Professional Sound

[VictoryX]

I created an original song and have just recently got Audacity loaded it up recorded the song. The sound quality is great but it feels like it is missing something. That professional sound, anybody have tips i can use to acheive that quality sound? I uploaded the song to here

http://www.jukeboxalive.com/player/play ... ethod=play

I need suggestions on different effects or things I can do to get a better sound. If you suggest a certain effect it would be helpful if you put what that effect actually does maybe even how to use it . I just got the program and I have no diea what I am doing other then record and play.

Thanks in advance!

[Duncan]

Hi. You're asking quite a question there! I can offer some advice based on my own experience of doing exactly what you're trying to do, although I make no claim whatsoever of having the final word. I'm still learning too.

1. Setup. How are you recording this? A picture would help here. It sounds like a single mic doing both guitar and vocals. You would be much better off recording the guitar and dubbing the vocal on afterwards. This will allow you to place the mic closer and so pick up the sound better, cut out ambience and eq them differently so they're not fighting for the same part of the frequency range. Closer miking makes the sound more intimate, although if you're not careful you can over-boost the bass frequencies (this is call the proximity effect). Many mics have a bass roll-off precisely for this reason, which is intended particularly for vocals. There's much more to say but this will probably do for now.

2. Arrangement. It sounds like you have an decent tune there but not really an acoustic song. This doesn't mean you can't use an acoustic guitar, of course, just that it could do with a bit of layering perhaps. You're probably happy with what I would term the horizontal arrangement but you might like to put some thought into the vertical. Perhaps two guitars, one taking the strain and the other providing a texture - both can be rhythmic, I don't mean just noodle about over the top of your rhythm track - and pan them l/r (a bit), leaving a nice hole in the middle for your vocal, which you can also treat in the same way. The bass, if you want to add one, will go here and won't be fighting for space. Ditto percussion.

As I say, I've been working like this for years, with varying success. If you would like to hear what I did you can hear it on MySpace at:
http://www.myspace.com/askmurt
http://www.myspace.com/cactusjuice2

As a final word, it can be almost too much of a blessing to have the almost unlimited possibilities available these days. The Ask Murt stuff was done on a cassette four-track and that's pretty much what you hear, although it has been digitally re-engineered and trickeried in places. All very simple, stick up a mic* and play, but having this little room to play with forces you to plan what you are going to do, which having all the technology in the world shouldn't let you off doing.

* Mic placement is critical and makes a huge difference to the sound, as does your choice of microphone. You'll have to experiment but if you want a good sound you will need a condenser, not a dynamic, mic and a decent soundcard. And as dead a recording space as you can find.

Then you have to get into engineering, I'm afraid. The basics are compression and eq and there's no space to talk about that here, it's such a big subject, but there's plenty on the web and software plugins come with some very well thought out presets. This is the bit I'm still learning.

Any questions, get back, I'll be happy to answer what I can.

Cheers, Swatcher

[kozikowski]

The basics are covered. There's no apparent damage from overload or noise, so it's all pretty much musical problems.

Getting good balance with one microphone is rough. You want good presence and clarity for the voice and that demands a close shot to the microphone and that usually means a good pop and blast filter.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/wynonna2.jpg

But that's not what is needed for the guitar. We just went through thousands of pages of comments on how to mic an acoustic guitar.

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 27&t=22109

I believe it's the longest thread in the history of the forum. You can hear how the quality of the performance picked up as the experience, equipment, and technique got better.

And by all means try overdubbing. Use that song as a base and sing to it on a separate track with the microphone set for vocals. Then roll the whole thing back and play the guitar to it with the microphone set for guitar configuration. Obviously you can't do any of this without good sealing headphones.

Mute the original song and balance the vocal to the guitar with the Audacity production tools. It's a snap now because they're on different tracks.

Koz

[kozikowski]

You understand that once you get this overdubbing thing down, nobody is going to be able to stop you from adding a bass and drum track?

And backup vocals....

Koz

[VictoryX]

To be honest everything you guys are talking about is going way over my head. I should make it clear that I am extremely amatuer when it comes to this kind of thing. But let me give some details about equipment and room settings. For a microphone I am using a USB Guitar Hero microphone LMAO. The room is just my bedroom with everything turned off that makes any noise. I recorded the vocal track and guitar tracks seperatly and mixed them together in audacity. I am hearing alot about compressors/compression. What is that exactly and where can I go to get more information on that subject?

Thanks for all yout replys

[steve]

I am hearing alot about compressors/compression. What is that exactly and where can I go to get more information on that subject?

As with all effects, it has it's uses and abuses. Effects can easily, but should not be overdone.
See here for info on dynamic compression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

[kozikowski]

I think I'd start by having somebody else mix your music. This will be the third time I've advised a vocal performer who produced a mix that was "missing something." It was perfectly obvious to me what was wrong -- I remixed to make the vocal louder. Compression had nothing to do with it.

Everybody who heard the remixes thought they sounded terrific, certainly compared to the original mix. The performer in one case admitted that I might have something there and the other case didn't like the remix. He alone didn't like it. So as a mixdown engineer, he was a great singer.

I know a C++ programmer that has an excellent rhythm/dance band -- a very strange combination, but they can jam a club no problem. They decided to produce and mix their own studio CD. Everybody gritted their teeth and bought it anyway. I would have killed to have recorded their evening performance at Madam Wu's in Santa Monica -- on my cellphone if I had to. Somehow one third of an energetic jammed club managed to start dancing. But no such luck. She admitted much later that producing it themselves was a big mistake.

The compression tools in Audacity work, but they can be something of a violin. In the hands of an expert, they can produce really good work. For everybody else, there's Chris's Compressor.

Chris's Compressor
http://pdf23ds.net/software/dynamic-compressor/

Try that applied to the vocal only and then dump that back into the mix.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Is there any way for you to post the pre-mixdown tracks? The trick is you can't use MP3 because that creates problems and distortions. You can post very short segments here, but that won't handle a three minute song.

It might be fun for the forum elves to have a crack at mixing it.

Where are you?

Koz

[Duncan]

To be honest everything you guys are talking about is going way over my head.

I'm not surprised, it was like that for me for years. I think you need what someone else has suggested - someone else to do it for you who will talk you through how its done. Might be worth paying for a day in a proper studio, considering what you will learn. All I know i learnt from looking over people's shoulders and asking questions. Tto get good at this takes as long a time as it takes to get good on your instrument so get out there and find yourself a tame engineer and buy them a beer or several.

Seeing as I mentioned compression I suppose I ought to explain. Put simply, it squashes the sound to even it out. If you look at your guitar track you will probably see it's quite spiky. Those spikes are important as they carry most of the character of the sound but very little of the volume you hear, which is mostly in the remainder. Compression evens these out, giving you a compromise between character and body that will sound more satisfying - and professional. (I can almost hear the other guys rattling their keyboards at this but when I was a layman this was about as much as I could understand.) Find one with presets for acoustic guitar and vocal. If Audacity doesn't have one, look for a VST plugin which does (which I'm delighted to say Audacity now handles!).

Can any of you others suggest one for him that does just that? I've been out of the freebie loop for a while.

EQ is tone control and a simple application is to cut boominess (bass) and jangliness (treble).

You will have more success, imo, by taking lots of small steps rather than few big ones. You have my sympathy as I can already smell the smell of fried brains wafting over the ether...

Best of luck and, in the words of Peter Gabriel, don't give up,
Swatcher