Taming Resonance On Pads / Strings

thedjnifty

thedjnifty

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Jan 14, 2009
Ez people, I've come across this problem a few times now where I've created a pad or string sound using a filter with quite a bit of resonance, which is essential to the basic creation of the sound so it's not something I wanna change...

The problem is that resonance obviously then results in a massive peak in the frequency spectrum, and when I mix the sound to an appropriate level in my track I often find that the peak is just too harsh on the ears, but turning down the level of the track is just taking it down in the mix too much

Occasionally I can use subtractive eq to tame the peak, but this doesn't always seem to work, especially when the sound pretty much IS the peak and doesn't consist of much else across the frequency spectrum..

Anyone got any other techniques that might help solve my problem?

Bigups
 
Did you check to see the volume of the notes you originally recorded? Not that it'll do what you're trying to accomplish, but just a quick thought.

Maybe you can try a bandpass sweep on it? Something that can trim the peak freqs lightly? Just how high are those peaks anyway?

If the peak is the sound itself, you should probably check to see what scale your notes for the pad are at; chances are you can recreate the sound w/o relying on those peaks so much if you rearrange the scale of the notes to a more appropriate placement, and watching the gain per note. If you really need to, you could also try to process each note individually and EQ them as you see fit, then mix them down into a single .wav. That shouldn't be necessary, tho.
 
Mason John said:
Did you check to see the volume of the notes you originally recorded? Not that it'll do what you're trying to accomplish, but just a quick thought.

Maybe you can try a bandpass sweep on it? Something that can trim the peak freqs lightly? Just how high are those peaks anyway?

If the peak is the sound itself, you should probably check to see what scale your notes for the pad are at; chances are you can recreate the sound w/o relying on those peaks so much if you rearrange the scale of the notes to a more appropriate placement, and watching the gain per note. If you really need to, you could also try to process each note individually and EQ them as you see fit, then mix them down into a single .wav. That shouldn't be necessary, tho.
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Yeah I don't really think there's actually much of a way around this, I probably will just need to turn down the resonance on the filter and instead use a bandpass or something to isolate a much smaller peak that I can work with
 
thedjnifty said:
Yeah I don't really think there's actually much of a way around this, I probably will just need to turn down the resonance on the filter and instead use a bandpass or something to isolate a much smaller peak that I can work with
Click to expand...

Dont worry mate its an easy fix. I've been dealing with resonant pads for ages with alchemy n massive n such, at all it takes is some solid multiband compression the the peaking area. Multiband compression is especially effective on cleaning up pads n strings, which leaves only a tiny bit of EQing to be done afterwards. If you got an untreated room, its especially bad, i know lol.
 
Mania said:
Dont worry mate its an easy fix. I've been dealing with resonant pads for ages with alchemy n massive n such, at all it takes is some solid multiband compression the the peaking area. Multiband compression is especially effective on cleaning up pads n strings, which leaves only a tiny bit of EQing to be done afterwards. If you got an untreated room, its especially bad, i know lol.
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This, plus maybe a lil' reverb to space it out and push it back in the mix.
 
Mania said:
Dont worry mate its an easy fix. I've been dealing with resonant pads for ages with alchemy n massive n such, at all it takes is some solid multiband compression the the peaking area. Multiband compression is especially effective on cleaning up pads n strings, which leaves only a tiny bit of EQing to be done afterwards. If you got an untreated room, its especially bad, i know lol.
Click to expand...

Ahhh yes that is the one, I was thinking compression might help somehow but didn't think of multiband, good shout mate!

And yeah it can be some serious ear bleeding business when you crank it up, not the one lol

Cheers mate
 
You really need to turn the resonance down a little and turn the volume up so you get the balance right. There's no point adding something only to EQ it out again.
 
Serum said:
You really need to turn the resonance down a little and turn the volume up so you get the balance right. There's no point adding something only to EQ it out again.
Click to expand...

Tiz true, I'll try the multiband compression as well, think that should help quite a bit

Bigups
 
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