well Im 16 and just started trying to mix my own music and well I can click the quick mix feature and that puts the vocals and beat together but can you all give me any tips on what to do after that like compressing the track or some eq levels that work for you so i can try them out? and I record over mp3 instrumentals which I have read are harder to mix with vocals.
what i usually do is put a hard limiter on the beat at about -7 and the wet level at 0.10, than i quick mix the vocals and instrumental together, but is there anything else i can do to make the whole track better???
Try Chris’s Compresor … http://pdf23ds.net/software/dynamic-compressor/
Once the tracks have been “put together” (mixed) there are a lot more limitations to what processing you can do. It is generally better to keep the vocals and the beats in separate tracks so that you can process one without affecting the other. When you “Export” (File menu) your finished work, the tracks are automatically mixed together to create a standard audio file that can be played in other applications. You may want to mix the tracks immediately before exporting so that you can check the mixed output level but you would not normally mix the tracks until you are almost finished.
Upgrade to Audacity 1.3.12 - it is far more capable than the old 1.2.6 version (although it does not yet say so on the web-site, the 1.2.x series is no longer supported).
I can’t really advise on which effects to use as it entirely depends on what you have already and what kind of “sound” you are aiming for.
The current fashion in hip hop is to use a lot of effects and a lot of compression on vocals. The best thing is to experiment with all of the effects and see what you like. (not quite “hip hop”, more “urban R&B”, but Faheem Rasheed Najm did not get his (once) distinctive sound by following instructions, it came from experimentation).
props on the advice guys