# How to create separation between keyboard, strings and choir in a mix?



## ulrichburke2 (May 22, 2022)

Dear Anyone.
I lurve writing flute'n'strings'n' choir, keyboard (sometimes piano, sometimes one of those alien Rhodes jobs you get as presets on things!) and strings'n'choir.... I'm sure you get the idea. But they all suffer from the same suck - no matter what I try with EQ or anything else, the choir and strings are One Mass of Nice Sound. I can't keep 'em separate. OK, thousand buck strings and choir they are not, but I'd still love to separate 'em out in all their tawdry magnificence!

I'm not posting a piece because there's gotta be a general rule-of-thumb for separating stuff out that I've missed. I've tried panning bits about all over the mix, tried compressing some bits more than others, nothing QUITE works. This link is NOT me, it's Michel Pepe. How's he doing his separation - all his pieces with choirs use the same trick but I can't spot it. 



You'll hear what I mean from about 1 min. in if anyone chooses to listen. He uses the same technique every time he does it.
Any/all other tips/advice/videos on keeping sounds separated in a mix will be watched too - I keep writing stuff I think isn't bad, I just can't keep the sounds well enough separated in the mix. (Yup - I'm a New Ager - sorry to dance people. Having said that, I've heard glorious separation between sounds in dance mixes and no idea how they achieve that either, would lurve to know.)

Yours hopefully

Chris.


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## creativeforge (May 22, 2022)

Hi, I don't know the professional/technical answer, but what I do is not only use the panning but also levels. Try panning similar frequencies among themselves on a stereo arc, and the more important ones make them a bit louder than those that simply are there to beef up the main strings or pads.

Nothing wrong with "New Age."  It can be heard every day in the media and is very popular on YT.

Hope this helps a bit,

Andre


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## AndreasHe (Jun 17, 2022)

Nearly all instruments use the whole EQ spectrum. Use sidechain to create space for different instruments for specific frequency ranges. This is the way to create a clear non-muddy sound. 

IMHO Fabfilter helps here very much.


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## Illico (Jun 17, 2022)

You can work with reverb predelay & decay to place the sound in the space (depth in the room).
You can also work with stereo side & mid mixing to change the spacialization (lead vs ambiance background)
And of course the panning (Left Center Right).

From your example, at beginning, string sounds more in the mid and choirs more in the side (with more depth).
Then later, the space change with Choirs (with solo) more in mid and string more in side.
Hope that make sense for you. This is how I operate.


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## el-bo (Jun 17, 2022)

Carving away competing frequencies (The lows, especially), judicious use of panning, creating depth with volume and reverb pre-delays , using dynamic EQ & compression etc. etc. are all part of a toolbox that these days seems to fall under the umbrella term of unmasking.

If you Google “unmasking“ these days, every result seems to point to Izotope's Neutron. It seems to be a good one-stop-shop for this kind of thing, with its AI Assistance and seems very well served by good tutrorials for how to use it. It might be worth looking into if you own any of their products, or even NI Komplete.

Of course, these are tried-and-tested techniques that existed long before Izotope offered the pokes  To that end, there're plenty of videos you could find on Youtube, that'll help withthese techniques. Definitely look to EDM techniques, as these genres often use a lot of full-spectrum, big-hitting sounds. Just make sure to adjust to suit, unless you’re going for pumping with your New Age


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## el-bo (Jun 17, 2022)

Also, have you considered writing to the artist who created the traks you embedded?
You never know…Perhaps they'd be open to sharing


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## Reid Rosefelt (Jun 17, 2022)

I can't do this well, either. I have music that I worked on for weeks that I was never able to fix--they had murky mixes that I was unsatisfied with. Now, at my age, my hearing is very bad. Without being able to hear well, I don't think I can learn at this point.

As I don't write orchestral music, I decided to work this out in the arrangement, rather than using Neutron or other plugins. First, I limit my palette to as few instruments as possible, as much as possible in different parts of the spectrum. If the piece needed two instruments occupying the same space, I used them at times when they didn't clash. So, for example, I could have strings sometimes and choir sometimes, but not strings+choir. 

