In our recent article about compression in audio recording, you learned what compression actually means. There’s even a video (but don’t pay attention to the messy book case, which has been cleaned up since then)! Basically it is a way to even out the loudness levels in your audio. This is sort of like using a trash compactor on your audio waveform, which then allows you to turn it up louder before the loudest bit of audio hits the limit for maximum volume.
But why would you want to do this? Is having louder audio always a good thing? Well, that depends on who you ask. And you definitely don’t want to over-use compression because too much tends to give you odd audio weirdness like pumping or extra sibilance. But here is an article that will show you some ways to use a compressor for extra punch and presence in your audio. The article focuses a bit more on music than voice over recording, but the concepts are the same.
Read the article here: http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/guerrilla_recording_compression/
audio editing
Auto-Tune – Any Tool Can Be Abused
Has anyone else gotten a little tired of singers on the radio sounding so pitch-perfect that it sounds more like a machine than a human? Me too. It has to do with the over-use and abuse (in my mind) of pith corrections tools, such as Melodyne and Auto-Tune.
Now let me go on record right now as a fan of Auto-Tune. It’s a tool. When a singer puts out a recording, I believe they have a responsibility to ensure the performance is good.
For a singer, that means in tune, on-key, on pitch, however you want to describe it. When you sing live, if you’re good enough to be a pro, you should be good, yes. But humans will inevitably be imperfect and may even hit one or two downright off-key notes here and there. But when it’s live, it’s fleeting.
As an audience member you may or may not even notice. If you do, you’ll probably forget it 5 seconds later. Not true for recordings! When fans are listening to the same performance over and over again, those one or two wonky notes will grate on them.
Before there was Auto-Tune, it was common practice to have a singer sing a track 3 or more times so the engineer could “comp” (short for composite) one vocal track made up of the best pieces from all three tracks. Is this any more genuine than fixing it after the fact with tuning software? My answer is that if the singer can bring it live, then no, it is no more genuine to use Auto-Tune than it is to comp a track.
In fact, I have found that if a singer knows things can be tightened up after the fact, they are more likely to sing without worry or stress. Studio singing often makes singers too careful and they don’t give their best performance. So the very idea of Auto-Tune can actually help the singer sing better before a single note has been “fixed!”
However, what seems to be happening is that engineers and producers are over-doing the Auto-Tune thing. They wash every note through a program that snaps all the notes to a pitch grid. It results in an unnatural sounding vocal. I think that is wrong. It may take longer, but I firmly believe that tuning should only be applied to specific (and infrequent if the singer is decent) notes that missed the mark. That way it sounds like an actual human sang the note, not a machine.
It may take longer, but I firmly believe that tuning should only be applied to specific (and infrequent if the singer is decent) notes that missed the mark. That way it sounds like an actual human sang the note, not a machine.
The other use of Auto-Tune lately is as an effect, a la T-Pain or the Songify-type applications made popular by things like Auto-Tune The News. This is a totally different thing. It isn’t trying to make you think someone can sing better than they can. It’s just trying to create a funky sound to add creativity or something different, although as common as it has become, I don’t think “different” is the right word. I say go for it when it comes to that. It allows people to get funky and be creative.
So there you have it. Auto-Tune is a tool like any other. I love what it can do for singers. But as with any other tool, in the wrong hands it can be ugly.
Cover of "That Thing You Do" – Record a Rock Song on Your Computer
I just recorded a cover of the song, That Thing You Do, (written by Adam Schlesinger). And I recorded it from scratch on my computer-based home recording studio right here in a spare bedroom. The band consisted of me, me, me, me, me and me:-P. The reason I did it, besides just loving the song and always wanting to, was to demonstrate what kind of thing can be done in a very modest home recording studio.
Before I talk about how I did it and what equipment I used, take a listen to how it came out!
I intend to follow up with a more complete step-by-step how-to, along with a video tutorial later this week. But here are the basics.
Sound Sources
- Voices – All me (a twisted version of narcissism?). I double-tracked the lead vocal to get that Beatlesque sound. I also sang the two harmony parts and double-tracked each of them. So there are 6 voice tracks in all.
- Guitars – Carvin DC200, 1985 model. I used this same guitar for both guitar parts. If I had vintage Rickenbackers I would have used those, but you work with what you’ve got.
- Bass – A Samick LB-11 4-string bass guitar I bought used in 1995.
- Drums – All sampled drum sounds (meaning “I don’t have a drum kit”) from an acoustic kit in the virtual instrument software package called StormDrum, by EastWest.
How Was It Recorded?
I used Reaper software to record it all. I started with the drum track. I created a MIDI track and loaded StormDrum onto it as a virtual instrument. Then I listened very carefully to the original recording of the song from the movie soundtrack. That allowed me to build the drum part hit-by-hit using the MIDI editor in Reaper.
Next, I recorded the bass track by plugging my Samick into a Line 6 POD Studio GX, which is a little box you can plug electric guitars and basses into. The POD then attaches to your computer via USB, and you use the Line 6 software to choose amps and effects to get the right sound.
Then I recorded the electric guitar parts the same way as the bass. I recorded 2 parts/tracks, one panned to the left and played as the “rhythm guitar” part. The other guitar was panned to the right and played with the little riff happening during the verses.
And Finally…
Last but not least, I recorded the lead vocal. As I mentioned, I sang it once on one track, and then recorded it again (listening to the 1st in the headphones) on a second track to get that double-tracked sound. I did the same thing with the low harmony part and panned it to the left, and the high harmony part, panned to the right. All vocals were recorded with the Rode NT2-A microphone hooked up to the computer via a USB audio interface – the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 interface box.
