Post by lilmenchi on Nov 8, 2012 20:33:04 GMT 9.5
So you want to mix? Great! Not so sure how? Well you're in the right place
First off, you'll need something to mix with:
Adobe Audition 1.5 - www.mediafire.com/?m1fymjdtz0v
Adobe Audition 3.0 - www.sendspace.com/file/qqvvq3
Audacity - audacity.sourceforge.net/
Out of these, I personally use AA3.0 and I definitely recommend it- but it is a lot to jump straight into. Audacity is the best for beginners, it's where a lot of people start out and it's good to record with, plus it's free and legal unlike the Audition cracks xD I've found it annoying to record in Audition 3.0, since it makes you save the session before you can start recording and it will save every single take you do. Instead I like to record in 1.5, so then I don't have to save the session if I don't want to, and I only save down what recordings I want, which is good when you have limited space.
So skipping along, now you have a program you can edit audio on, we can go through the basics of mixing audio for cover groups!
The main things to do when mixing people for covers are cleaning lines, timing lines, volumes and effects. So I'll go over what my basic workflow is for those first. Since I don't have Audacity on my computer at the moment, if I explain how to do something it'll probably be on Audition 3.0 (1.5 is pretty much the same). I'm going to try and explain this as if I'm explaining it to someone who has barely any audio editing experience, or if it's the first time they've tried this, so there'll probably be a lot of things most people know and some plain common sense stuff, but like the title says, I am trying to go for the basics xD;
1. Cleaning Lines
What I've learnt is that more often than not, people don't clean up their files before sending them in. This can mean that they'll have all sorts of noises in the background, and hopefully those will be where there isn't singing. A common issue with lines is that there will be noise like a background hum from a computer, which can sound pretty terrible in a final mix. The best way to get rid of that is to run noise removal, to do that you first need to select a sample of the noise to be removed with the selector tool in your program of choice. For Audition, after you have your selection (for everything here, you should be in the edit view, not multitrack so you're viewing one track at a time) in the effects menu go to Restoration -> Capture Noise Reduction Profile. Next select the whole file (or selections you want to remove the noise from) and click on Restoration -> Noise Reduction -> Okay. I don't have Audacity installed on my computer but the process should be similar, select the unwanted noise, capture it, select the file, remove noise.
The next thing you will want to do is get rid of any other noises that are in the file, for example if someone has knocked their mic, or said something, etc. pretty much any noise that isn't them singing that might get distracting if it's there in the final mix. Also very simple, select the part you want to get rid of and go to Effects -> Apply Mute. There is a similar feature on Audacity as well, so don't go straight to turning down the amplitude (essentially the loudness, how high the waveform is) because it will just do that, turn it down, and it can still be heard if it's a quiet part of a song.
And finally, volumes! I definitely won't go into EQ or compression/dynamic processing now since this is a basics post and those take a bit to get your head around, but basically this is a good stage to get the vocals to a good level so it's easier to time. Again, select the part you want to make louder/quieter, go to effects -> Amplify and chose your amount. If you're using AA3.0, once you select what you what to change, a small grey box will appear in the middle of the selection at the top with a small dial on it, click and drag on that dial to change the volume. The best part is you will see exactly what you're doing to the waveform as you go, it's very handy!
2. Timing Lines
This is what will take up 75% of your time. Don't say I didn't warn you. It is a pretty straight forward thing to get the hang of though, and something you get a better feel for the more you do it. First off, when you start a session, you need to import the original mp3, the instrumental, and all the lines. Make sure the instrumental and original have the same timing first, rarely do they just import in and start at exactly the same time. Sometimes for some bizarre reason, you'll even get songs which the instrumental doesn't have the same timing of the song, they'll go out of sync somewhere along the line and THAT can be hell to fix ;-; (CURSE YOU SUKI SUGITE BAKA MITAI). Once those are lined up, it's time to do a general lining up of all the people you have in your session. This is just making sure that everyone's lines are lined up to the instru, which is a good thing to do before you get into timing. So now everything should be in approximately the right spots, now it's time to time!
From what I remember from Audacity, if you're using it, it will involve a hell of a lot of cutting and pasting to line everything up, copying silence to put between waveforms, deleting silence... and everything is saved to the original file. So one thing I'll recommend straight up, before you time, make a copy of each file, just in case you accidently get rid of something, you have a copy you can import and use instead.
For those with a copy of Audition, you're awesome and you'll have a much easier time of this, since cutting up tracks in multitrack view does not affect the original file. Before I get straight into that, time to get some terminology explained and some basic Audition how-to before I confuse everyone completely. Which is likely. xD;
When you are in Multitrack view, you have the file window on the left, and on the right is the session window with all the tracks. Each 'lane' in the session window is a track, and as a default, sessions will start with 6 tracks open and a Master Track. This Master track (also known as the Master Bus) is a global track, if you turn it up, it turns up ALL the tracks, if you press solo, it will solo everything, as with mute, it mutes everything. This is important to note because, if you put an effect on the master track it effects everything, vocals AND instrumental. There is a way to put an effect on all the vocals at the same time without affecting the instrumental, but I'll cover that in a more advanced how-to later. So the next thing to know is when you drag a file from the file window onto a track, it'll go on as a block you can move around but right-clicking and dragging it. This is known as a region or a clip. If you right click on the region, a menu will pop up, and you can go 'split' this will separate it into two regions at the position you clicked. You can also split regions by pressing 'control+k'. Remember this, because it's by splitting regions and dragging them into position that you time things in Audition ;D
...