It's like a game, and it actually made composing go a lot faster for me. After writing my music this way, I have a second stage where I go through the MIDI tracks removing any overlaps. 

Then I discovered binaural music, using dearVR MUSIC This allowed me to take things even further. Not only were the instruments in different frequencies--they were in different spaces. Much stronger than panning. Here's an example. If you listen for what I said, you can hear clearly how it works. 



Another thing that really helps with binaural and mixing in general is a good set of headphones. Things really changed for me when I got my Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO. I can hear more separation of tonal sectors on this than with any of the other headphones I've previously owned.


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## Bee_Abney (Jun 17, 2022)

First off, hello! Please don't be shy of posting your own tracks. If anyone is overly critical without being invited to be (sometimes it's wanted), it's usually the critic who gets roasted by everyone else! Equally, don't feel the need to post anything either. The Pepe tracks you embedded gets the point across nicely.

I'm very much a learner. I've been working on mixing in earnest for the past year, being a live musician before that, and having a non-musical career. So, I'm finding my way, the same as you are. So please bear that in mind in relation to my advice.

I would start in mono. Points mentioned above about panning, about creating the illusion of depth, and about ambisonic music (@Reid Rosefelt's track is so, so good!); those are necessary eventually. But start with mono. You'll need to be able to fix it there before adding panning to your toolkit.

@AndreasHe and @el-bo give you some very good leads to look up and work on. Izotope's Neutron (the latest version) is built very much with the intention of solving the issues you are facing. In one specific way, so is Wavefactory's Trackspacer. This can do things that are very difficult and absurdly time-consuming to do by painstakingly altering the EQ over time. But leave these out at first.

You said you've had no luck with EQ; but I'm afraid that it is in equalisation that the answer lies. Equalisation and related techniques - filtering and frequency specific compression.

Here's a rough starting plan for flutes, strings, keys, choir. When I reference a filter, I have in mind either a high or low pass, with a slop of around 12 to 18 decibels per octave. (High pass removes lows; low pass removes highs.) The EQ you use for to create frequency space for your different instrument groups is a parametric EQ. Something nice and visual and which allows for lots of nuanced adjustments. This sort of thing (I expect your DAW will have one of its own):






And so, my starting suggestions (I'm naming the frequencies from memory, so I may be off in some cases - you'll have to experiment in any case given your particular instruments and what they are playing).

Flutes: filter out everything below 800 Hz to start with. Keep the 1500 Hz and above under control to watch for shrillness.
Strings: Filter out below around 500 Hz, but use the EQ surgically to reduce whatever frequencies your vocals are operating in.
Keys: go low or go high. If going low, go mellow. filter out above around 500 Hz, watch out in the mids to avoid the choir.
Choir: Have these dominate in the mid range. Filter out above 800 Hz and below, say 350 Hz. Let these dominate the mids.

For all tracks, have a dip at around 280 to 330 Hz. This is more or less where mixes can turn to mud.

EQ-ing in the mids will then be the toughest job. According to my suggestions, the mids will have strings, keys and the choir.

This can be done by ear; but use a spectrum analyser. I use UVI's Shade, which is (in part) an EQ, but it also displays the frequencies that are playing. Voxengo Span is a widely used free option. I've never tried it; but I really should.

Look at your vocals and see where they peak. Try reducing those peaks until the choice sounds muted and lifeless. That's the EQ patter you should apply to the strings and keys - and definitely NOT to the choir! Then play with it until it sounds good to you. Where the choir is strong, you might accentuate that to exaggerate the difference.

I haven't got into sidechain compression. That's good too; but this is just somewhere to start.

Lastly, if you've already done this and you are thinking 'Yeah, obviously; but it doesn't work!' I'd say - sorry, just trying to help and I don't want to be patronising but... it does work if you do it right. EQ and filtering might not be quite enough, but it is part of the story and should take you a long way.

