What if we told you there was one FabFilter Pro Q3 tip that would not only save you from buying other expensive plugins, but also help your mixes sound louder or more professional?
Well, it’s true, and we’ve got our Content Lead Fabio to break down how it works.
For this tutorial, we’ll be using music by Deemie, so big thanks to him. Let’s jump into it.
Analyzing the Mix
So here we have a massive EDM track with lots of parts fighting for space. Unfortunately, that makes it more difficult for the listener to focus on those dominant parts.
To fix that, we’re going to use the FabFilter Pro Q3 in a clever—one that we’ve never seen anyone else talk about.
If we look at the two main parts fighting for space, we can see it’s the lead and the big horn impact that comes in every so often.
Mix Decisions
What we want to happen is for the lead to duck a little bit every time the horns come in. That makes more space for the horns to make an impact and signals to the listener where to focus.
On the horns, we’ve got a Pro Q3 with a low cut, and we’re going to boost it 400 and 2000 to bring out some of the warmth and the presence of this sound.
Now, we did make those adjustments in the context of the entire mix. If we listen to it solo, it sounds like it’s just getting a little bit louder.
Here’s where the magic happens. If we play back the lead, the frequency space analyzer shows us how much space it’s taking up. (It’s a lot.)
Making the Magic Happen in FabFilter Pro Q3
So we already know from boosting the trumpets earlier that we know where in the track we want them to feel most dominant. If we take a look at the frequency spectrum analyzer again on the lead, you’ll see that these areas are actually quite busy.
The horns are fighting for space in those areas. So what we’re going to do next is quite clever.
We’re going to feed our horns in via the sidechain. We’ll gonna go to Audio and scroll down to the trumpet. Next, we’re going to turn those two EQ points into dynamic EQs.
Let’s zero out the gain, because we don’t want to boost the lead. And then we want the dynamic EQ to be going downward. When dynamic EQ goes upward, it’s expanding the signal, which is making it louder. We want downward compression, so we want the volume to duck.
We’re going to start by selecting the frequency point at 400hz, then we’ll go to Auto, and then there’s a tiny button that allows us to use the sidechain signal as a trigger.
Once we turn this one, it means the dynamic EQ is not reacting to the lead synthesizer; it’s reacting to the trumpets.
We can decide how much of the dynamic EQ is reacting to the sidechain signal with these threshold sliders in FabFilter Pro Q3. And there’s one for each of these EQ points.
Let’s play it back so we can see the horns triggering the dynamic EQ. You can hear the lead momentarily ducking in volume when those horns play.
Creating Space in the Mix
After listening back, the mix sounds good, but we’re probably overdoing the dynamic EQ a little bit. To solve that, we can go into each EQ point and reduce the threshold ever so slightly.
Just by adding these two dynamic EQs that are triggered by trumpets, we make so much more space. In context, it’s not going to sound as obvious, but if you compare the before and after the difference is significant.
The idea is to get this mix to sound as natural as possible. And you don’t just have to do this with two lead synthesizers. You can do this with
- Rhythm guitars
- Lead guitars
- Lead vocals and backing vocals
- and so on
Notice how when it’s bypassed they kind of get lost in the sauce? So if you have FabFilter Pro Q3 this tip is definitely worth trying out.
And if you already have those other plugins we mentioned earlier, it doesn’t mean they aren’t useful. It just means there’s another option available in the FabFilter Pro Q3.
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When you’re ready to share your next mix from Pro Q3, don’t forget to use BoomBox. What’s that? You haven’t signed up yet?
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