#1

Here’s what I’m trying to do. Maybe it can be done before the DAW, but I don’t see a simple method. I’m recording the same guitar pass onto 2 tracks, one clean and one with distortion/fuzz. I want to combine them into one thing with judicious editing, but most importantly, to start with I want them to both have the same amplitude envelope. The distorted track will always have more sustain. I’d like it to decay as the clean track does. Maybe I’m missing something obvious here. With a modular synth I’d have the clean track patched into an envelope follower and have the envelope modulate a VCA that the distorted track passed through. I’ve been away from DAW land for quite few years so I’m rusty to put it mildly… any help would be greatly appreciated. Happy Holidays, everyone, BTW.
EDIT - I’m using the latest Logic.

#2

Not sure what DAW you’re using, but Max for Live has an envelope follower device that may do just the thing you’re looking for.

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#3

+1 Max4Live Envelope follower!

#4

If you have a gate plugin that has sidechain capabilities you can put the gate on the distorted track and sidechain it to the clean track. Will probably involve fine tuning the attack and decay.

#5

My first thought was sidechaining a gate on the distorted channel. The gate might close quickly and not follow the envelope of the acoustic envelope, so you will need to work out how to A/B the two channels to make sure it’s the same envelope on both sounds…

#6

iirc Reaper has a built-in envelope follower on each track which you can route to anything that is automatable. Even if you don’t plan to use Reaper beyond that it might be worth getting the trial version (which is fully working and does not expire) for things like this.

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#7

Not sure about Logic but for reference the Ableton Gate plugin has sidechain too. Works great and has attack, hold, release and floor params.