My band, Eighth Day Broken, recently recorded this song using audacity. Just thought I’d share it. I recorded it with a peavey 8 mixer and some really cheap drum mics I found used. Feel free to give me feedback on what I could do better. 
Much thanks,
That came out well. I’ve said many times you can crank out very nice stuff with modest equipment if you pay attention to what you’re doing.
Five minutes of graphics is a little rough. This thing cries out for lip sync. That will also make the graphics last longer. Ever done that? It’s dead easy. Play the finished song on a small sound system (you can do it on earbuds, but that’s harder to hide), and lip sync, or actually sing along if it’s easier for you. That’s the footage you use in the finished YouTube submission.
My favorite ones are the singer on line at the 7-Eleven/Tesco and just suddenly breaks into song. They’re all friends or actors, of course.
What roadie dented your speaker? Did you give them a good thrashing?
Koz
Nice upfront vocals and guitar. Crisp and clean. Nice professional sounding job.
Some points…I’m listening on Sony MDR V6 headphones and I’m feeling the need for a de-esser on the lead vocal. Maybe just a slight (minus 3-6db) roll off at around 16-18kHz with Low Pass filter will do to deal with those raspy “S’s” or maybe find a decent de-esser plugin. Those that might want to crank it up will thank you.
Drums need some clarity and lower bottom end to the high pitched kick drum ( first add some reverb just to the drums track then apply Low Pass filter @ 80Hz/48db on a dupe of the finished stereo, converted to mono channel & mix back into the original stereo that’s had High Pass filter applied at the same 80Hz spec) because the drums sound as if they were recorded in a different environment in contrast to the crisp/clean vocals and guitar.
It would help others if you could outline what part Audacity played in how you arrived at your results.
I agree with Koz on the lip sync tip for video presentation in order to get more YouTube hits.
This is a cool idea (this category). Per Eighth Day Broken: Not sure how anyone gets good sound on Youtube/ not bad though… I think YouTube compresses the hell out of everything --so you’ll lose there. Although ‘everyone’s doin’ it’ and killing high quality music at the same time -imo
It would help others if you could outline what part Audacity played in how you arrived at your results.
Like that essay question you hated in school: “Discuss the American Revolution from the point of view of the parliament of King George III and the Townshend Acts of 1767.”
Include pictures.
Do you have any pictures of what you were doing? I can’t believe a musician could resist publishing selfies on their Facebook page or squarespace. Two or three will do it. How did you mic your drums and how did you arrange the mics for your vocals?
If you don’t have any pictures, what, exactly, were you going to use for your album cover?
And no, we don’t all have a Facebook account.
Koz
What’s your point, Koz, and why did you wait so long to post such an unhelpful response? Plenty of time to come up with something more substantive than that. What’s up with your use of obscure analogies? A long walk for that “Discuss the American Revolution…include pictures” thingy, don’t you think?
As a matter of fact there are tons of YouTube tuts on how to mic a drum kit. Some quite helpful and informative so it’s not like no one can figure out how to get better results than the OP’s. With a bit of info on how the OP placed their mics, it would aid in choosing which tut to link to or other helpful tips. No point covering old ground.
why did you wait so long to post such an unhelpful response?
It wasn’t so long. Apparently, the forum reorg bubbled up this posting as current.
A long walk for that “Discuss the American Revolution…include pictures” thingy, don’t you think?
There are no long walks for good whimsy.
As a matter of fact there are tons of YouTube tuts on how to mic a drum kit.
I’m not interested in tons. I’m interested in how Careless did it. Also vocal micing doesn’t always work out particularly well, especially given the planning and prep:
I recorded it with a peavey 8 mixer and some really cheap drum mics I found used.
Quite a few posters never get any further than that.
Koz
I’m interested in how Careless did it.
Maybe Careless should’ve included that in his discussion on the American Revolution. Should he include pictures? 
Now I’m not sure who you directed the analogy toward. I’m also a bit numbsy on whimsy. Careless is being quite mumsy in getting back to us, wouldn’t you say? 
Maybe my bubbles work better than his do.
Also, to bring this around, twice, I think, maybe he’s too busy creating Great Art to get back to us and publish. Publishing being in the same grind as “Discuss the American Revolution…”
Koz
here’s my latest hacked ipod edit (of a song I improvised)— ugg. it came in clipped—I EQed and rms-ed to -18.7. the EQ seemed to put a lot of hiss in–but without it sounded so flat!! --yes need better equipment–donations appreciated—all advice appreciated 2. happy listening–and listen to the whole song!! download it–share it with your neighbors… send as a Christmas present to your cat.
UPDATE: I 've since removed/rejected this edit. But here is a link to whatever I’m doing now:
https://soundcloud.com/blackdog2016
Equalization and in fact many of the Audacity tools and effects can cause the blue waves to increase — many times into overload territory. That’s why Audacity doesn’t overload as long as you never leave.
If you do insist on exporting your work you need to take steps to make sure your goal or target export doesn’t overload. Both Effect > Normalize and Effect > Amplify will do this. This is where you make sure the blue waves never go over the zero mark.
You can make Audacity show you the overload points with red marks. View > Show Clipping.
Koz
Hey BDB, nice capture off an ipod. But really, 9 minutes of singing the blues in the bathroom? Ever tried Ex-Lax? 
