Surfer EQ Pitch Change as sidechain?

SurferEQ
1

Hey there, wanted to ask if you can sidechain not only by volume but if the pitch of the internal instrument changes, e.g. to emphasise a walking bass. Sometimes the volume is so close to each other notes that there happens no sidechain. THank you!

2

Hi @Chrisi2378,

Welcome to the forum!

When sidechain is enabled, SurferEQ follows the sidechain’s pitch.
You can also fine-tune the detection using the ‘Pitch Detection’ and ‘Pitch Tollerance’ controls at the bottom of the UI.

The Sidechain can accept audio and MIDI information.
You can create a dedicated MIDI track or use an existing one and have it feed SurerEQ’s sidechain.
More info here: https://assets.soundradix.com/downloads/SurferEQ%202%20Manual.pdf

I hope that answers your question, if there’s anything else I can help with, let me know.
Thanks,
Oran

3

THank you Oran! So if i understood it right i will need to go for a workaround to let surfer EQ dynamically rise the volume every time it recognizes a note change, as so far it can do it only by volume check or sidechain. Having midi and use it as sidechain would solve the “issue” but i work most of the time on real bass audio.
Can you write any data automation out of the plugin to be able to catch the pitch/note changes and use it as a trigger? There maybe another solution.

Thanks alot!

4

Hi Chrisi,

To help us better understand your use case, could you please describe in detail what you’re trying to do with SurferEQ?
If you’d like to send us your project to [email protected], we’d be happy to go over it.

Thanks,

Oran

5

Yeah sure, appreciate your help.

For example i got a walking bass here with a quite easy line playing, not many notes. I try to use SurferEQ to emphasis the attack and/or release of each note he is playing by using the dynamic upward function of SurferEQ( the one if you click GTE once ). Triggering by volume doesn’t work for 100% because volume is sometimes too constant while the bass is playing different notes. But the pitch detector seems to be more precise in detection of another note is beeing played, not dependend by volume.
So it’s just about getting the upward function triggered each time the next note is detected.
Hope you understand.

I can get a really cool groovy bass with that upward function, but as i said so far only by volume detection which doesn’t work on every note change.

Thanks

6

Hi @chrisi2378 ,

Thanks for the explanation and sorry for the delayed response - it took some time to find an elegant way to boost only the attack of the note. Luckily for us, we have @Nir on our team, he pointed me out to a cool plugin.

Check out TheZhe’s free TheSplit plugin (VST3/AU).
Using TheSplit, you can split the transient and sustain parts of your bass track and then process only the transients with SurferEQ. I tried this on a bass part and it worked quite well.
In my case, I lowered SurferEQ’s Pitch Threshold for it to successfully track all the notes.

I hope this helps. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at [email protected].

Thanks and have a great weekend,

Oran

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7

Nice! Will try Split, thank you very much. Cheers Chris

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