"Tying" levels of two instruments to one another

  • Thread starter Thread starter elbandito
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elbandito

elbandito

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So I'm trying to keep the levels of two horns together. One is a tenor sax that was recorded with a clip-on condenser and the other is a trumpet thru an RE20. This means that there are times when the trumpeteer is blowing off axis and his levels change, while the sax is always blowing hard into the mic. This was a live capture of an out-of-town band, so there's no way to get this re-recorded... I've got to work with what I've got.

Other than automation, what techniques do you all know of that would help me keep these two parts at a similar level? I have been messing around a bit with sidechaining but I can't quite find the appropriate amount to duck the sax, since the trumpet can be loud or soft, even within the same bar of music.

Ideas?
 
If I was dealing with that...I would simply adjust levels per section as needed (aka automation) of the trumpet, as I think that would be the most controllable way get exactly what you want....rather than compressing, etc.

For say....a 5 minute song, that wouldn't take more than 30 minutes to do for a single track....done. :)
 
Um, compression might help. Lots of it. Like killing 9dB or so.

Don't be afraid and choose your weapon wisely, my son.

Cheers :)
 
elbandito said:
:facepalm: I've got two 45 minute sets to do. Fun times!
Click to expand...

Yeah...but you probably don't have to edit every minute of that 45....do you?
The trumpet is not playing continuously...is it?


For stuff like that, I'll put the track in play and then as it's playing, I'll be cutting/splitting the audio where the trouble sections are. Precision is not an issue, as I can easily "size" the cuts to what I want.
Then I just go back to those sections and make adjustments.
Often, you can group/adjust all of them on the first pass to where they are close in level...then go through and adjust the real extreme stuff to fine tune.

Yeah...compression is another way, but not as precise as manual level adjustment...and you have the same problem of not being able to set the comp for more than one target level...so you still need to go through the track if you want more exact matching.

Your call...pick what works better for you. :)
 
miroslav said:
Yeah...but you probably don't have to edit every minute of that 45....do you?
The trumpet is not playing continuously...is it?
Click to expand...

It's a funk/soul band, so basically when the trumpet's not playing, neither is the sax - except for solos, of course. But pretty much the entire performance has the horns on it. The upside being that the lines aren't super long for the most part, so hopefully that'll make my work a little easier.

but like I said... fun times. :P
 
Do you use waves?
The demo of vocal rider might sort you out. It automates automatically........you know what I mean.

It'd do the same thing as slamming it with a compressor, except more naturally.
 
I've been doing the manual level slice-n-dice thing for so long...that I don't find it such a burden, though it is a time consuming task.
I do it to most of my tracks after I dump them into the DAW....go through, slice-n-dice the tracks into pieces where needed, and then go through and level-adjust those pieces.
That is always my SOP rather than slapping on a comp just to fix level issues.

I'll use comps during mixing for tightening things up and adding some flavor...but not for pure level management.

Brew a pot of coffee...and then go into a trance and start editing. :D
 
Steenamaroo said:
Do you use waves?
The demo of vocal rider might sort you out. It automates automatically........you know what I mean.

It'd do the same thing as slamming it with a compressor, except more naturally.
Click to expand...

I've been wanting to buy that vocal rider plug for a long time now... don't know why I haven't bit the bullet yet. It would have potentially saved me hours upon hours of tedious automation work over the last couple of years.

miroslav said:
I've been doing the manual level slice-n-dice thing for so long...that I don't find it such a burden, though it is a time consuming task.
I do it to most of my tracks after I dump them into the DAW....go through, slice-n-dice the tracks into pieces where needed, and then go through and level-adjust those pieces.
That is always my SOP rather than slapping on a comp just to fix level issues.

I'll use comps during mixing for tightening things up and adding some flavor...but not for pure level management.

Brew a pot of coffee...and then go into a trance and start editing. :D
Click to expand...

Yeah, I hear you about not using the comp for straight level management. Things can get sloppy that way. I'll take your advice on the coffee thing and get this sucker taken care of first thing in the morning... at this point in the day, I've spent enough time on this material already.
 
elbandito said:
I've been wanting to buy that vocal rider plug for a long time now... don't know why I haven't bit the bullet yet. It would have potentially saved me hours upon hours of tedious automation work over the last couple of years.
Click to expand...

I think I'll buy it. The demo saved me from a lot of hassle a while back.
 
Hey Steen, what DAW are you using? I grabbed the demo of Vocal Rider (it's on sale, btw!) and it did the trick but now that my trial period has expired, I've found myself playing with ideas on how to achieve the same results without the plug.

I use REAPER and it turns out that it's pretty easy to similar results with parameter modulation, using a gain/trim plugin. I haven't yet been able to get this set up to work as smoothly as it did with vocal rider (I can't figure out how to make it both increase and decrease the levels as needed - only one way or the other, so far) but in a pinch, it does the trick.

Just thought I'd share this with you, in case you're interested. :)
 
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