Multiband Ducking?

I'm curious about this. Is there anything that would allow you to do this with ease?

Has anyone ever experimented with it?

My thinking was mostly geared towards ducking the 2khz area in a guitar tone when the vocals came in. A moment on google has left me wondering if anyone has bothered to program such a thing...

I suppose you could do it manually, though - using multiband soloing/splitting and ducking one area as you please.

What're everyone else's thoughts?

Yeah!

I just learned this.

Create a copy of your guitar tracks, flip the phase on the copied tracks.

Put a gate on them.

Key the gate with the vocals.

put an equalizer on the, doubled and out of phase guitars that cuts everything but the frequencies that you want to bring down.

Then, when the vocals come in, the gate opens, and the out of phase guitar track that only consists of the 2khz range will be heard (or not heard) and ... Tadaaaa!

You'll have to feel out the rest of the gate settings so it happens smoothly.

I don't think it's called multiband ducking. Maybe phase reversal something ...

It deffo exists... but what you're describing is something that's different with them same results.

I guess the advantage of multiband would likely be more selective ducking over using a standard EQ and Comp. The results are likely going to be the same though.

I done some experimentation with both hardware and software ducking using vocals and guitar. Musical Composition is going to dictate if its useful or not.

In my case I found it a bigger pain in the ass than just using envelopes.

I'd get it sounding good on chords and had it still sound natureal, but if the guitar track has leads like many of mine do, it turned to garbage. Maybe on a track that the lead backs up the vocals in Jazz or blues echoing the vocals it might work better. Ducking can sound good on slower moving part that produce a strong signal like kick and bass where the ducking is actually benificial when the comp has some time to breathe. Other stuff its just a buttload easier to use envelopes to attenuate parts or use automation.

What you've basically just described is a de-esser. If you have a parametric eq and a compressor with a sidechain, you could do this.

While it seems like a pretty clever idea... I don't think it would as effective as using arrangement techniques. Having a guitar in the mix at the freq when the voice lays out then dropping that guitar when it comes in.

I'm not rejecting a cool idea or use of technology, just trying to see the best way to achieve what you're going for.