That’s a lot of hiss. Thought I’ld use your downloaded song trying out a different kind of octave chopping type EQ hiss curve I thought about from watching a xiph.org video showing audio engineer Monty’s demonstration EQ’ing noise floor harmonic hiss shaping you can hear/see at the 14 minute mark in this video…
http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
Here’s the screen shots of the two EQ curves…
Apply the first one then, Amplify to 0db and apply the second.
Here’s the Before/After results on what appears to be the most quietest and loudest section which averaged out to -15db RMS according to Wave Stats…
OK, that one’s harder to deal with. Hitting pitch is good while you’re singing. Was it good sh…er “stuff?”
Koz
Hey funny… really funny. AND Interesting redo but I’m still sensing the same trade-off. Less hiss but more boomy-ness. Not sure what happened but that one hisses or will sound muffled (…I’ve spent way too much time trying to tweek it into some kind of brilliance). Well first suspect is “it’s recorded on an iPod!” and second is “in a bathroom,” although I can’t remember where I recorded that one–I do know it was clipped bad. At the recording of course, nothing I would finish as clipping. But regardless I used it/the clipping sort of acted as a limiter and it didn’t seem to sound too distorted. I tried a reedit also: bringing the lows and mids up but it did not sound as good to me. The hissed (posted) version is hissing because I cut lows and mids quite a bit. I think the mid I cut 30db! and low somewhat less.
AND Interesting redo but I’m still sensing the same trade-off. Less hiss but more boomy-ness.
That’s mainly because I Amplified by 5db after applying the first hiss cut EQ. The boomy-ness was already in the audio most likely from the hard reflections singing in the bathroom but you couldn’t hear it because the hiss drowns it out and/or you reduced volume so the hiss was more comfortable to listen to. I don’t see how you could stand listening to the finished version you posted?
This also suggests that you aren’t checking your edits by testing for balance of sound throughout the file’s audio spectrum by increasing volume on your listening device. No one portion of the spectrum should stick out especially hiss when increasing loudness.
We also don’t know what you did to get these results even at the time of capture. A lot of this hiss could be from the ipod’s noise floor being raised so high by applying gain to the entire signal at capture in order to hear what was recorded. Increasing volume on a low voltage signal (line level?) is never going to deliver good results. But we don’t know what you did at the time of capture and in post so it makes it hard to offer fixes that will give desired results.
One suggestion is to reduce boomy-ness by EQ’ing down the portion of the midrange that produces it, but do it slowly and gradually without making the hiss noticeable.
Another suggestion is to just listen to my edited version and not your before version because your ears will adapt to ( or become used to the brighter hiss version sounding normal, similar to eyes adjusting to seeing in the dark) when comparing sound texture of my edited version where I don’t hear this much boomy-ness. I just did this listening test by skipping over your version and just listening to mine after a night’s sleep and I think mine sounds more natural that yours. This isn’t about taste in sound but a physical nature of how humans respond to outside stimuli, in this case the ears. This happens with sight as well as with tasting or smelling food.
As a digital processor of images on a bright calibrated display adaptation is a bitch when editing Raw captures of color images of wide dynamic scenes such as sunsets where I have to walk away from my transmissive display and come back with a fresher eye. If I’ld only done that first I would’ve saved a lot of tweak time for other images.
How did you remove the hiss? I wasn’t clear on that–I assumed with EQ?
Right! Horrble–But I’ve been listening to my stuff in old country blues mixes on my Sansa Clip–so compared to old recordings like Bessie Smith–they don’t seem too bad? I keep reediting to make less horrible/and maybe comparable to old, old, recordings. I hate to scrap them/well Back In The Bathroom–wanted to save that and thought the hiss was better than the un-EQed/flat sound[? I dunno though]. Have to reevaluate that one AGAIN-thanks for the input!–really
okay/–will try --better/but as I said-I considered the hiss a trade-off to the flat-er bassy-er sound/?? with no choice but either or?? But I think youre saying find more of a medium somewhere/with less hiss/I dunno–may be impossible?
Here’s the rawest version–straight from the iPod (AAC file). All I did was EQ really
CANCEL that–it’s not uploading for some reason!!? and part 2 is less than 2MB??? (part one 2.something)–such baloney. I can email to you if you send me a message with your email.
(its PART 1 & 2/I spliced for the finished because the ipod limited the length I could email/I had to email it to extract it from the ipod (my computer is PC) because I wont get iTunes on my computer–theyre too intrusive–don’t like iTunes!/ im listening now to it raw unedited and I think it sounds better than my mangled edit or–it got degraded when I converted it online, to WAV?? )-a tangled web!
-right-thanks. IF YOU’D LIKE See what you can do to this attachment–its the exact as I edited. And I’ll give another go as well. The ipod delivers as compressed–so I had to convert that to WAV/I know-bad to start! but this is just a little/getting bigger hobby of mine
@Tim: Not sure if you wanted to carry on about what you did to correct the hiss on the sample you uploaded… would really like to know–the link did not go through for me–the only clue you left --thanks, Black Dog hissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss 
What link did not go through? My previous “Back In the Bathroom Blues” mp3?
If so, I explained in that post of my applying the two EQ curve seen in the screenshots. You can see the screenshots, right?
Just build them yourself by copying the same points and adjust each point up/down and/or blend those EQ edits back into the original on a duplicate.
Don’t know what else to tell you.
this link: http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
says, require firefox – any way okay–will check that EQ ‘template’/reference–thanks/oh I overlooked the instructions as well–will try.
That’ll just be a message to say that your web browser does not support the video content. It will probably work correctly in most good web browsers - Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Iceweasle, …
If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can probably still view the YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM