A before/after comparison would have been really cool

The mixing part of this is as excellent as always but the video production is also crazy good. The way you overlaid the frequency spectra was just so perfect! Sound effects, close-ups, zoom-ins,... awesome!!!

havent seen your videos in a while and oh my god the production values and editing you've implemented are insane. the hard work is showing man! keep it up!

I’ve been mixing and producing for 15 years and this just blew my mind !

this is the best use of Soothe 2 I've ever seen and I'm going to try this. Hats off to this man. I've rarely used Soothe 2 since I bought Pro Q 3.

For those that don't own soothe but want to try out a free form of this (and simple), check out TDR Nova. You can sidechain with it, and use the dynamic eq bands to affect whichever areas you would like, with whichever q.

Seriously thank you so much for these guides, tremendously helpful and right to the point

You have opened my mind to so much with your courses and training methods, thank you so much for the value you bring to the community. You are creating artists! It’s people like you that make the world a better place with better music. Nobody should have to struggle when it comes to learning music production. Thank you again!

This is like the most important mixing tip ever. I feel like everyone should learn this right off the bat but almost no one does. Thanks for this.

:DDDD I am crying, what a great transition: "but if I were to do an AD...." Love this trick, kinda forgot about it so thanks for the reminder! You are the most straightforward and informative mixing channel out there! 💕

This has been one of the best and most useful things I've learned so far, and I thought it was such an important topic. I really appreciate you taking the effort to teach it for free. I'm truly a big fan now, thank you so much for your help, and I will definitely purchase your course. You're the man!! ❤👑🚀

Big Z you really are Great man! Thanks!

This is fire. It makes so much more sense to use soothe instead of a dynamic eq! Excellent tip!

Excellent explanation of one of my favourite techniques! More dynamic version of bus splitting and phase inversion of the copied vocal, or master bus compression/creating instrumental duck side-chained to vocal.

literally the best technique!! Thanks

NICE!! Thanks as always for the GREAT info!

Thanks for this! It took me awhile but I figured out how to do this in Ableton: Set up a Return Track, toggle the Post/Pre button to Pre Turn down the Return track to -inf Route your vocal track to the Return Track; all the way up to zero Put Soothe2 on your Instrument Group Sidechain it to the Return track, Post FX (this is in the Audio Effects bar at the bottom, not in the Plug-in window itself) In the Plug-in view of Soothe2, turn on the Sidechain button From there, you should be able to toggle the Delta button on and off to hear the vocals--this is easier to hear if you solo the Instrument group AND the Return track

Very useful info to share for people learning to mix or producing their own Pop style tracks with loads of synths etc. Soothe is great but also so is Trackspacer for around £50. A thought I had which might be useful to share here: techniques like this are most relevant for 'modern Pop, EDM, Dance Pop' and genres that are super slick, sonically dense and full of layers of synths. BUT if you actually work on arrangements that minimise masking (the problem being solved by the technique in this vid), then side-chain EQ, dynamic EQ / multi-band compression etc don't really need to be used as much. The most experienced of the Pro mixers (and probably those close to dinosaur age) will always talk about the fact the mixing starts with the arrangement. Well-arranged tracks mix themselves - it's a principle that goes back to older times, but still holds true. Listen to the tone of the singer's voice and the other main focal points and choose other sounds (synths, guitars etc) the complement them and don't mask them. Also, if you leave space in your arrangement for the vocal to breath, the music is much easier to mix. But again, most modern Dance Pop isn't made like that - some is though. Just listen to Billie Eilish production. So clean!

really enjoying your mixing academy course!!!

OH MY GOD, I really appreciate the way you teach ❤️

I use trackspacer. It's great. Send the vocal through a send to the backing music. Move the high and low pass towards the kids so you don't lose the sheen on top or the bottom, but carve out the kids you need for vocal clarity.

nice! I also like to use soothe to sidechain any reverb/delay i have on the vocal, really convenient way of carving out space for the vox especially in a wet mix.

Love the way you slid that ad in there. Iconic.

