Written by Putting theory to practice; racks 101 and a couple of general tips.
(<< Back to Pt.1 of Multiband Processing with Ableton Live)
Personally I like a bit of grit on my percussion so I suggest we drop a Dynamic Tube and a Compressor in there.
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Some rather extreme settings on that Dynamic Tube but it really drives the midrange out in that dirty fashion. After listening to it one realizes that its too dirty. The trouble with that is that we still want to retain the dirty but still have some not-dirty shine through; this right here is the magic of Multiband processing. Duplicate the mid-chain (ctrl+d/cmd+d), then simply delete the Dynamic Tube and trim the eq a bit so that it only affects a bit of that midrange:
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With an easy Compressor it will still retain the dynamics of the hits while still having the dirty dirty mid processing on the other chain, which is exactly what we want and exactly why producers should use this way of processing; we can achieve incredibly complex, diverse and extreme effects and still retain the original dynamics of the source audio just by separating the bands a bit. After some aggressive tweaking on the Dynamic Tube compressor, a small volume adjustment on the gated highs, take a listen at how it sounds.
Here´s each chain individually rendered out, so you can hear what each chain sounds like:
Notice that the last chain is just dry, so in practice we are doing multiband processing and parallel processing, which is in theory a different topic all-together. So, just by taking a seemingly boring random break and with just a few steps and a very simple audio rack we have made it interesting. Now, one could easily drop in a phaser, perhaps a grain delay or a small plate-style reverb and it will fundamentally change the break into something else, your imagination is the only limit (and of course, your processing power).
In conclusion, multiband processing is what you want it to be, it can be as subtle or extreme as you want, and it can fundamentally change the feel and texture of the source audio. Most importantly; its a cheap and easy way to gain total control over your frequency content.
Phase Cancellation
One thing to take notice on is that when processing different frequencies it´s incredibly easy to end up with certain frequencies cutoff, or missing entirely from your source audio (usually depends on how you set up your eq). That can be fixed with phase cancellation. The idea of phase cancellation is simple: if it´s silent, it´s cancelling out perfectly; if it´s not silent then there´s a difference in phase. This comes with a pleasant suprise; if you make a rack with a phase cancellation eq and a dry chain, your effect rack will always be 100% transparent when it´s dry. A more indepth explanation about that can be found on my blog here.
If you want to learn more, and in particular if you want to learn more about multiband processing, be advised; the topic is as thick as the topic of mastering itself, jampacked with theory and do´s and dont´s and it all differs depending on the context and the source. This article was merely an introduction of how you can roll your own mutliband processing racks the easiest and most convenient way in Ableton Live and is in no shape or form the “right” way to do it.
With that said: Remember; you can´t learn unless you experiment.
Have a nice day people.
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