You can get started with a bundle I created for B&H Audio called The Home Recording Musician’s Starter Kit. CLICK HERE for more details on that.
Then I mixed and panned everything to make sure the sounds could all be heard and rendered (mixed down) the result into one audio file, which is what you heard above.
Check back here in a few days and you should find a bit more detail and a video.
Now go forth and record your own pop or rock songs!
Cheers,
Ken
EQ Tip: Cut Narrow But Boost Wide
When using EQ to shape you sounds, there are all kinds of words-of-wisdom and rules-of-thumb from the gurus. Some say you should avoid boosting any frequency, but instead focus only on reducing (“cutting”) at target frequencies. Yet another tip is cut (reduce) narrow, boost wide. That means that when you reduce, use only narrow bandwidths but when you turn things up, us wide bandwidths.
Here is an article that discusses the merits of that last bit of EQ advice:
http://www.hometracked.com/2008/01/31/eq-cut-narrow-boost-wide/
How To Quickly and Accurately Cut, Copy or Paste Parts of a Song
Whether you are recording your own music or working with a music file that already exists (usually a royalty free music clip for background music), there are many times when it is useful to cut, copy, and maybe paste sections of a song. Here are just a few of the more common reasons for needing to do that, just off the top of my head:
- Shorten or lengthen a song to make it fit a presentation, video or voice-over production
- Building a song by copying repetitive sections (entire bars or sets of bars) and pasting them
- Fixing a problem in a song you are recording (for me it’s usually guitar buzzing I use this for) by clipping the same chunk of music from another part of the song and replacing the problem section.
When working with music files, it is important that any edits you make do not mess with the timing. Otherwise it will be jarring to the listener. If you want to slice up a song, say, to make it fit a video, you want it to sound seamless in terms of the beat of the song. One excellent tool for doing this is the snap tool. This is a pretty common tool for editing both audio and video. In the picture on the left is where to find the tool in Reaper.
Snap To
The idea of snapping is simple enough. It is a way to ensure the edges of an item can only be be moved and placed so that they align with a grid. In the case of audio, that grid is frequently bars and beats, though you can change the grid to be other things, like minutes and seconds, etc. For our purposes in this article, we want to make sure we use bars and beats. In Reaper (see picture on the left), simply right-mouse click in the band across the top of the screen to change the grid settings.
The next important thing is ensure the song is aligned with that grid. When you’re recording your own music, this is not an issue as long as you are recording to the metronome which you set in the song project settings. And I HIGHLY recommend that you do that if at all possible. It makes things much easier in the long run.
If you have imported a song already recorded, you will have to do a few things to get its beats on the grid of the audio software. You’ll have to do a little trial and error, first setting the correct time signature for the song, then using the metronome and experimenting with the beats-per-minute setting until the song matches. Ironically, you’ll want to make sure the snap tool is turned off while you do this, so you can freely drag the song on the track to line up the visible beats to the grid.
Fixing Example
Once the song is matched to the grid, you’re free to copy, cut and/or paste and have the result be musically correct. Let’s take an example of when you need to correct a mess-up in the middle of your song (like my guitar buzz).
1. Just go to another part of the song with the same guitar chord playing without a buzz, and select the beat or beats containing that section. Make absolutely certain that the snap tool is turned ON when you do this.
2. Next, you click in the selected section and right-mouse-click to open the drop-down menu and select “copy selected area of item.”
3. Now open a blank track underneath the song track (you can see this in action in the picture at the top left of the article). This isn’t strictly necessary, but I find it helps to line things up BEFORE pasting into the song, which can save you lots of time and headaches. Paste the bit you copied into the blank track right underneath the buzzing guitar part. You may have to drag it left or right to m
ake sure you line it up just right. Again, the snap tool needs to be ON at this point.
4. Next, click on the song at the beginning of the beat that has the guitar buzz and hit the “S” key on your keyboard to insert a split in the song file.
5. Now drag the left edge of the section with the guitar buzz in it to the right, creating a blank space where you will insert the part you are pasting. Things should now look like the picture to the left.
6. Now all you have to do is drag the pasted bit from the audio you pasted in the spare track up into the blank space. Having the snap tool on will ensure it doesn’t slip or slide to either side when doing this, which is a common problem when you don’t have snapping enabled.
7. The final step here is to make sure things sound smooth and seamless. Turn the snapping tool off (yes, OFF) and drag the edges of the new part you just pasted in a little left and right. Since cross-fading is turned on automatically in Reaper, this will allow the sounds to blend a little more smoothly. Otherwise the abrupt implanting of a different section might sound a bit jarring, creating clicks or pops at the borders. Cross-fading will help eliminate that problem.
And that’s it! It may sound a bit involved, but the entire process only takes about 30 seconds, which is usually a lot faster than having to play the part again.
Now you can use the same steps to remove parts from a song. Just select (with snapping turned ON) the part you want gone, hit the delete button on your keyboard and it’s gone. Now you can drag the part on the right back to join up with the song part on the left (closing the hole in the audio). Of course, if you had ripple-editing turned on, the part on the right would automatically be pulled to the left to join the two parts up.
If you want to make a song longer, just select a part of the song you want to repeat, usually a full measure, and paste it at the end of the song. Do this as many times as you need to in order to make the song as long as you need it to be.
Hopefully this simple tip of using the snap tool will help you cut, copy and paste bits of songs to your heart’s content.