-
Roses … another live 2 track with mastering voodoo
This is the second offering from a live singer songwriter performance I recorded earlier in January. I took my post production process one step further on this one by creating 2 guitar-only stem separations from the original 2 track, adding some high passed EQ and 20 ish mSec width to one of the newly created guitar dupes and then processed the second dupe with a low pass filter to just have the meat of the guitar to work with, dropped it down and octave to get some warmth and finally mixed the two new guitar flavors back into the original. I think it’s noticeably more natural this way.
This (self-described) redneck girl can sang!
-
7 Replies
-
Wow Paul! Such a glorious tone — Yes! Way more natural sounding than the last one in terms of the guitar DI.
So you had only one guitar stem to work with and then duplicated and delayed one? – how many guitar tracks in total am I hearing? 2 or 3? I can’t tell that anything has been pitch shifted down an octave. It’s incredible how natural it sounds. I will definitely use this technique on my stuff (I’m specifically thinking about situations where I’m only able to record one guitar track, but with this technique, it seems like I could really fill it out nicely!)
Any chance you could share a small portion of each isolated stem so I can get a better sense of what you all mixed together?
Thanks for sharing! What a cool idea!
JLew
-
Jesse,
Usually I’m good with words, apparently that explanation was not my usual.
Allow me to go about it differently so that the math does its mathing more clearly.
I only used four channels on my console for the live performance. One vocal mic, one DI for her acoustic guitar, and two channels for the stereo vocal reverb return. Vocal and guitar DI panned center, the reverb returns panned hard left or right. There’s my stereo image feeding the speakers AND the onboard USB recorder simultaneously. Whatever relative tones and levels I send to the house speaker system also goes to the USB recorder That’s my live 2 track.
Post processing starts by importing that 48K/24 into my DAW.
The stem separation process starts when I take a copy of that file and import it to my stem separation software. That’s where the AI voodoo happens. You prompt the software to extract only the acoustic guitar from the live 2 track. The software spits out a stereo file with only the acoustic guitar to the best of its ability. The acoustic guitar went into the software in dual channel mono and will exit the same way. Dual channel mono, equal level to the left and right of a stereo channel.
Now the math starts….
I import this stereo file into my DAW and label it guitar stem 1.
I duplicate that channel in my DAW and label it guitar stem 2.
I now have a total of three stereo channels to work with.
Channel 1 is my live 2 track off the console
Channel 2 is my guitar stem separation that will then be high passed and delayed differently on each side of this stereo channel to create a sense of air and width to my originally mono guitar. Mix enough level into master buss to just widen the sound of the guitar.
Channel 3 is my stereo guitar separation that will then be low passed to 160 ish Hz so as to feed the pitch shifter plug-in only signal that creates deep bass. I’m trying to create bass frequencies that the guitar itself was not producing. Mix enough level of these faux freqs to create the illusion of resonating wood warmth.
Better?
That’s a great idea to add pictures of the DAW session and audio files.
-
Yo Paul!
This is so incredibly helpful! Thanks for taking the time to explain it in such great detail! Very smart and cool!
JLew
-
-
Jesse,
This timely guitar article showed up in my mail today. Passing it on to you.
izotope.com
8 tips for using reverbs and delays on guitars
Learn how to use reverb and delay to enhance your guitar tracks in mixing. Discover tips and techniques to create depth, texture, and space.
-
JLew,
For the visual learners, this may help to understand the process.
The white and green tracks in the session are my live 2 track mix off the console and the guitar stem separation created in RipX. I then duplicated the green guitar separation in my DAW and changed its color to red. Despite all the verbiage, I’m only working on 3 stereo tracks here
The next image is of the EQ applied to the green track, the separated out guitar. This the channel I high passed and added 20 ish mSec to and created a cheapo widener.
The next image is of the EQ applied to the red track, a duplicate of the green separated guitar that I changed the color to red. Just like the roses she’s singin’ about. You can see the low pass filter on the graph disallowing mid and high freqs. The inserted pitch shifter (-1 octave) created the musically related deep bass that warmed up the guitar’s tonality.
-
Thank you! SO COOL!
-
-
-
What an excellent singer and songwriter she is!
Damn that minor-iv-chord pre-chorus setup is amazing. Great bridge and melodies and lyrics all around. 👏
Love learning more about your processing voodoo! Whatever you’ve done sounds excellent, man.
- 0:30-0:32 there are a couple guitar chords here that aren’t as full as the rest and I bet you could fly them from earlier in the verse if you wanted to. You know … since you have the guitar separated from the vocal, you Rip-X madman!
- Only other thing from me is wanting to hear more of that audience at the end. Turn that applause up loud and proud cause a) she deserves it – and so do you!, and b) it’ll really make listeners go “wait .. woah, that was live?! It sounded like a studio recording!” If the audience sound isn’t as robust there in your 2-track as needed, perhaps you could fly in some audience bits from her stage entrance or exit to supplement, with your 20ms widening perhaps!
Awesome stuff as always, @-PT! Thanks for sharing both your audio AND your process!!
Log in to reply.