Advice for this song?

So I ‘created’ a song, I guess, mixing and sampling from one that I like. I edited to make it sound older and damaged, with the idea of trying to make it sound like vaporwave or something similar to learn how to use the different effects in Audacity. I’m not all too familiar with mixing or producing music so it will most likely sound unprofessional. Aside from that, I’m wondering what else I can do with it; I’ve done almost all what I want to do but it still feels unfinished. I tried making a subtle beat to it but it’s too irregular to keep a constant rhythm. It doesn’t sound bad (to my inexperienced ears, at least) so I guess it can be considered done? I just don’t like leaving things that I know can have some finishing touches on them. What do you guys think?

Here’s the song.

to learn how to use the different effects in Audacity.



I just don’t like leaving things that I know can have some finishing touches on them.

There is no finished. You didn’t start out to do anything.

“I want to remix an existing current song to make it sound like a 1956 45 RPM record.”

We can listen and judge how well you did with that job.

We can’t take effects out of a song to see what you did, so all we know is you applied effects and unless you list them somewhere, we have no way of know what happened. There are several effects that can be made to sound like each other, so we’re a little lost.

Koz

Oh. Sorry about that, I guess it was a little vague. The song I edited was called “Oh Girl” by the Chi-lites. The various effects I used were Amplify, Glame Highpass and Lowpass Filter, Change speed, Sliding time/Scale Pitch Shift and Reverb. Alongside the edited audio is a stereo track of an empty vinyl to add to the ‘old-fashioned’ feel.

In the beginning, I used the Sliding time/SPSR and Amplify(negative units) to warp the audio and break the track. The same is used with the vinyl, which is what you hear with the loud white noise sounds. The song continues on at a slower, deeper tone which was used with Change speed at around -18.00% to -21.00%. The Highpass filter is used to make it sound like it’s emitting from a radio and the Lowpass for it to sound muffled. (I have a feeling they slightly cancelled each other out, if that’s even a thing that can happen…) Throughout the song are a few pitch shifts that I executed and saved, and then immediately afterwards are shifted back to it’s original sound; It loses a bit of fidelity that way. Near the ending is a mixture of Change Speed, Sliding time/SPSR and Amplify again, interspersed to accentuate the ‘instability’ effect. The reverb was only used once at fairly low settings when the actual song begins.

Whether or not this is accurate to a 1956 45 RPM record, I haven’t the slightest clue. My goal at first was to make a ‘vaporwave’ track but that soon shifted as I continued editing, just going along with what I felt best. So I apologize again if that causes any issues, because I don’t think it really fits in a genre.

If the goal was to use Audacity effects, you did.

It loses a bit of fidelity that way.

Fair warning. 44100 sampling rate is only “perfect” out to about 17KHz (out of 20KHz audible) and it carries the difference with tricks and electronic skulduggery. The tricks don’t make any difference until you start shifting speeds and 17KHz musical tones aren’t at 17KHz any more.

This is one of the reasons studios use 96KHz sampling and 24-bit sound. Most of the time it doesn’t make any difference at all, but sometimes it does. 96KHz is “perfect” out to 37KHz audio which isn’t sound, but it’s also perfect above 17KHz (really 16.96 KHz) which is the goal.

Koz

Your warp is a bit too much, IMO. Steve made a “TremVib.ny” plugin which does a more realistic cyclical warp effect,
see … https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/off-center-filter/20260/1
warped 45.png

Ah. Thanks, I’ll make sure to put this to good use. The warp is admittedly harsh, so I’ll try to get more plugins to help me with effects I don’t have to try and recreate myself.

Now, to Koz once more, I’ll have to confess that I got a bit lost reading your response. I’m not very knowledgeable about audio editing, which is why I stuck with the Lowpass/highpass filters and the other aforementioned ones because those were the only ones that I had an idea of what they’d do. With that, it’s probably best I learn more about these things before I try to edit and play with Audacity in the sense that I had been trying to. It might save me some future embarrassment.

Firstly, there’s absolutely nothing embarrassing about learning. Producing good music recordings is a never ending learning experience.

In case you’ve not found it, this is a good page to bookmark in the manual: Index of Effects, Generators, Analyzers and Tools - Audacity Manual
(there is also a link to this page in the left side column: “Effects”)

I would highly recommend playing with all of the shipped effects so as to get a feel for what they do. It can sometimes be ‘educational’ to test effects on generated sounds. For example, applying filters to “White Noise” can give a good idea of what the effect is doing. Applying Reverb or “delay” to a click track works well. Also try the effects on real recordings - some are more effective / noticeable on speech, while others are more relevant to music. “Playing” is one of the best ways to learn (“reading” is another good way - I’d recommend doing both, but especially “playing” :smiley:

Thanks! I’ll definitely try and learn more with experimenting and reading to get the best from both. I suppose these were all something I should’ve had in my resources since I’ve had audacity for a while, though. Sometimes I overestimate what I know when I’m editing, which isn’t a very good habit. But with all of this in mind I’ll keep practicing and eventually make things that I’m content with. :slight_smile: