I am new to Audacity so I’m not sure if this is the correct location for this post.
I have a song that was already recorded with vocal and instrumental. The song has two tracks, one for Vocal and the other for instrumental.
I need help with changing the instrumental for the vocal. I need to add the vocal to a different instrumental / Beat.
I have the vocals for the song and I need to add it to completely different instrumental (BPM, speed and tempo) and align the vocals so it sounds seamless.
Any help that can be provided will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
The song has two tracks, one for Vocal and the other for instrumental.
Is it a Stereo track? Vocals on the left and music on the right? If so, Use the drop-down menu on the left > Split Stereo to Mono. That will give two mono tracks (no more Left and Right). Open the new tracks in Audacity. They should appear under the original tracks. Audacity will play everything at once unless you stop it with the MUTE and SOLO buttons.
Push the tracks around with the time shift tools (two sideways black arrows) and change duration with Effect > Change Tempo until everything matches.
Audacity will push everything together into one song when you export. Save Project will retain all the original tracks, but will not save UNDO.
Note you shouldn’t be using MP3 anywhere in this dance. Every time you use MP3 in a production the quality goes down. You can slow the speed that the sound falls apart, but you can’t stop it. Use WAV (Microsoft) 16-bit for everything until you want to post on-line or listen on you personal music player. Then make the MP3 with the WAV file as your edit master.
Also note that Audacity can’t take a mixed song apart into individual voices, instruments, and sounds. Even if you have a mixed song and the vocals by themselves, the chances of splitting everything apart cleanly is not quite zero.
I already split the tracks to mono, delete the instrumental, added the new instrumental but I was not sure how to align the vocals to the new instrumental.
Thank your very much… I will try your recommendation and let you know the results.
Still a beginner of a few months. Several years have passed… is this still true? I can dupe tracks, play around with EQ and highlight different things Hi/Med/Lo but when guitar, keys and vox sit in same bands there is nothing approaching ‘clean’. Wondering about using dynamic floors and clip and noise tools to isolate the louder instruments for boost or cuts?
For live recordings to most low end folks rely on the sound board mixer of source and keep digital massage to minimum?
Wondering about using dynamic floors and clip and noise tools to isolate the louder instruments for boost or cuts?
No, dynamic processing doesn’t really help with isolation.
Dynamics are is pretty-much a one-way street… Dynamic compression makes the loud parts quieter and/or the quiet parts louder, bringing everything towards the same loudness. In practice it’s mostly used to “push down” the loud peaks and then make-up gain is used to make “everything loud”. Limiting is a kind of fast-compression and again it’s mostly used to push-down the peaks and with make-up gain to make everything loud.
The opposite - Dynamic expansion (making the loud parts louder and/or the quiet parts quieter) doesn’t usually work very well and it’s rarely used in audio production. The exception is a noise gate which makes the quiet parts quieter and/or completely silences the quiet parts.
For live recordings to most low end folks rely on the sound board mixer of source and keep digital massage to minimum?
“Most folks” just record with a cell phone!
With acoustic music you can usually get a very good recording with a pair of directional microphones close to the stage. You can put them close to the conductor’s position with one pointed left and one pointed right or they can be spaced-out at about the same distance from the stage. That can sometimes work with amplified rock music but it usually doesn’t result in a very good recording.
With rock music in a “small venue” a lot of the sound you hear is coming directly from the stage and PA system is mostly vocals. So even if everything running through the mixer, the mixer-output it doesn’t represent what you’re hearing and it usually doesn’t make a good recording.
A better small-venue set-up would be a separate recording-mixer with the microphone signals split and sent to both mixers, possibly with additional (close) microphones for anything that’s not already mic’d. And even better, a multi-channel interface and multi-track recording.
With a “big show” performance everything is going-through the PA system and you could get an excellent recording… I’d guess they record every performance for “archival” purposes. But if they are going to release a live recording of Lady Gaga or The Rolling Stones they multi-track and mix later in the studio. (They’ll have additional audience mics so they can record & adjust the crowd noise.)
Thanks! I expect this will lead me to a crossroads. Right now I am learning a lot to get to a very basic competence in the production process. My primary audience is myself and musical collaborators. At some point I will have to decide if/when/where to deep dive and invest time and money pursue mastery! For now I am happy with the journey and progress!
