Members rasputin1963 Posted September 12, 2015 Members Share Posted September 12, 2015 I'm having lots of little AHA! moments tonight, as I apply a Multiband Compressor to a bass guitar track, triggered sidechain by a drumkit groove. It's taken me a while to understand how this compressor/expander works, but I think I'm finally getting the gist of it. And it's no exaggeration to say that, when you get your parameters all set up correctly, the "compander" is really an "instrument" of its own, as it makes your bassline sort of "sing and dance" along with whatever track is triggering it sidechain. My initial bassline was okay enough, but this compander turns it into a a sort of fakir's cobra that dances and sways to the drumbeat. I appreciate that one always has to think about the genre of the music being tweaked, because a multiband compander can quickly make your music very "Kraftwerk weird", if that is your intention, LOL. This compander allows certain frequency bands of your drums..... to trigger corresponding bands of your bassline in interesting ways, using some "sweet spots" in your drum's frequencies to make the bass "dance". You can make your kick and snare drums either reduce the gain in your bass's frequencies (a little bit, or completely knock them out altogether)... or punch those sweet spots up even louder, which is cool, too. I suppose one could conceivably link any two tracks (of any type of instrument, ie., organ, synth, piano, guitar, bongos, etc.) to get some very compelling effects, but so far I've only linked drums and bass in a sidechain setup. Any fans of Multiband Companders here? Any cool tricks you've been able to set up? ras Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Beck Posted September 12, 2015 Members Share Posted September 12, 2015 Yes!!! Nice ain't it? And that can really make a piece stand out that is otherwise ok, but not quite ready for prime time. When the kick and bass are perceived more or less as one instrument... tight, professional... sometimes the only thing that separates a garage band sound from a professionally produced groove... that beautiful sidechain and all the possibilities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted September 13, 2015 Author Members Share Posted September 13, 2015 It seems to me that this Multiband Compander is the quickest way to make your tracks sound less karaoke-like, and more like a groovy, authentic-sounding groove... Makes it sounds like all the tracks are "colluding and cooperating" with each other to put out a rhythmic groove you can feel. Thanks, Craig-- I'll read your article right away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted September 13, 2015 Author Members Share Posted September 13, 2015 Yep, it's cool when you can make a band region quickly "pop" (expand) while other regions of the same audio track are "ducking", and doing so with "musical meaning" with the freqs of a sidechain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted September 13, 2015 Author Members Share Posted September 13, 2015 Wonder how long it'll be before we have a Compander which allows you to predefine as many freq bands as you'd like! Instead of just the four. You could really get some wild and sophisticated interrelationships between your tracks, I'd think. Looks like the MELDA line of pluggies has given you limitless User multibands on nearly every one of their EQ's/FX.... and further adding LFO/Envelope/CC modulation to each of those bands. The head swims! What would Ravel, Mussorgsky and Holst done with all this s**t? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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