Is this EQ trick do-able? How?

Here's what I want to do in my DAW:

I have two audio stereo tracks:

1). a dense string accompaniment

2) a single vocal lead line

Is there any way I can set up an EQ, in which the vocal pitches (their fundamental + overtones)... are automatically realtime attenuated from the string track?

Is there a "smart" EQ that can do this kind of brain salad surgery?

I'm guessing it would be an EQ that either:

a). could "listen" to the vocal track (FFT-style) while manipulating the string track with comb filters, OR

b). an EQ that is triggered by the user depressing MIDI keys in realtime (me playing the viocal pitches)

Thoughts?

The automatic Melda "MAutoEqualizer" works in this direction

You're talking about Ducking an EQ?

You need a device that has automation to get automation.

The only ways I can think of is to use an EQ in conjunction with a side chained Comp or Expander.

EQ's alone have no automation. You need side chaining to get one track to influence another.

A comp and EQ can work like a DeEsser and target the frequencies its fed.

Otherwise manually going through and editing your EQ changes is the only other way I can think of doing it.

Yes, I am talking about a kind of Ducking, but I don't want to lower the entire string track's amplitude; rather, I want to attenuate ONLY the frequencies found in the solo vox track.

As you've gathered, i want to start exploring what happens when discrete DAW tracks are able to affect each other in different ways...

This new one's supposed to do that...

http://www.soundradix.com/products/surfer-eq

Back in the day, we used two hands on a different set of knobs, and could control them independently at the same time, I really miss that with a DAW since I don't use a controller.

Q: Why do you have a Stereo Ld Vocal ??? A Vocal is going to be full of frequencies, lot's of colors on your pallet to paint with. If you really want your vocal to pop, re-amp the Strings, push them back in the mix physically, so the strings come from behind the singer, therefore their not occupying the same space and you will need less EQ / FX's.

Russ

Nashville

A really great string arrangement written for that melody and voice will most likely bypass the need for even considering automating EQ. Composers have been creating great arrangements for supporting vocals for hundreds of years in live settings, often with no amplification at all.

And yes, why do you have a stereo vocal track?

That's the best advise. It's amazing how much less processing and automation I use in mixing when I get the arrangement right.

Yeah, I know good arrangement/recording needs a minimum of EQ. This is sort of an experiment I'm conducting... more for its aural value than anything... It's not a song that will ever see the light if day.

I'm sort of a dorky Texas Joe Meek... heh=heh...

Tina's WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? was recorded with a stereo lead vox!!! (-;

Great arrangement = Mixing.

It's all done for you.

This is why you can throw stereo microphones in front of orchestras and big bands and the recording sounds good.

I'm asking why YOU have a stereo vocal track, my friend!

Definitely and clearly hearable single channel (mono) recording the vocal of Tina

When you arranged it 'right' you already did part of the automation. And when the band plays the dynamics as the score requires, then you can even record the band with one strereo microphone pair, but hardly anyone does that, maybe a Dixieland band I would record with a stereo pair when we have an ideal room to do so.

Multitracking need automation, or you never end recording the perfect tracks for a mix. Pop today is impossible without automation - everything down to the tiniest detail get automated and designed, including any synth parameter, reverberators, EQ and and EFX. Everything else is talking nonsense.

It sounds like what you're describing is an autowah on the orch. bus keyed off the lead vocal.

Which could sound pretty funky. I don't think it would solve any "problems", but it might be a cool trick... You'd prolly have to have some pretty extreme filtering going on to even have it be anything more than just a"that sounds odd" kind of thing, IMO.

how i understood it wants Raspitinello a frequency plugin which follows the changes of the vocal frequency spectrum,

so for example when the vocals get brighter this plugin make any particular track brighter too in real time

Correct. Either that, or the reverse: vox gets brighter, then those selfsame frequencies get attenuated in the other BG track. It's the "realtime" aspect of this experiment that intrigues me most.

Actually, my vocal track is only pseudo stereo: It was recorded in mono, then converted in the DAW to a stereo track. At this point, I'm not even thinking about phase anomalies yet.

Well, then, was it "Private Dancer" ? One of those big hits from that era was recorded with Tina on stereo leadvox.

this song neither has lead vox in stereo,

maybe you hear the stereo effects added to the single channel lead vox

never did anything like that, because when you record brighter and darker happen naturally when you play soft and loud, but when the music is synthetically done with synths, then anything can be considered, also vocals can be threated with whatever is required.

Doubling a mono track makes no sense, because it would produce phasing as soon the two mono tracks are no total panned left and right, respectively produce artefacts as soon they overlap. What you can do is celelemonize the doubled tracks, then it works fine, then you can use one and the same vocal track for a chorus effect.

what you can do too with a doubled mono tracks is move the copy a few microsecond or millisecond until it make a pleasant chorus effect,

usually at least 7 microseconds are required, and so in the region of 7-13 milliseconds it produces a nice chorus effect, more and it sound like two seperate recordings our of sync.

disclaimer: I didn't read all the posts, so I apologize in advance if this has been covered.

A couple ideas:

1)

- Examine the vocal with a spectral display

- sidechain the vocal track through a very steep bandpass filter set to pass only stuff between the upper & lower freqs you determined above, and use it to control a compressor inserted on the strings

2)

- Run the strings through a stereo->mid/side converter followed by a mid/side->stereo converter. Between them insert a left/right level control and lower the mid signal to leave room in the center for the vocal.

- Do a similar operation on the vocal, but this time lower the side signal, narrowing the stereo width of the vocal to your taste.

(this won't remove any of the string signal, just move things around so there is less masking of the vocal by the strings, which I'm guessing is what you're looking for)

Maybe you don't care anymore, but I had another idea.

You select the entire vocal track, invoke a noise reduction plugin (such as in Cool Edit), and get the spectral signature of the vocal that way. Exit it, then select the strings track, reopen the noise reduction (with the orig. Voc track spectral signature) and apply it as noise reduction to the string track. The idea: It will remove every vocal freq from the string track. (You might have to play around with the settings a while to get a listenable result.)

Couldn't you use typical sidechain setup for ducking, but with a Multiband compressor?

This whole thing reminds me of the time that I spent a whole day patching and layering to get the "ultimate" synth sound, only to find out that it really didn't work in a musical context.

Dan