I recently purchased SpectraLayers 11 Pro and have found the experience to be a little overwhelming.
Right now I’m working on unmixing a demo someone sent me so I can get each isolated track into a session and help him with arrangements (he’ll eventually send me the individual tracks but he’s out of pocket for a bit).
One of the challenges I’m facing is transferring sections between layers. For example several layers have hi hat and snare in there that I want to move over, but they have some frequency overlap with keys and guitar parts.
I’ve tried using the Select Similar tool but it seems pretty difficult to effectively isolate just the snare hits, for example.
I don’t mind a little bleed between the layers but bass especially is a challenge as I’d want that as clean as possible. Similarly there’s a lot of bleed between the guitars, piano, and other (which is all the synth parts).
Any tips on how to get better isolation on just the snare hits and then using the Select similar function to find matching parts across the track? What tool is best for selecting a section? What changes to the select similar algorithm would better identify other snare hits across the track? I’ve tried removing Tonal and keeping Transient, Noise etc. using around 60%, but it either selects only a couple hits or tons of sections that include key bleed in the bass.
If there are any good getting started tutorials on best practices and what each tool is best used for, that would also be helpful as I found the user manual for 11 seems to operate under the assumption that the user has some general knowledge of how each tool works.
Thanks, and apologies if there have been similar posts, I just couldn’t find any that seemed to address this - may not be searching with the best keywords.
you’ll need to give yourself time to get adjusted to reading the spectrograph…it has taken me a while…I started in June using SL every day…and learn a great deal about SL every day.
Did you watch @Unmixingrecent video? Have a look at that…altho it might be a bit over your head at the moment
as far as unmixing music, take the time to watch some @Phil_Pendlebury videos…
I will say, I haven’t spent much time unmixing music…I’ve run some modules…unmix song…levels…components. I have found the same as you…the OTHER layer has a lot of important unmixed elements/ instruments in it
if you are trying to completely isolate each instrument, it’s going to be a long voyage…like @Phil_Pendlebury says and I have repeated here A LOT, “SL is more a re-balancing tool” at this time
My advice for Transfer tool is use layer copies and keep safety layers if you are destructively editing…going backwards (undo) can get tricky if you aren’t careful. You need to be very aware of your transfer to target layer and the percentage you are transferring.
Personally, I find the selection brush, transfer and clone tools the most useful to my work. You need to understand the “selection modes” replace/ add/ subtract/ intersect.
Also understanding when SL is getting choked…FFT size for example…or the clone preview. When I’m working and have finished using a tool with preview, I switch to rectangular selection because I notice no lag with the rectangular/ elliptical selection tool when just navigating the software.
Personally, I don’t know how much time I would spend on instrument isolation from music at this time…I have so much NR and levelling to do for the rest of the year. I’m hoping the music unmix AI models improve before I get too into unmixing music…as I have a lot of that to do in future, too.
This is all super helpful. I’m gonna dig into some of these videos. And yeah - I’m not expecting perfectly isolated tracks, just clean enough where I can cut and splice stuff around in my DAW to help arrange things. Thank you!