Hello all, first post ever here. Have been searching SOS and forums here and still need some help.

I create relaxation tracks for my patients and one complaint is that the sound of my voice gets lost in the background as the person relaxes. Its not just my voice getting quieter :-)

I can reduce that by reducing the volume of the background when my voice comes in (using a ducker), but I would like to do that only in the frequency range of my vocals.

One way to do this would be if there was a way of having a ducker that only reduced certain frequencies. Or possibly having my vocal track as a side chain input that triggered an EQ?

Is this what a dynamic EQ plugin does?

I use Logic Pro 9.

Thanks much
--Joe

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That which does not kill me better make me smarter.

Hi Joe

The easiest way to do this is to use something like the Waves C6 which is a multiband dynamics plug in with a sidechain input. It's relatively inexpensive.

A more elaborate but cheaper approach would be to set up a mult of your track, polarity flipped, eq'd to emphasise only the frequencies you want to duck, and gated with the sidechain keyed off the vocal. So basically when you speak the gate opens, feeding the frequencies you want to duck into the mix bus but out of phase with the backing track...in other words causing a cancellation of those frequencies. The fader on that channel will control the amount of cancellation.

But it's fussy...I'd just buy the plug in.

J

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www.jackruston.com

Jack,

Thanks very much for the help. I like the idea of the gating the polarity flipped signal off the vocal. That's really clever. I'll do that just for the sake of playing around.

I'll look at the plugins for serious work though.

BTW I also saw the album you produced and mixed for Karl Wilson and was very impressed by the clarity and positioning of the sounds. The first song I listened to was Love Will Find You Here and I took off my headphones because the field was so wide I thought I had routed the output through my monitors.

Thanks again,
--Joe

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That which does not kill me better make me smarter.

Thanks Joe. I really appreciate that.

Jack

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www.jackruston.com

Sorry…

Hello Jack

Got curious about the track mentioned and love it a lot too(I’m quiet ‘bad public’ in general…).
Love the way it sounds.Nice work.

Cheers!

Pedro

ps:Sorry if it’s not topic related...

Thanks very much for that you guys. Often what we all do is a thankless task and it's great when people tell you that they like it!

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www.jackruston.com

How about mixing it right by fader ? Radical I know

If not compress your vocal a few dB to even it out then side chain the music with your voice. The subjectively meaningful frequency range of your voice is around 70Hz - 14kHz thats a fair old span. The physiologically most useful 200Hz-6kHz. Jiggery Pokery messes voices up with ease.

In broadcast (and the music industry too) they spend 100's of thousands a year on people making voice intelligible over music.

I like to move the vocal around a bit so moving it hard right wouldn't work. The compression idea is helpful. While the volume modulation in my voice is relaxing, as someone shifts into a more relaxed state that modulation probably does not need to be as great. So I can add compression to the vocals after the first part. That would probably complement EQ'ng down the background.

I really appreciate the attention and effort that goes into the answers. It helps to receive varying approaches to a problem.

Thanks,
--Joe

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That which does not kill me better make me smarter.

Quote seriouslynot:

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I like to move the vocal around a bit so moving it hard right wouldn't work.

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I'm pretty sure safeandsound didn't mean "pan it to the right", rather, mixing it correctly or simply by use of a volume fader (controlling the music level). DAW automation lets you record/edit/perfect these changes.

IF you're too lazy to do this, the suggestion is to use a compressor.

I agree of being wary of the weird EQ plan (only ducking certain frequencies). It might well make things sound sTRanGe. But might be worth a try, I guess.

Quote Jack Ruston:

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Hi Joe

The easiest way to do this is to use something like the Waves C6 which is a multiband dynamics plug in with a sidechain input. It's relatively inexpensive.

A more elaborate but cheaper approach would be to set up a mult of your track, polarity flipped, eq'd to emphasise only the frequencies you want to duck, and gated with the sidechain keyed off the vocal. So basically when you speak the gate opens, feeding the frequencies you want to duck into the mix bus but out of phase with the backing track...in other words causing a cancellation of those frequencies. The fader on that channel will control the amount of cancellation.

But it's fussy...I'd just buy the plug in.

J

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Thanks for that hint, J! I think I've seen it only one other time, in Mike Senior's book, and have been waiting for a time that it might come in handy. For the New-B in me ... is this in essence an "automatic automation" of EQ on the conflicting track?

Also - when you say **fussy** ... do you mean that even in your hands it takes a fair amount of time to set up the gate, or do you mean that even after you think you have it set up properly you get surprising results?

I'm surprised it's not used all the time, tbh ... anytime there are conflicting EQs when mixing. In general do folks just go ahead and EQ the whole track, rather than the "conflicting" bits?

Thanks again!

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Alexis -Cubase 6.5.0/SX3.1.1.944, XP SP2, 4GB RAM (1GB not accessible, but used just to balance the computer so it doesn't tip over); Delta 66 in Omni i/O Studio; Motif8; UAD-1

Quote alexis:

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Thanks for that hint, J! I think I've seen it only one other time, in Mike Senior's book, and have been waiting for a time that it might come in handy. For the New-B in me ... is this in essence an "automatic automation" of EQ on the conflicting track?

Also - when you say **fussy** ... do you mean that even in your hands it takes a fair amount of time to set up the gate, or do you mean that even after you think you have it set up properly you get surprising results?

I'm surprised it's not used all the time, tbh ... anytime there are conflicting EQs when mixing. In general do folks just go ahead and EQ the whole track, rather than the "conflicting" bits?

Thanks again!

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Yeah it's fair to say that it's like some sort of automatically automating eq.

When I say that it's fussy, if you compare that to just setting up a band of C6 with a sidechain, it's quite convoluted and time consuming.

Re it being used a lot...Well, a level change, perhaps combined with some static eq is quite possibly going to be more invisible than a big spectral change. It's horses for courses. But I suspect that compressing the voice and ducking the track will work best. But Joe asked for a way to do this, and he'll be able to make his choice depending on what he finds.

J

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www.jackruston.com

Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding about the volume vs panning.

Its not a question of laziness, as I am comfortable spending time with controls when I am mixing something post-recording. The problem is that I if I am making a relaxation track for my patient in an office visit then I don't have time to do post-recording editing. However if I use a plugin then I think I can set it up so that it will improve the bounce that I give to the patient at the end of the session.

Thanks
--Joe

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That which does not kill me better make me smarter.