😲 wow!!! That's golden! Thanks ✨️

Super good content man your videos are getting super pro as well.... Worth mentioning that if you use soothe 2 in 'mid side mode' instead of left/right for vocal carving, you could have your instruments 'wrap around the vocal' better. Just adjust the balance to be 20-30% side the rest mainly mid where your vocal sits 🧡🧡

Great tip!!! Works the same as trackspacer but with much more precision on the frequencies. Thanks

DUDE YOU ARE SO AWESOME THIS IS NEXT LEVEL - TRULY AMAZING DUDE!!

Absolutely brilliant trick

Your content is one of the best and precise. No long videos just to the point content that is easy to understand thanks for helping out the community ❤

His editing to make the complex things seem so simple is underrated 🔥

DAMN. can't wait to try this.

Awesome use of the plugin. Great idea. Love your stuff.

I LOVE THAT YOU KEEP IT SHORT AND SIMPLE. IM TIRED OF CLICKING ON VIDEOS AND WAITING 10 MINUTES FOR SOMEONE TO EXPLAIN SIMPLE THINGS LIKE THIS!! THANK YOU

I would suggest turning the “quality” from 1x to 4x when doing this technique. I have noticed some artifacts in my instrumental channel while at 1x, but switching to 4x preserves my mix. Great video man! Keep it up!

insane ! Thank you !

Thanks a lot for this tip!! I will implement it in my future tracks 🔥🔥

Top notch content, as always. I always learn so much from you. Thanks Big Z! Much love from South Africa! 🎧

You can go further by using mid side unlinking OR Stereo unlinking to focus the effect

Thats really cool next level stuff man. Thank you

Nice!

Hard ratios are key to making this work. In Rock music with heavy guitars, I tend to duck the high mids the most, but with a very high ratio so it pretty much dips -1.5dB with every part of the vocal rather than just the loudest parts. I like how you do this in Soothe quite hard then limit to 2-3dB reduction via the main knob. Same kinda effect but much more precise than dynamic EQ or multiband comp. I might have to get it!

This is basically similar to what I do with TDR Nova. I send the vocal bus to unused channels in Reaper and use those as the sidechain reference in Nova. This will work with pretty much any dynamic EQ or multi-band compressor and it’s great for mixing to premade beats when you can’t adjust anything to carve out the space manually even if you wanted to. You only really need to do it on any frequencies that are actively obscuring the vocal too much and not every single space the vocal exists. I usually do somewhere in the mids and around 5khz since those are usually spots that clash with vocal clarity and depth.

Thanks so much! Really subtle but almost perfectly carves the vocals out without having to worry too much about compromising the instrumental. Think it may have been helpful to share what you're looking for in sharpness and sens but I kinda felt it out, by the end I could really hear the separation a lot better.

Awesome!

I like this approach. I'm more interested in using it strictly with instrumental music processing the guitars, bass, drums, or synths (etc.) in place of the vocals. Could be a wash but experimentation will be done for sure. Thanks for the tutorial fam.

This one is def a bit advanced but the result sounds amazing. I think I figured out how to do this a bit using Izotope plugins that let you unmask a track in the same manner. The plugin is chained throughout, so they can speak to each other in the same manner. Not familiar with the side chain process or what it does too well though, but I think I just gotta watch the video a few more times.

been trying to do this for months thank you

Bro, I just watched this video and when I saw what you did, my mind went crazy! Thank you so much for this tip. I’ll be taking a peep at your course my dude. Again, thank you!

Love this trick! Would you mind explaining the reason for creating a vocal bus with no output and why you wouldn’t just sidechain to the vocal track directly?

You can do the exact same thing with "Trackspacer" just by adding a Sidechain Input from the Vocal to the Instrumental Group. No "Ghost Group" needed. But Soothe is such a crazy Plugin.

I NEVER would have thought to use sooth2 for this. I'm really impressed. Thank you

This is literally the best thing I've seen. Hella helpful, now I'm also excited for my music😂😂. Thank you🙏

I've been doing this for years but this is the best explained video of it I've ever seen. I also use TrackSpacer for this instead of Soothe. Soothe only lowers resonant parts of the audio (as heard in your example) whereas TrackSpacer doesn't make that distinction. Any reason why you'd want only the resonant frequencies to duck? Also, I'm always surprised as how hard I can push the trackspacer in this sidechain mode, if I mute the vocals the instrumental sound very wobbly and strange but with the vocals on it's perfectly natural :) One just needs to remember to disable this stuff when bouncing out instrumentals...

