Today we began by going over your lab projects. I was pleased with the results. Most of the mixes needed only minor tweaks. Nice work, folks!
We're moving on to the next portion of the course on Human Hearing and on Equalization. We determined that we hear about 10 octaves of sound in total and this can be broken down into four ranges: Lows, Low-Mids, Upper-Mids, and Highs. These cover the approximate frequency ranges as shown below:
in Hz:| 18 | 37 | 75 | 150 | 300 | 600 | 1.2k | 2.5 k | 5.0k | 10.0k | 20.0k |
| Ultra-Low | Lows | Low-Mids | Hi-Mids | Highs |
The bottom octave has very little sound of musical interest, although this is frequently used for film sound effects on the Low Frequency Effects (subwoofer) channel.
We defined the EQ as a "frequency-selective" amplifer that can change the gain of a particular band of frequencies.
We took a quiz after break and then looked at some basic signal processor routings. When a serial, or "In-line," processor is inserted on a channel, only processed signal is heard. This is usually the preferred setup for Timbre processors, such as Equalizers, Filters and Distortion, and Dynamics processors, such as Compressors, Limiters, and Noise Gates.
When a parallel, or "Sidechain," processor is used, we hear both the processed ("wet") and unprocessed ("dry") sounds mixed together. This can be accomplished two ways. If the processor is to be inserted on a channel, it must have a Mix or Balance control to allow you to vary the balance of wet and dry signals. Alternately, you can set up an effects loop by using an auxiliary bus to split the signal and send it to the processor and an effects (aux) return to bring the processed signal back to the mix. In this case, you would set the mix control to 100% wet on the processor, since you would have the dry signal on one fader and the wet signal on the effects return's fader. Another advantage of using this method is that a single processor can be used on multiple channels: simply use the same bus to send each channel to the effect. Sidechain processing is typical for Time-based effects, such as Reverberation, Delays, Chorusing and Flanging.
Pitch processors can go either way. In cases where you want to correct a bad pitch or transpose a track to a new key or octave, use Inline processing. When you want to create a harmony to an existing part, you may want to use the sidechain approach.
We then opened up Pro Tools and looked at Late Morning Lullaby, by Brandi Carlile. This live track has a lot of challenges. There are multiple tracks of similar parts--two lead vocals, for example. There is a lot of leakage on some tracksÑand that cello!
We showed how to insert EQ on a channel. In this case we used a High-pass Filter (HPF) on the background vocal tracks to reduce some of the muddiness in the leakage. We duplicated the processor and its settings for the second BVox track by option-dragging the processor to the insert on the next track. We also showed how you can bypass a processor from the Mix window by Apple-clicking on the plug-in.