As an alternative, just get Neutron or Trackspacer and have them do the work whilst you enjoy making music!


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## Thundercat (Jun 17, 2022)

Everyone has posted such great suggestions - I learned a lot just reading thanks!

I think an oft-overlooked aspect of mixing is the composition itself. One rule of thumb I like is to ask, "what is the most important thing happening right now" and make sure that instrument/group of instruments is prominent, by volume primarily, but also by panning - within the composition, before ever bouncing down to final tracks. If it doesn't sound pretty good with just volume and panning, before you add all the whizbang effects, it might be time to go back to the drawing board on the composition itself.

When I first started writing orchestrally, everything sounded like a merry-go-round theme park piece, every instrument playing constantly. It was a "happy sound" but anything but professional.

I learned to highlight individual instruments, even dropping everything else out completely and allowing a lone piano or oboe to play - for one of the secrets to great composition is contrast. A good melody doesn't hurt either!

When it comes time to do a mix, I was shocked at just how important simply getting levels and panning right does wonders for any mix, before ever touching any of the eq's or effects or reverbs.

I'm not a pro, but I have produced a lot of church music tracks with singers and instruments, and that's what I learned so far.

HTH,

Mike


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## Bee_Abney (Jun 17, 2022)

Thundercat said:


> Everyone has posted such great suggestions - I learned a lot just reading thanks!
> 
> I think an oft-overlooked aspect of mixing is the composition itself. One rule of thumb I like is to ask, "what is the most important thing happening right now" and make sure that instrument/group of instruments is prominent, by volume primarily, but also by panning - within the composition, before ever bouncing down to final tracks. If it doesn't sound pretty good with just volume and panning, before you add all the whizbang effects, it might be time to go back to the drawing board on the composition itself.
> 
> ...


Great points. And it reminds me that I had meant to say something about altering the EQ over time - and volume changes are definitely important (and, including changing dynamic layers, more realistic) in accomplishing changes in which instruments dominate at which times.

In the flutes, strings, keys, choir example, each group might dominate at different times. Changing volume is the first and easiest step; but also altering the EQ so that, for example, the keys could get boosted and the choir reduced in midrange frequencies.

EQ is really a volume change, so is filtering (hence the way that it is measured in decibels per octave) - it is just narrowed down to specific frequencies rather than turning the whole instrument up or down.

While I emphasised learning to do this in mono; it is true that your frequency cuts can relax a little once panning is play. And also, depth. The illusion of depth is created wtih a complex mix of filtering/eq, general volume and delay - or a nifty plugin that will do it for you like Reid's DearVR. While it is especially impressive in ambisonic mixes, DearVR also works in traditional stereo mixes (just select the output to be stereo instead of ambisonic).


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## youngpokie (Jun 17, 2022)

ulrichburke2 said:


> all his pieces with choirs use the same trick but I can't spot it.



To my ears, he's using two main strategies: clever doubling; and individual dynamics that are out of sync.

Doublings: to me it sounds like he's restricting the choir to the mid range, leaving lots of space above and below. Then he pads the choir with very high and low "strings". In other words, he's favoring octave doublings and avoiding direct unison doublings for large stretches and key moments. 

In some prominent spots, he brings in a synth in the same mid range as the choir - but again he's not doubling the choir but using it as just one chord tone, with the choir providing remaining chord tones above. This effect is very powerful - the choir is still identifiable, but it has a subtle difference in sound now and so it remains fresh and distinct. 

The only time I hear him using direct unison doubling is when he creates the echo-like washout: the choir fades out and this synth echo fades in, for just a brief moment, with the exact same chord. 

Dynamics: I also feel like he's riding the dynamics of his "mid section" (choir) differently than the low and high sections and possibly linking reverbs with that. The result is the subtle kaleidoscope effect, with the choir getting in and out of focus without ever disappearing. 

I haven't listened to the whole track, but he seems to be really planning it section by section: maintaining the individuality of "low, mid, high" textures and keeping them interesting by subtle timbral additions, echos, fades, etc.


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