Dear Anyone.

I'm an instrumental composer, 100% MIDI, can't play anything cos I'm disabled. I've read up about static mixes and setting sound levels but I hit the following probs. just about every track and cannot make the info. work!

I DO understand what things like EQ, Compression, Velocity and Panning DO but as you'll see there's a massive hole in my understanding SOMEWHERES.... OK. Here goes.

So I balance the lovely lead flute, strings, percussion and synth. pad perfectly, flute on top. It sounds great, the flute's on just about zero DB (I read somewhere the lead sound has to be on zero DB), everything nicely around it. Then I want to do a dramatic swell of strings. If I make 'em louder, they don't sound dramatic, they suddenly just sound a lot CLOSER to the flute as though the whole orch's. on rollerblades and have skated closer as one. And now they're clipping because the carefully worked out, pre-orchestral-swell levels have changed. So I try making the flute quieter to give the ILLUSION the orchestra's louder (we-e-e-lll, synth pads and strings orch, not talking full-on-Garritan here!) And the flute vanishes in the orchestra. So I use extra EQ to make a bigger hole for the flute and that works a BIT till I hit the next paragraph....

....which is - what if I want to change the lead instrument? I want - say - a keyboard to play lead for a bit. Now I've carefully E.Q.'d everything for the flute. It sounds great with the flute. It all sounds pretty (censored!) with the keyboard, because it was setup for the flute. So I redo all the sound balancing so it sounds OK with the keyboard in that respect but not overall because the holes have been E.Q'd in the wrong places, the EQ was for the flute! So I have to have TWO instances of all the backing instruments, one instance for the flute, one for the keyboards, EQ and everything set individually for both, which again works somewhat until I hit the next paragraph....

....Which is you're now listening to 2 different pieces. One piece with everything EQ'd and set up for a flute, one piece with everything EQ'd and set up for a keyboard. All the backing instruments suddenly jump, tonally and in volume level, from sounding great with flute to great with keyboard. It sounds like the band have chucked their old instruments and got new ones, 3 mins or whatever into the track! And if I go back from keyboard to flute as main instrument, it immediately sounds like they've chucked their new instruments and gone back to their old ones again!!

Now nobody else seems to have those problems. And I have flat no idea WHY nobody else seems to have those problems, I can't EVER do a piece without smacking straight into them all. Even if it's a fake rock track and someone's given me a vocal, I can make the band sound OK with the vocal (the 'band' is me and VSTs don't forget, nothing for-real) but the moment the guitar does its Steve Vai bit, the drums all sound wrong cos I've EQ'd them for the vocal. Does everyone end up with about 6 instances of each backing instrument to use in different parts of a track!?! Is that why everyone talks about grouping tracks, etc., BECAUSE they have to have so many instances of different instruments for different parts of a track, for the above reasons?

Love to know where my thinking's wrong here, I know it is but can't find any info. on this, which tells me it's not a common problem, but I don't know WHY it isn't a common problem!

Yours frustratedly

Chris.

 

I think you need reverberation. Make 3 buses with short, medium, & long reverberation. Then send instruments to each as appropriate.

 

If you want to place your (orchestral) instruments in different depth maybe this helps
https://www.parallax-audio.com/

I just had a listen to Garritan's PO 5 and it sounds rather dry, so adding some reverb could help.
To make an instrument more upfront use less early reflections and longer predelay, to place it more in the background do the opposite.
The main key is not different length of reverb (there is only one length in a given room) but it's amount of ER/reverb and predelay.

Imagine a real orchestra. If you have a tiny little flute as the lead instrument and want to make a dramatic swell with the (complete) string section, this swell either has to be done with very low velocity or the flute gets drowned completely, this is just normal.

Digging a hole in the whole orchestra for one single lead instrument does not work (as you already experienced), therefore no one is doing this.
You have to emphasise the most characteristic frequencies for the lead instrument and attenuate this range a bit in the most clashing instruments.
You can also use the Free TDR Nova (https://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-nova/) and use it's dynamic section with lead intrument as sidechain to lower some freqs in the clashing instruments.

If your DAW or your (fx) plugins clips at 0dB you should not adjust the lead instrument to the max level but the whole band/orchestra and this level should be around -4dB or lower for saftey purposes and some space to raise an instrument or a frequency.
That advice was really bad.