To be continuedtomorrow~
First off, you'll need something to mix with:
Adobe Audition 1.5 - www.mediafire.com/?m1fymjdtz0v
Adobe Audition 3.0 - www.sendspace.com/file/qqvvq3
Audacity - audacity.sourceforge.net/
Out of these, I personally use AA3.0 and I definitely recommend it- but it is a lot to jump straight into. Audacity is the best for beginners, it's where a lot of people start out and it's good to record with, plus it's free and legal unlike the Audition cracks xD I've found it annoying to record in Audition 3.0, since it makes you save the session before you can start recording and it will save every single take you do. Instead I like to record in 1.5, so then I don't have to save the session if I don't want to, and I only save down what recordings I want, which is good when you have limited space.
So skipping along, now you have a program you can edit audio on, we can go through the basics of mixing audio for cover groups!
The main things to do when mixing people for covers are cleaning lines, timing lines, volumes and effects. So I'll go over what my basic workflow is for those first. Since I don't have Audacity on my computer at the moment, if I explain how to do something it'll probably be on Audition 3.0 (1.5 is pretty much the same). I'm going to try and explain this as if I'm explaining it to someone who has barely any audio editing experience, or if it's the first time they've tried this, so there'll probably be a lot of things most people know and some plain common sense stuff, but like the title says, I am trying to go for the basics xD;
1. Cleaning Lines
What I've learnt is that more often than not, people don't clean up their files before sending them in. This can mean that they'll have all sorts of noises in the background, and hopefully those will be where there isn't singing. A common issue with lines is that there will be noise like a background hum from a computer, which can sound pretty terrible in a final mix. The best way to get rid of that is to run noise removal, to do that you first need to select a sample of the noise to be removed with the selector tool in your program of choice. For Audition, after you have your selection (for everything here, you should be in the edit view, not multitrack so you're viewing one track at a time) in the effects menu go to Restoration -> Capture Noise Reduction Profile. Next select the whole file (or selections you want to remove the noise from) and click on Restoration -> Noise Reduction -> Okay. I don't have Audacity installed on my computer but the process should be similar, select the unwanted noise, capture it, select the file, remove noise.
The next thing you will want to do is get rid of any other noises that are in the file, for example if someone has knocked their mic, or said something, etc. pretty much any noise that isn't them singing that might get distracting if it's there in the final mix. Also very simple, select the part you want to get rid of and go to Effects -> Apply Mute. There is a similar feature on Audacity as well, so don't go straight to turning down the amplitude (essentially the loudness, how high the waveform is) because it will just do that, turn it down, and it can still be heard if it's a quiet part of a song.
And finally, volumes! I definitely won't go into EQ or compression/dynamic processing now since this is a basics post and those take a bit to get your head around, but basically this is a good stage to get the vocals to a good level so it's easier to time. Again, select the part you want to make louder/quieter, go to effects -> Amplify and chose your amount. If you're using AA3.0, once you select what you what to change, a small grey box will appear in the middle of the selection at the top with a small dial on it, click and drag on that dial to change the volume. The best part is you will see exactly what you're doing to the waveform as you go, it's very handy!
2. Timing Lines
This is what will take up 75% of your time. Don't say I didn't warn you. It is a pretty straight forward thing to get the hang of though, and something you get a better feel for the more you do it. First off, when you start a session, you need to import the original mp3, the instrumental, and all the lines. Make sure the instrumental and original have the same timing first, rarely do they just import in and start at exactly the same time. Sometimes for some bizarre reason, you'll even get songs which the instrumental doesn't have the same timing of the song, they'll go out of sync somewhere along the line and THAT can be hell to fix ;-; (CURSE YOU SUKI SUGITE BAKA MITAI). Once those are lined up, it's time to do a general lining up of all the people you have in your session. This is just making sure that everyone's lines are lined up to the instru, which is a good thing to do before you get into timing. So now everything should be in approximately the right spots, now it's time to time!
From what I remember from Audacity, if you're using it, it will involve a hell of a lot of cutting and pasting to line everything up, copying silence to put between waveforms, deleting silence... and everything is saved to the original file. So one thing I'll recommend straight up, before you time, make a copy of each file, just in case you accidently get rid of something, you have a copy you can import and use instead.
For those with a copy of Audition, you're awesome and you'll have a much easier time of this, since cutting up tracks in multitrack view does not affect the original file. Before I get straight into that, time to get some terminology explained and some basic Audition how-to before I confuse everyone completely. Which is likely. xD;
When you are in Multitrack view, you have the file window on the left, and on the right is the session window with all the tracks. Each 'lane' in the session window is a track, and as a default, sessions will start with 6 tracks open and a Master Track. This Master track (also known as the Master Bus) is a global track, if you turn it up, it turns up ALL the tracks, if you press solo, it will solo everything, as with mute, it mutes everything. This is important to note because, if you put an effect on the master track it effects everything, vocals AND instrumental. There is a way to put an effect on all the vocals at the same time without affecting the instrumental, but I'll cover that in a more advanced how-to later. So the next thing to know is when you drag a file from the file window onto a track, it'll go on as a block you can move around but right-clicking and dragging it. This is known as a region or a clip. If you right click on the region, a menu will pop up, and you can go 'split' this will separate it into two regions at the position you clicked. You can also split regions by pressing 'control+k'. Remember this, because it's by splitting regions and dragging them into position that you time things in Audition ;D
...
To be continued