Cubase EQ Automation - Mixing Piano and Electric Guitar

[SparkyNZ]

Hi. I'm pretty new to using EQ. I have a track with competing electric guitar power chords and piano arpeggio. I've found an EQ setting for my piano which boosts it through the guitar which works OK for me for those particular parts of the song. The only problem is that I don't want to use this amount of EQ in parts of the song which don't have the guitar.

I'm using Cubase 8 Pro.

One thing I could do is move the "piano without guitar" parts onto a separate track which doesn't have EQ but I would like to vary the EQ.

Rather than just "EQ on" or "EQ off" is there a setting which I can vary on the channel/track to vary the amount of EQ as a whole (like a dry/wet EQ control that I can vary with time) ?

Is there such a control or do I have to using routing/sends etc? I am not really familiar with sends/buses either but I would like some guidance so I don't do this the hard way.

Hope this makes sense!

 

[SparkyNZ]

I think I have figured this out:

1) By default my piano channel goes to "Stereo Out"
2) I created a new Group Channel Track called "Piano EQ" and added the EQ to boost the piano during the power chords
3) For each piano track, I added a "Send" to "Piano EQ"
4) At the start of my song "Piano EQ" volume is set to zero and I hear the piano tracks without the EQ
5) I then use Automation to record changes in the "Piano EQ" level - this means I can graduly boost the EQ of the piano "on top of" the original piano track

This seems to work for me but if there is a better "standard" way of doing this, please let me know.

 

[rob aylestone]

To be honest I'd probably do it almost the same way - However, I'd duplicate the track and set the alternate eq on that one, then with the automation on I'd simply cross fade between the normal and alternate tracks. For me - that would be simpler.

 

[Farview]

What I would do is leave the piano alone and EQ the guitar so it doesn't fight with the piano.

Most of the time, I get the main instruments sounding the way I want them to, then EQ all the stuff that comes and goes around the main instruments. That way, the foundation of the song stays consistent.

 

[SparkyNZ]

What I would do is leave the piano alone and EQ the guitar so it doesn't fight with the piano.

Most of the time, I get the main instruments sounding the way I want them to, then EQ all the stuff that comes and goes around the main instruments. That way, the foundation of the song stays consistent.

Thanks Jay - I'm going to give this a go and see what gives. I'm just worried that scooping out some of the guitar EQ may change the sound of the guitar when the piano isn't there. Would it be useful to side-chain the piano so that it only scoops out the guitar EQ when piano notes are played? Statically changing the EQ of the guitar channel I reckon I'll ruin the sound - but this may just be my lack of experience.

The piano is actually a Nexus VST patch. It will have a wide stereo field and plenty of delay/reverb. I may also try and "mono-fy" the piano track to see if I can bring it into the middle of the mix.

UPDATE: I've just tried all 3 things combined:
1) I've scooped the guitar EQ to allow for the piano (and the guitar actually sounds fine even without the piano)
2) I've still used the piano EQ boost - although a small boost in comparison
3) I merged the piano track into mono using "Stereo Flip"

Sounds much better.

 

[Farview]

When I read your post, I assumed that the piano is always there and the guitar comes in and out.

In this case, I would just separate the parts of the song onto separate tracks and EQ as needed per part.

or

Maybe pan the piano part a bit to one side and tilt the guitars a bit to the other side. (either when they play at the same time, or through the whole song)

There are 100 ways to make it work, it's just a matter of picking your compromises.

 

[SparkyNZ]

When I read your post, I assumed that the piano is always there and the guitar comes in and out.
There are 100 ways to make it work, it's just a matter of picking your compromises.

My track is pretty much a metal track - or at least this section is. There's a band called Pyramaze which does a lot of what I'm trying to achieve (check out "Pyramaze Heir Apparent" on Youtube and you'll get the idea pretty quickly). My music does have a lot more piano doing melody in it but I reckon this Pyramaze track is the best example of what I'm aiming for in a mix.

 

[JimmyS1969]

You gotta post a sample man. There is no possible way to give advice without hearing what you hear...

 

[jkuehlin]

You gotta post a sample man. There is no possible way to give advice without hearing what you hear...

He's trying to create an automation lane for his EQ, but he's really going about this the wrong way. He created a parallel EQ path when he should have activated an automation lane for a specific group of EQ parameters.

YouTube