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Today we’re going to talk about unmasking. This is a mixing technique. It takes place during the mixing process and it allows to clarify or create separation between one or more instruments that share a similar frequency range. This is most commonly a problem with something like bass drums and a bass guitar stepping all over each other. So, whenever they’re together, it creates muddiness. Uh, and it’s they’re essentially fighting over a very narrow frequency range. And unmasking is going to carve out areas within their frequency range for the drum in this case and the bass guitar.
This also happens when there’s a whole lot of guitars and a whole lot of vocals, which is every heavy metal song. And what you’ll find is unless the the guitar player is scooping out all the mids, which does happen occasionally, you’re going to have the guitar and the vocalist stepping all over each other all the time. So today we’re going to talk about how to carve out an area for vocals to sit more easily within a given mix.
You’re going to want to get your want to get the volume set before any of this starts. So create the best best mix that you can. You know, get everything sounding okay. And then if you’re still hearing muddiness, which you’re you’re there’s going to be some. There’s always some. Uh, but if it’s too much, you don’t like the way it sounds, then you can take this technique and carve out areas. Now, I’m going to talk about unmasking, and I’m going to talk about sidechaining,and we’re going to talk about routing for just a bit.
Uh, and I will link to some deeper dives into those areas. Look at this instance of Reaper that I have up and you will see that I have routed all of the instruments into this particular track which we’ll call track one because it is and all vocals into vox all which is track two.
Now there is a main vox there’s four different main voxes here. There’s a ton of choruses and towards the end and something that we’re going to take a look at. I’ve got here this listed as monster voice and that’s fun and it also created some issues of its own because instead of singing which I sing in a higher register uh I was speaking and it was very very low and it got very muddy. It was really bad and also the passages are in Latin which meant even I was saying it and even I didn’t know what I was saying. So, uh, we’re going to take a look at that, too. But here we go. All right. We’re going to look at the first verse of a song called Absolution. And again, all the instruments are going into track one.
And all the vocals, chorus, everything, everything’s going into uh track two. And I have several plugins in the master out. I’ve disabled all of them. So, what we’re hearing is uh whatever’s list, whatever’s on the main track. So, you’re going to have some digital delay, you’ll have some reverb, and you’ll have on the backing vocals, you’ll have autotune. And I wanted to leave them there because they’re going to create the mud we’ve been talking about more often than not.
So, I’m leaving all that on. We’re going to hear it affected, but I am turning off the program we’re going to use to unmask the vocals. Now, let’s just listen to the verse quickly. We won’t listen to the whole thing. We fall for yet another day. Speak your heart, my son, so we may pray. I took these lives on them. Have no fear, my son. Now you may >> All right, we uh did get muddy there towards the end when the vocals started slipping into a lower register and
that’s good. So we can look at that. So what do we do? All right, we’ve got all of our vocals into this into track two and all of our instruments into track one. Now we want to protect the vocals. So we’re going to load the unmasker which today we’re going to use curves resolve from waves. I am this I am in no way sponsored by anything or anyone. No one’s gonna give me money for this crap. So, you can use any myriad of things, but what I really liked about curves was it’s got the little AI thing that everything has where it’s going to listen to everything and it’s going to create a base to start from.
And while we’ll probably make adjustments after that, it’s really good to start 75% of the way there and kind of have to so you’re you’re putting your effort into that last 25%. Because starting from scratch if you especially if you don’t know what you’re doing is a pain in the ass. But everything that we’re going to do here can be done with free plugins with Reaper, no problem.
All right. So, we’re going to load curves resolve stereo. There we go. All right. Now, we need to put the vocals into the side chain. And so, we’re going to do that. And we’d already done that. So, that’s how you do the side chaining in Reaper. Give it a quick listen. There’s the instruments. >> Speak your heart. >> Now, as you can see, you can see the vocals up here and you can see everything else down here. That’s because the vocals are being loaded into the side chain.
