When your dream synth doesn't sound great against your other gear

Well, I have to add that I am a bloody beginner in my first year of music making. I haven‘t even started recording any of my work …so not even came close to „master“ any of my tracks.

In my case this “issue” isn’t entirely uncommon while jamming new material with mates. Probably because in isolation I go to extremes and use massive chords.

But the solution is quite similar to cutting EQ or even side chaining.
When the issue arises just modifying the chords leaving out the offending note, or playing shell chords, dropping the root note when accompanying the bass line, or splitting the chord across two or three octaves are pretty basic options you can use on the fly. Also as mentioned above, change velocity (or attack and sustain levels).
Stuff like this is easier to learn, quickly, when you spend time jamming with other people, so throw your gear before them before you throw it away.

Edit: is it just me or does everyone find good percussion compression works wonderfully to clarify the mud.

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Just a Quick thought. Many clashes happen during writing/arrangement! Writing or arranging instruments different can solve 80 percent of clashing problems :slight_smile:

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When you say muddy do you mean the whole mix in the low end? What are you trying to get it to sit behind? Kick? Bass? Both?

Most importantly what genre of music are you writing?

And what daw are you using?

some stuff in this thread might help too

And there is also of course the DSI forum

https://forum.sequential.com/index.php?board=4.0

Thanks for all that. Im using Ableton as a DAW. Well, i like to make techno but im always trying to fit a pad like sound with hunners of warmth in the back ground. Its generally trying to sit in the low mid/mids. Even if I wasnt making beats and just something Ambient, i’d get a good sound, play around and then try and over dub and I cant for the life of me fit anything else in the mix happily… Hey ho, I guess it’s all just trial and error and ill get there one day? Appreciate your help none-theless

This was my experience as well. That’s why I don’t use HW synths anymore.

So if I understand correctly your trying to get a sustained sound as in a pad or the like to sit in the low mids in a techno track?

This could be your problem. Low mids are where the kick and bass sit in techno. In order for a track to breath there needs to be room for each sound within the mix be that either room in frequency or time. For example to have a kick and bass work together they either need to not hit at the same time or be sidechained or cleverly eq’d so they don’t fight for the same space in the low and low mids.

So if you add to this equation a long sustained sound in the same low mids you’ve got the kick, the bass and the pad fighting over the space and you’ll have a wall of mud and phase cancellation happening.

To have a sustained sound in the low mids in the background over the top of kick and bass you need to either sidechain or hi pass.

Try grouping your kick and bass together, dropping Ableton’s glue compressor on the pad and switch on sidechain and assign it to the kick bass group. Another way to get the sound to stand out and behind us mid/side eq. Get an eq plugin that does mid/side like Fabfilter pro q and eq out the mid signal (that’s stereo middle not frequency mid) and boost the sides. Make sure your kick and bass is in mono with Abletons utility. Not only is the sustained sound now out of the way and kind of behind the kick and bass it’s sticking out the sides and gives the mix width and depth. Add a nice reverb and you’ve got lush pad behind a strong kick and bass.

I hear what your saying about the sound losing the warmth and analog kind of fuzz when you hi pass but you can get this back by processing the sound further with compression, maybe some reverb, chorus etc…

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Ill share that in my experience there has to be a lot of darlings killed in terms of frequency and balance - or - its all solved in arrangement and instrumentation. Its taken me sooo long its embarassing to land mixes, and the biggest reason is vision - great big ideas that are impractical.

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Cool, this all seems to make sense, im pretty much at the beginning of my music adventure anyway. Its good to have people that are willing to help so thank yall very much.

Does anyone else have experience with a prophet 6? I find it extremely resonant… So much so a single oscillator drone has at least 7 resonances in it when i record into my DAW. I can hear them before but they’re not a pronounced untill after I record. I do everthing in my way to get rid of them.
I bloody hate resonances and not sure how to get rid of them before they go in. Im using the 12MTK as a desk so unsure really what the capabilities with doing this with the EQ is?

I mean it could be my room, it’s untreated but even when I use headphones the problem still lies. Im using the HD650 sennheiser. I dunno, just another one of my problems!!

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This is good, thanks very much!

What do you mean? Not quite sure I understand…

Sounds like you may need to use eq as the frequencies are probably clashing.
Make some cuts in the problem areas

I want to be a bit careful, because im no one to lecture. I simply mean context - something like the p12 can make pretty much any kind of sound - if a sound needs to be duller, you have to make it duller. Now thats no fun, but the compromise has to be made. This kind of stuff nobody can tell anybody really, its learning by doing. For instance - when i started to dip the top off vocals way more than i thought was even advisable, it was a big step for me in terms of getting total mix balance to make sense. About arrangement and instrumentation - well its the same thing - only not postproduction…

Which part don’t you understand?

I’m doing this on my phone and it didn’t tell me which commment you are replying to…

Check out these videoes for instance…and forget about liking the song or not - the stuff that the producer is doing - i really dislike it, and i want to fight against it, because my personal vision for music wants more chaos and craziness and i want things that wont work to work and so on…fact is, the guy is pretty ruthless at getting things done https://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/from-creation-to-final-mix-how-to-create-a-track-in-pro-tools-612125

Ableton eq 8 has a spectrum analyser as in visual display of the frequency’s. Grab one of the nodes (the 8 points) and make a sharp boost and adjust the q so it’s a sharp tall point. Move this back and forth up and down the frequency bands until you hear the resonance your talking about pop out. Then you either just turn the boost into a cut (down instead of up) or make not of the frequency and then use the eq on your desk to make the cut. Also bear in mind that the filter on the synth is a resonant eq as well and you can adjust the filter and resonance to taste.

Trust your ears and the tools in combination. Your ears are telling you there is a resonance you don’t like so your halfway there you just need to find that resonance and cut it out.

Hmmm…i have no experience with the p6 but the 7 resonances sound weird - at least if youre talking a simple sound…could there be distortion in your rec chain? What happens to the sound if you try to supress these resonances with eq?