Side Chain Function

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Gargamel

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Problem: Bass guitar and Kick are fighting each other.

I have an RNC compressor and a Behringer Composer Pro (No Flames please)
How do I route the signals?
 
Rather than ducking one or the other of these two very important sounds,it might be better to let each have its own uncontested space to sit in.Ideally you do this at tracking but careful EQ can make them both play nice.
First step is to use a frequency analyzer like in cool edit or a plugin like FFT.Graph out where the energy is and particularly find where these two are clashing.There will be one or more spikes where the same freq gets reinforced.
Rather than scooping out hunks of space with graphic EQ (it works but to my ear is bad technique);use a parametric EQ to carefully trim back only those offending peaks you noted above.This sounds smoother and you won't hear dropouts as with ducking through a sidechain.

Tom
 
Thanks Tom....its funny that you mentioned an analyzer. I have been looking for an RTA for a few days now and finally stumbled upon a demo version that includes the Real Time Analysis function.

Translation: No need to Buy one!!!!
 
This is a real nice way around your problem that you might try. Take your bass (guitar?) signal and split it into a hard L-R pan and keep your kik drum up the middle. Couldn't hurt to try it!
 
Gargamel said:
Thanks Tom....its funny that you mentioned an analyzer. I have been looking for an RTA for a few days now and finally stumbled upon a demo version that includes the Real Time Analysis function.

Translation: No need to Buy one!!!!


where can I get that? I would appreciate the link. thanks !
 
Please post the link. I would like to have a software version to try out.

Thanks...
 
in addition to EQ'ing the bass and kick tracks to give them some separation, another thing i've been doing successfully for the past couple of months is panning the bass and kick apart. I'm not doing anything drastic, just 5-10% to the L or R of center seems to do the trick. of course, I have no idea what this will sound like in mono.

i thought that this was some brand new science that i had invented, until i read an article about bass/kick mixing in recording magazine (nov. 2001) that said the same thing.
 
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