Hi,
I am trying to clean a little bit my mix, and I would like to prioritize my voice track over the instrumental tracks, mostly in the 1-2 kHz range.
Frequency2 seems perfect for that job, so I draw a “dynamic EQ curve” that I sidechain to my voice track, so the bell curve goes down when the voice reaches a certain threshold.
This is fine, except that my voice track is actually part of the mix, since the instance of Frequency 2 is in the Stereo bus inserts, and as a consequence is also attenuated in the process.
I would like to separate my instrumental tracks from my voice track, to be able to keep my voice track unchanged, and then route everyone in the Stereo bus.
I am quite new with the FX and group tracks, so at this stage I am not too sure about what to do.
I was thinking of creating a group for the instrumental tracks, routing this group and my voice track to the Stereo bus, moving away all the inserts from the Stereo bus to the instru group, and doing the sidechaining with the voice in the instru group.
So when the voice track arrives together with the instru group in the Stereo bus, it has not been affected - by itself!
First, do you think that there could be an easier solution?
If not, I have a problem when copying the insert plugins from the Stereo bus to the instru group : the automation tracks are not copied.
If you have any idea…
I hope it was not too confusing!
Thanks
Hi! I think that sounds like a valid approach; it’s a common practice ‘classify’ your mix tracks into groups. For example routing the instrument tracks of the mix to one group, and then the lead/solo elements to another group. Then sidechain a gentle dynamic EQ on the instrumental bus to lead bus, to carve space for vocals etc.
Another popular approach is to adapt the ‘film industry standard’ style grouping of 4 ‘main’ groups: dialogue (dry vocals/solo parts), music (dry instrumental), ambience (rooms/reverbs) and miscellanious/fx (explosions/booms/whatever etc). For example, to get your reverbs separated into the ambience bus, you would have to use fx channels and sends, and then put reverbs as fx channel inserts, and then route these fx channels to the main ambience bus.
It’s also quite common to create subgroups for instrument groups etc, such as drums, backing vocals etc; drum tracks > drum group > instrument group > master. The main goal usually being to have easier/faster ‘high level’ control over many individual tracks. Such as carving out space for vocals in all the instrument tracks.
AFAIK, you probably have to copy/paste the automation separately by ‘hand’, if you’re moving the processing from master to group.
Hi, thanks for your explanation!
I will very likely use it for the next time. But I started to reorganize my project with groups and busses, and actually I am not very confident re-routing the sends and checking that everything sounds exactly the same. Doing it at the beginning of a project is probably wiser.
So for now, I think it is easier to use Frequency2 on my voice track to compensate the ducking effect, by amplifying it the same amount that it is attenuated when mixed with the instruments. Probably not very professional, but it will do the job : )
Thanks!