I love working with Patcher and I was looking for a way to kinda fade or switch between whole segments of my project, which mostly even have different EQ settings and or compression methods, I just like to have everything in one place to reduce the amount of different automations being used for each channel in my track. So I decided to build my own 'DryWet' fader / switch. I cannot find the right name for it, because it can act as a tool for many things when it comes to mixing or even mastering:
- It can handle 8 individual tracks that you can fade between without the loss of volume or quality of each track
(as long as you're using for example Maximus with linear-phase filters, which also is not always a must. Or Parametric EQ with oversampling turned off)
- For each track you can set a different amount of compression, EQ setting, effects like reverb, delay and so on...
- There are two knobs, one will act like a fader between your desirded tracks (good for fading into different segments of your song e.g. from intro to refrain), the other one will act as a switch (can be usefull for that as well, or for example as a mixing tool to quickly switch between different instruments, could be something like dubstep, trap etc..)
- You could use this as sidechain effect tool, for example you put the kick on track 1 and the rest of your instruments on track 2 and compress/eq them individually and then use an automation to fade between these
- You could just try to play around with the automation and form it the way you like which can result in very interesting and new patterns / effects
- Each track goes through its own 'container (patcher)' and can have its own plugins inside to keep better visual track of whats going on
- The way it is chained normally would be to route all your instruments into master as a sidechain (volume down at master channel) and then load the DryWet Switch preset.
After that you would activate any output you like and assign them to one or more of the 8 tracks you want to fade between. For example you just want to fade between a piano and a synth sound of your likings, you would assign your instrumentals to track 1 and track 2 so they will not dissappear while fading between the tracks. Then you assign the piano to track 1 and the synth to track 2 and now you can fade switch between them.
- The tracks are named as 'states' . Originally I only wanted to fade between different compression styles or EQ settings only, but I figured out you can do a lot more with that.
- I found it a lot easier to do transitions by applying certain settings to a whole group of instruments and then fade between them, it will also allow to keep focus on making things sound great first, balancing out individual instruments to easily blend after.
- It helps a lot to split the workload like that by letting one compressor do the work for let's say the entire melody stuff, bassline etc and let the other compressor do the work for the kickdrum and then fade between them, it usually enables you to max them out a lot easier and helps to keep them still in balance
So basically you're fading through different states that you have prepared before.
I made an example track, just don't focus on how it sounds (it is awkward...), but rather than that it can give you an idea what it can make possible
Just play the project and watch the knob moving, maybe play around a little as well to see what it does. This is the flp:
It has an older version of the patcher preset. If you like the idea, download this though, only this will have the switch inside:
I am not sure if something like this exists already, I pretty much just build everything I need on my own... 