Anything side chained in, it’s going to protect. That’s what you’re basically telling it. So load this or whatever plugins you’re using onto the instrument track and sidechain everything else into it and it will protect it. Let’s look at it again. >> All right, everything’s going through. We’re going to tell it to learn. And as you can see, it’s going to analyze the side chain to create a static curve. So I’m going to hit learn. yet another day.
>> It said stop. >>
Now we have a big knob here. This knob is how much are we going to suppress the instruments for lack of a better term. It’s it that sounds very negative. It is not. How much are how much are we gonna suppress the frequencies that are occupied by both instruments and vocals to allow the vocals to push forward? And here you go. >> Speak your heart. >> That’s too much. Now, as you can see, as you turn up the uh as you turn the knob, you can see the vocals becoming more and more uh dominant within the given frequencies.
Let’s do it again and watch the vocals start to push down the given frequencies when they come in. Give me father voice in yet another day. Speak your heart my son so we may pray >> if you crank it up all the way. >> Obviously while fun but that is not very useful. >> All right let’s do it one more time. I’m gonna start bringing it up slowly and we can see how it makes the change. >> Speak your heart, my son, so we may pray.
I took these on and them away. >> That’s nice. That’s nice right there. uh any higher and it starts to get a little weird and you can really hear it pumping and it was essentially if you’re gonna tap down the entire song versus the vocals that’s too much. So, one more time, I’m going to start it out without resolve at all, and then we’ll activate it so you can hear the difference. Give me father yet another day. Speak your heart, my son, so we may pray. >> The sibilance is very acute when it comes on.
I have an easier time hearing the higher end of the vocals. uh with that when that comes on. And again, we want it to be subtle. We don’t want the thing to just go crazy and annihilate the song every time the vocals come in. But as you can see, this gives you a great deal of control. And if you do want to make it profound, especially if you’re doing like voiceovers for YouTube videos, for example, that’s another great use. You can throw some background music in there. And I think we all know how annoying it is when you’re trying to listen to someone while they turn background music on and you can’t hear a goddamn thing they’re saying.
And what you could use is a tool like this to tap down the music a lot harder when someone is doing a voice over. All right, I’ve deactivated curves and we’re going to listen to uh at the end of this song, as I said earlier, we have there’s a spoken word part. It’s in Latin and it’s I call it the monster voice in the track and that’s appropriate because uh I’m speaking in a deep voice.
It’s got a ton of crap on it. It’s got a phaser on there. I think there’s who knows what. Sounds weird. But it gets buried and I’m going to play it now and you can hear it get buried. Do not enter into judgment, my lord. >> Let’s do that again. >> All right. Here’s what it’s supposed to sound like. >> So that gets lost. Uh, we’re going to use curves. >> All right. >> Check this out. As you can see, it’s all in the low end way down there.
>> So, here it is without Here it is with >> it’s much more obvious. I may want to turn it up a little bit more. What I’m going to do is reroute all the monster voices to their own track and then I’m going to really squash the instruments. Blessing on the coolless. >> Nice. Well, that’s more similar to spoken word like a voice over and whatnot where you can really stamp down the music. You don’t want to stamp it down that hard. But, uh, this is a perfect example of a whole lot of messy frequencies stepping all over each other and it fixed it.
And that’s out of the box. I mean, essentially, I hit learn and then turned a knob. That’s exactly the kind of tools I’m looking for. So, again, that is curves resolve from Waves, but there’s a bunch of plugins that’ll do the same thing. And if you want to learn how to use uh multiband compressors, there’s some free ones you can do. Now, it’s not going to be hit learn and crank a button, but uh there’s a thousand ways to do this.
I’m choosing the easiest way because that’s what I’m all about. So, that’s Curves Resolve. If you want to know more about side chaining, I’m going to put a link to uh Glenn Fricker’s Spectre Sound Studios where he does an entire piece on just side chaining, when you should do it, the best ways to do it, and if he says anything that disagrees with me, he’s right and I’m wrong, and do what he says. So, until later, thanks for coming by.
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