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Hey Guys,

I was thinking to myself what this would produce when combining a band pass + band reject of two interesting synth sounds.... Even some sample triggering or what have you. This is probably a very basic technique, but I was just wondering if anyone knew anything out there to do a side-chain like effect using eq.

Maybe just creating the band-reject then shifting the freq's over a bit would create this effect?

I'm not sure if a vocoder would do what I'm talking about, but I've never had any 'clean' results come out of vocoders... (Maybe I need to watch a few tutorials on vocoding)

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks!

Bump for the interesting question, perhaps it would be best if you found out yourself by experimenting with it? I'd also love to know how to get some cleaner sounds out of a vocoder :/

Earjax wrote:Bump for the interesting question, perhaps it would be best if you found out yourself by experimenting with it? I'd also love to know how to get some cleaner sounds out of a vocoder :/

Thanks!

Experimented with a few bounced out bass clips I recorded from Massive last night... (had about 10 clips I've been constructing patches of in the past month or two, really aids in perspective to see them all in waveform format)

Added each one to a simpler (Live), then started testing on each one.

Starting with the first bass sound I added a LP24 filter on it with some res, and set it fairly low. (just a bass sound so far)
Duplicating the whole simpler track, I repeated the process by using a LP24 filter set a bit higher to give a different sound, selected both of the tracks (ctrl clicking record & solo buttons to test both at once)
The sound definitely improved...
I then Duplicated it about two more times, this time adding a Bandpass filter and a Highpass filter on the new tracks. Again playing them all at once, and it sounded pretty great...

What I noticed is that the production quality definitely improved, but the fatness / loudness just wasn't sustainable. I think it would probably need some tweaking manually with compressors, fatteners & saturation....

Something I also did as an extra on those tests was to pass all of one bass sound to a bus that had a nice phaser on it to bring everything together.

Anyways, hopefully that's a good enough explaination.... not exxaactly what I explained in the first post, but was definitely a fun experimentation.

Update:

So after touring around YouTube to look through what else could help out this discovery process I found another video from Mr. Bill which explained a process that could help this theory out.

The bass effect in the video is also really nice.




If you haven't watched the video, he basically phases out the instrument and then brings it back by adjusting bands on the eq one by one. So with the original idea in mind, what we could do is take two sounds, duplicate one of them for the phasing. Phase it out, and then dial it back in wherever it sounds interesting using the eq. Then copy that same eq to the other sound, which will eliminate those freq's from it. Maybe add some saturation / overdrive or any other fattening effects to really bring it out a bit again (possibly before the eq's to maintain their position in the mix)

Lets see what this will do if we rinse and repeat a few times!

What I believe this will do is get all these instruments in their own unique frequency space allowing the mix to sound loud and not as muddy as it would be if you just layered them directly.

Another thing I want to try is modulating those eq bands across the spectrum to create a custom flanger-type effect with this effect combined. (Lots of testing to do )

that was a really neat vid, thanks for that Mr. Bill has also (imho) done the best recreation of some skrillex basses. The guy has amazing talent, and the way he moves through ableton is super fast.

subfect wrote:that was a really neat vid, thanks for that Mr. Bill has also (imho) done the best recreation of some skrillex basses. The guy has amazing talent, and the way he moves through ableton is super fast.

Yeah, there are some amazing tips in there, especially for people who are into FM synthesis and more complicated production techniques inside Ableton

will have to check this out when im back in the house

Still haven't tested any of the new stuff out yet, but starting to create some formulas for some interesting results.

If anyone tries out any of these methods, definitely post what your results were / how it went

Can you only do this in ableton 8????
im trying in 7 and its just creating a chain instead of a group

MilkyPirate wrote:Can you only do this in ableton 8????
im trying in 7 and its just creating a chain instead of a group

Definitely!!!

I don't think any of this really requires making a group or a chain, but what you could do is automate 4 eq's or so using a few chains and map the chain selector to a macro slot
Also, Chain / Group should be the same thing, it's just creating an effect rack grouped under one chain.

Dont know if this is what you mean, but I've had good results in bussing sounds that need to dominate in the mix and also bussing the less dominant body of the track (leads, pads, atmosphere). I would then bandpass the less dominant in an area not taken by the dominant and sidechain it so that when dominant sounds are playing, the other stuff gets out of the way. And it has worked well for me so far.

jrisreal wrote:Dont know if this is what you mean, but I've had good results in bussing sounds that need to dominate in the mix and also bussing the less dominant body of the track (leads, pads, atmosphere). I would then bandpass the less dominant in an area not taken by the dominant and sidechain it so that when dominant sounds are playing, the other stuff gets out of the way. And it has worked well for me so far.

Kind of... I'm going for more of an effect thing though, mixing multiple bass sounds together to create an interesting blend. If I can develop this technique fast enough, and if it produces a like-able result, I may start using it all the time

It's always nice to hear others' production techniques though, that's definitely something I'm going to try out sometime. It sounds like a much better way of incorporating the sounds rather than just ducking the less dominant parts. I think a mix with a filled frequency range is a lot more desirable if done right.

jrisreal wrote:Dont know if this is what you mean, but I've had good results in bussing sounds that need to dominate in the mix and also bussing the less dominant body of the track (leads, pads, atmosphere). I would then bandpass the less dominant in an area not taken by the dominant and sidechain it so that when dominant sounds are playing, the other stuff gets out of the way. And it has worked well for me so far.

jesus christ you've gotten good fast. That tune is sick

Wow, just found the exact solution I was looking for. I was just searching for articles on sound production tonight and stumbled across Mr. Bills Tunes again.... He has this article >>> http://mrbillstunes.com/tuition/article ... to-filter/

I can't believe I've never spotted the 'sidechain' feature inside of Auto-Filter. Very cool that we can do this in Live! I'm going to start testing this out with multiple bands & such, see what cool effects I can get out of combining various sounds

haha i remember getting frowned upon on here when talking about sidechain EQing for mixing down, but yeah its a good technique depending how u use it. for the pumping effect it can sound nice depending where you set the EQ points. also experiment with sidechaining other FX like distortion, tight delays, anything really.
not sure how to do that in ableton but its pretty easy in FL, takes about 4 or 5 clicks to set up a sidechain on any parameter, even with VSTs.