Today we’re going to have a look at the Mattertone plugin. Mattertone is a multiband envelope shaper, and thus it’s a great tool for emphasizing (or taming) transient-heavy material like drums, for instance. However, we will do something a little unusual and apply the plugin to a synth bass. As you’ll soon find out this will not only tidy up the sound, but also provide it with more definition, and hence assertiveness.
Here’s the original example track:
Envelope shapes
Mattertone should be placed onto the synth track. We have three bands in total to work with: one for the lower, one for the mid, and one for the higher frequencies. In short, we will give the highs more room to breathe, reduce the mids, and eventually provide the lows with more impact. Therefore we set the first row of controls as follows: ATTACK, one o’clock; RELEASE, all the way up; FREQ, 8,000Hz. The second row would be: ATTACK, zero; RELEASE, ten o’clock; FREQ, 3,900Hz. And finally the last row: ATTACK, all the way up; RELEASE, all the way down; FREQ, 300Hz.
In case you increased the overall level during the process you can always lower it again with the big VOLUME knob.
The interface of the plugin should now look something like this:
The result
As we now listen back to the sample song, you will hear that the synth sounds a lot cleaner, yet is more present in the mix.
You can download the preset for Mattertone here: Mattertone_Synth_Shaping_Preset.FXP