Notch ducking
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 4:10 pm
I conducted an experiment.
I was inspired by two things: THE MONEYSHOT THREAD and this page of Thinking inside the Box: a complete EQ tutorial. The caption under a picture points out that the box of EQ describes only one point in time, although it may be more correct to say it exists in one short, but sufficiently long duration of time, since a sample is simply a measurement of an amplitude. Macc in The Moneyshot Thread wrote that if you EQ well, you won't need "fancy" sidechain compression, and that you should notch space in your bass for the kick drum because masking in that range is a common problem.
Macc's method is only a solution for the period of time in which the kick drum plays. If he were only handed a short clip of the final mixdown, and in this clip the kick drum does not play, I suspect he would consider the frequency response to need correction.
One solution is to have the kick trigger an EQ band cut on the bass at the fundemental of the kick drum. This can be set up in FL Studio, but I am not aware of a way to do this in Reaper, so I found an another method.
I set up a synth to generate sound in the complete audible spectrum. I played a continuous C0, with saw waves playing the fundemental and first and second harmonics (in GSinth2). I laid a kick drum sample on the one, and a snare on the three. I bandpassed the drums for the purpose of this experiment.
I notched two bands out of the synth. The first was at the fundemental of the kick drum, and the second was a wider band at the fundemental and lower frequencies of the snare. I had duplicated the synth twice, and bandpassed these one each at of those frequencies. I set up sidechain compression from the kick to the first copy bandpassed at the lower frequency, and the snare to the second copy.
The overall sound was "fuller," and it preserved the character of the drums, which could be EQed less, and also be set absolutely quieter in the mix. I found this to be more interesting sounding then a constant EQ setting on the synth. While it takes longer to set up, there is in total less EQing actually happening.
I also tried splitting a synth into five bands, and sidechaining some of them in different amounts from the drums, but this influenced the character of the synth, actually making it talk. It also happened to take longer to set up.
Bottom line is: Notch out space for the drums, but have bandpassed replacement copies duck the appropriate drum hit.
I was inspired by two things: THE MONEYSHOT THREAD and this page of Thinking inside the Box: a complete EQ tutorial. The caption under a picture points out that the box of EQ describes only one point in time, although it may be more correct to say it exists in one short, but sufficiently long duration of time, since a sample is simply a measurement of an amplitude. Macc in The Moneyshot Thread wrote that if you EQ well, you won't need "fancy" sidechain compression, and that you should notch space in your bass for the kick drum because masking in that range is a common problem.
Macc's method is only a solution for the period of time in which the kick drum plays. If he were only handed a short clip of the final mixdown, and in this clip the kick drum does not play, I suspect he would consider the frequency response to need correction.
One solution is to have the kick trigger an EQ band cut on the bass at the fundemental of the kick drum. This can be set up in FL Studio, but I am not aware of a way to do this in Reaper, so I found an another method.
I set up a synth to generate sound in the complete audible spectrum. I played a continuous C0, with saw waves playing the fundemental and first and second harmonics (in GSinth2). I laid a kick drum sample on the one, and a snare on the three. I bandpassed the drums for the purpose of this experiment.
I notched two bands out of the synth. The first was at the fundemental of the kick drum, and the second was a wider band at the fundemental and lower frequencies of the snare. I had duplicated the synth twice, and bandpassed these one each at of those frequencies. I set up sidechain compression from the kick to the first copy bandpassed at the lower frequency, and the snare to the second copy.
The overall sound was "fuller," and it preserved the character of the drums, which could be EQed less, and also be set absolutely quieter in the mix. I found this to be more interesting sounding then a constant EQ setting on the synth. While it takes longer to set up, there is in total less EQing actually happening.
I also tried splitting a synth into five bands, and sidechaining some of them in different amounts from the drums, but this influenced the character of the synth, actually making it talk. It also happened to take longer to set up.
Bottom line is: Notch out space for the drums, but have bandpassed replacement copies duck the appropriate drum hit.