I use this technique with smart:comp's spectral ducking. It's an interesting idea to use Soothe instead, but since it's finding resonant frequencies rather than the straight frequency content of the sidechain, I'm not sure it's a better way. I will try the two side-by-side for myself. Always interesting to see a different take!

Amazing tutorial. So easy to understand. Thank you so much!

thank you so much!! this is so helpful and cool

I do this with trackspacer for the same effect. Just really nice to have a tool in one's arsenal that can sidechain EQ duck one channel from another. Absolutely essential imo. Btw you don't have to do the send bit in Ableton, if you're in that DAW, since you have an option of sending sidechains pre or post fx.

I'm boutta bus 😫

that is extremeeely cool and useful!!

oh man, your content is gold!!

i knew what this was going to be but actually that soothe Delta Vocoder sound is really sick i'm definitely going to try that as a vocal effect with different backing sounds LOL

I like doing this with just vocals sc the chords and leads. Don’t want my bass getting any sidechain compression from the vocal.

Really amazing idea!

Great video as always! 🙏🏽

Trackspacer.

Thank you for the advice, Big Z. I didn't realize there was such a powerful plugin for mixing. A small technical question: do you include your reverbs, delays, and other special effects in your instrumental bus before applying Dynamic EQ, or do you keep them outside of the processing?

that was so easy to follow and so concisely explained. thanks so much!

THAT was amazing!!!

I'm curious about how this would be done in fl studio. Someone shine a light upon me please?

I believe that if you use Soothe for this, it would result in only the problematic resonant frequencies of the vocal being cut into the instrumental. Rather than the full vocal. Whereas something like trackspacer would make a space for the full vocal. Anyone else have any thoughts on this? Maybe it was the goal to only cut the resonances?

Amazing Big Z

wow ! this is pure magic, thxxxxx

Just like trackspacer lol

Spectral sidechaining has become a LAW in music production, if you wanna go pro, you must master this! Thnx for the content 🤓

Gonna try this, the man!

Awesome and simple. Much appreciated

Love your videos but not sure about this one especially with Rock or Pop. We should mix to make things sound like they belong together and not necessarily for separation. To me the before sounded more glued together. Sometimes dirty and clashing sounds better than separated. Love your content again and your course line was sleek as hell lol

How do you do this is FL Studio? I can't sidechain the plugin (soothe 2) to the vocals any help would mean a lot, thanks!

Great lesson thanks!

This is so sick bro! Amazing tips

That's so clever. How would you do this in FL Studio though?

why do you even create a send for the lead vocal at @1:29? Why not just add soothe2 onto your instrumental bus and sidechain it right to to the lead vocal audio channel "vox"?

it sounds amazing

Great technique, explained well and executed concisely! :)

Trackspacer is a $60 plug-in that is specifically made to do this

If you ask me trackspacer is an better solution but both ways will work. For me personally trackspacer sounds better on such stuff.

u nailed it well done

omfg i needed this thanks

Dude, you have to stop the upspeak. It's unbearable. DON'T trail your voice upward at the end of each sentence like you're asking a question. There are great videos on KZfaq on how to stop upspeak. Your videos will be much better received and you'll sound like an adult versus a child's inflection asking for permission with your voice trailing upward like you're asking a question instead of confidently speaking a statement as all good speakers do. You can do it and you'll never go back once you realize this. Thanks for the good video.

This is amazing tip! Thank you.

THIS IS AWESOME THANKS SO MUCHHH

so awesome! thx for sharing

Quite a difference from start to finish. Well done😊

Awesome advice!! 🔥

Very useful thank you, need to apply this to my tracks 🤝

How did I not remember to do that?? Great tip!! And great content, by the way. Thanks a lot for sharing.

This is god like!!! ive come to this video by suggestion, i think this is the best suggestion youtube gave me! this is amazing! i didnt nkow i needed this till now, now i cant live without it XD epic job dude!

Thanks enjoyed that great tip Big Z

Beautiful done

Thanks for sharing!