyle]

Welcome

I usually eq while playing the melody. You can hear how the whole loop will sound. When a sound it's layered with another sound, i eq it while all the sounds are playing, to hear the final results!
In the forum you will find a lot of tutorials about eqing

[Colorblind]

Well personally before i go into depth EQing i put high pass filters on my leads and other instruments that arent kick related, but dont over do it to where the sound begins to become thin

[Alphajuno]

Eq is mostly used to balance different sounds together, or shaping 1 particular sound. If you have a whole melody going and you do a deep cut, and than you play the note which is in that cut, it's going to sound too quiet.

There's no magic solution. If that note is important, don't cut it to deep... But it sounds to me like you're overdoing it on the EQ. If you need so much of it to make it sound good, maybe you need to go back a step and adjust your synth to get a sound that better fits the rest.

[DrKamikazi]

ok so on what op said, you guys are EQing the synths based on the melody for the song from the get go? I always try to make a synth and EQ it to get it to sound how I like and then try to fit it in the song/melody via mixing. Im relatively new to producing as well and have always understood it as its best to EQ during your sound design, is this the wrong way to do this?