Frequency automation

dav nagle

Do you automate a frequency for certain parts of a vocal track? I was co engineering a session with Stefano Soffia last Saturday for a boards member and he mentioned this?

sei046

Never really thought of it to be honest. It seems a little like an overly complicated way of getting vocals to stand out/ sit back. I presume thats why? I could be wrong. The nearest I do to that is possibly a but of multiband compression.

dav nagle

I have come across the odd vocal take here and there and the odd word needs an extra boost in the higher end and well I suppose this is a way of going about it. I remember one time I selected a phrase and changed the frequency but it sounded way to out of place so automating the frequency might sound more natural, wind and the likes you know?

PaulBrewer

Jaysus, If that's your only problem yer laughin' !

trackmixstudio

I would certainly do this sometimes. If you have trouble getting a snare to cut through a dense mix in certain parts of song, it is often helpful to automate a wideband boost in the attack of the sound just for the problem section.
Or instead of pulling back the volume of rhythm guitars during a guitar solo I would often automate the high mids to come come back slightly so all the low mids don't drop out of the mix.
I would also use a deesser sometimes (only if absolutely necessary), which is an automatic, frequency specific automation.

Seziertisch

It is the reason some eqs have side chains.

I know it gets used (not necessarily always on vocals) in a live context quite a bit. Say you've got a heavy guitar sound which needs to sound the way it does when it is playing on its own but is inclined to swamp the vocals. As soon as the singer starts the guitar sound (or whatever) is side chain eq'ed (fed by the vocals) to remove or mellow certain frequencies which compete with the vocals.

dav nagle

This is very interesting lads, thanks:)

studiorat

That's a real Mutt Lange thing right there.
That happens all the time, and on multiband compressors on vocals too.
I use two seperate tracks for verse and chorus alot of the time...

Neurojazz

Well, if one word needs work.... you cut/slice part - and duplicate track...

Using something like a dynamic eq to affect the sound how you want.. render... reinsert slice... bobs your uncle.

A high quality De-esser sometimes may not perform well over the whole passage, so sometimes the slice treatment does the trick on the problem words.

tweeky

you gotta do what you gotta do, frequency auto, autotune auto, desser auto
Ampfarm auto, and that's after comping the bejazus of the Vocal/Gtr/Drums etc.

teamdresch

Do you mean automating an Eq plugin on or off on one section of a song?
Sure, all the time.
For one word or two here and there on a vocal?
It's happened, but not too often.