Envelope Shaping?

[Suntower]

Hey...

I got an old rhythm guitar part I want to fix. And by'fix' I mean that I want the note attacks to be crisper. The playing is in time, but the chunks just sound flabby---like the down strokes were a bit slow instead of going, pop, pop, pop nice and tight.

I know there are 'envelope shapers' that are used on kick drums for this sort of thing, but anyone got any experience on this kind of track?

I was thinking of trying to do this with PMB. Reasonable, or should I look for a dedicated plug? If PMB will do the trick, any suggestions on settings?

TIA,

---JC

 

[T-Dogg]

Maybe set a semi-narrow band to on the PMB to use upward expansion, and tune it to the frequency of the pick attack? Probably somewhere inside 4k and 7k? Then do the same in the near sub-bass region, just to add a little more impact... i don't have the PMB, but have had some luck in a similar situation using waves C4... Wasn't a night and day improvement but it helped.

 

[Akis]

Before spending any money, try this:

http://www.digitalfishphones.com/binari ... 1.2_PC.zip

It's a free transient modulator/designer/whatever you wanna call it and yesterday I used it on a guitar track to make the attacks cut better in the mix (lotsa guitars playing at the same time...). Not to mention how nice it is on drums...

If you want any help on how to use it, just ask.

 

[Dan Duskin]

if it's distorted guitar you probably won't be able to do much to it.... distorted guitar lacks dynamics so their will be nothing to work with.

 

[Mark Edmonds]

No idea if this would work but what if you used an envelope follower to trigger on each down stroke? You could set the envelope for quick attack, quick decay and lower sustain to accentuate that pick bit and trigger via threshold or manual or midi. In practise this might be difficult to do or may not work and could be a useless suggestion of course!

Mark

 

[Suntower]

Hey, thanks for the replies.

Yeah, I pulled out Dominion---which I have used before---and it =did= help. It's always a trade-off though. It seems as though it's more of an 'envelope leveler' than an 'envelope shaper'. That is, it will definitely make the attack -louder-, but not necessarily -crisper-. And when you make the attack louder, it seems to cut into the sustain.

I was using this for some typical strat-style clean rhythm parts---chunks with little ripply arpeggios.

Probably why these things work better on individual drums--where you're only dealing with -one- type of envelope.

Frankly, what I ended up doing? CHEATING! I edited the waveforms directly to create more abrupt starting points. Took a long time, but sounds better overall.

Thanks again!

---JC


[RANT]
This is one of those things that I think needs someone who works for Adobe to look at---who understands DSP but doesn't have preconceptions about how audio -should- be processed. I'm constantly amazed at how Photoshop style programs can do these 'Wizard' like things to re-touch photos and add artistic effects. They are really quite effective at, for example, auto-magically doing color balance. There really isn't enough stuff like that going on in audio. Yeah, there is TC's 'vocal modelling' jazz, but that's pocket calculator stuff compared with what is done with image editing. I know a lot of people here want more vintage/vintage/vintage but if you think -outside- the box, there are a TON of things that could be done that have no analog with hardware---which is IMO a real brutish and baby with bathwater way to get things done (let's process the WHOLE signal, all the time!)
[/RANT]

 

[Eric Dahlberg]

I edited the waveforms directly to create more abrupt starting points.

Isn't that exactly what Transient Designer, Transient Modulator, & Dominion do automatically? btw, the SPL hardware Transient Designer is a whole other world from the Pulsar version or Dominion, I don't know how it compares to the Oxford.

 

[Suntower]

I dunno. I haven't tried those. Dominion doesn't seem to let me get the fast SNAP attacks I wanted. Also, it seems that one pays for the attack with a loss of sustain. Maybe you get what you pay for. It's sort of analogous (to -me-) of how sharp a -real- Minimoog's attack is vs. a typica VSTi. The -crack- just ain't there---and if -I- can hear it, anyone can; it's not subtle.

I guess I dream of a time when we have -smart- processors, like with video where you can tell it 'Look, sharpen up the chunka-chunkas, but leave all the sustained chords alone, OK?' It seems that image-editors can do that already.

---JC

I edited the waveforms directly to create more abrupt starting points.

Isn't that exactly what Transient Designer, Transient Modulator, & Dominion do automatically? btw, the SPL hardware Transient Designer is a whole other world from the Pulsar version or Dominion, I don't know how it compares to the Oxford.

 

[Eric Dahlberg]

btw, I actually like your idea of using a multiband to do the job. If you use it only on the sparkle & leave the rest alone (since the sustain is more in the lower frequencies), I could see it working well.