Music Part 2: Masterizing
Last time in Part 1 we covered Recording audio and now were gonna go with masterizing the resulting tracks.
Best is if you have recorded everything in individual tracks, especially if your using adobe audition or audacity, so you can set the track volume and pan and apply virtual effects to the track without affecting the files.
Arrange all your tracks so it results in a decent, continuing song, meaning not having abrupt changes, but also not long fade-out’s between different parts. This part basically relies on your ears and what you see when you zoom in.
Next, export the whole session to a wav file and open it in a separate editing session. Now you can compare what needs to be changed in the main session. You want the whole thing not only to be audibly appealing, but also visually. So if you see that the chorus has a whole different volume than the rest of the song, you have to adjust the volume settings on the tracks in the session until it’s pretty, with as little intensity variation as possible between the different sections of the song.
So let’s assume that you have done that and are happy with the overall volume. Now, listen to the individual voice tracks to see if it’s Ok like it is or if something is still missing. If it sounds distant, apply a compressor effect, with an attack rate of 2:1 and adjusting the other setting until it sounds good. You can do this with any track, even instruments, if that makes it sound better.
Next apply a Filter, specifically a frequency equalizer where you have a bunch of sliders to set the intensity of frequencies between 20khz and 20hz. You can apply this to different individual tracks, especially on the bass to give it a fuller sound, though not overdoing it as your song will probably get played full blast on stereo systems and might be over-saturated with bass if you mess up here.
Now you can export it again as wav and edit it. Here you want to apply that same filter, raising the higher frequencies to give more shine to the song, not to much though and ajust the rest of the frequencies to get the best possible sound. Generally the middle freq. are Ok by default.
Applying a compressor to the whole mixdown might improve the overall quality, play around with that. Use it to adjust the overall volume, so that it’s mostly under 0db, but allow for some fluctuations into higher levels. This is very important, especially if you have multiple songs, that you have them all with the same volume level, so that when you listening to them later, one after another, you won’t have to be adjusting your volume all the time.
These are the essential basics, applying different effects and stuff is important, but can vary so much across different music genres that it’s impossible to give suggestions.
Have fun!
Music Part 1: Recording
I decided I would make a simple guide for all you audio amateurs, on recording, editing, masterizing and applying some simple effects to the music you plan to record. I won’t get into details of the audio recording software, but just so you know, I use Adobe Audition and the Diamond Pack VST effects bundle and Sony Sound forge VST effects. I haven’t done any midi recording as yet.
Generally when recording a song, you would want to have the beat first and then record the rest of the instruments, but as most drummers find it very hard to play their drums without something to play it to, I record an acoustic or electric guitar (or a piano) first, to which the drummer can then play.
Let’s start with recording an acoustic guitar. You want to place one or two mics right below or above the body, not over the center, as the bass frequency’s are overwhelming there. I used two Shure voice mic, ideally I would use condenser mics. Place the first mic at the back end of the guitar, facing to the strings behind the hole, the other one I placed on the other side of the hole, also facing towards the strings and facing slightly downwards. Your mileage may vary.
Recording the electric guitar can be slightly harder, to get a decent sound out. As plugging it directly into the mixing console doesn’t result in decent sound, the best is to place a pic directly in front of the amp (the resulting quality depends heavily on the quality of the amp), placing the mic about half a meter or slightly farther away as to not get a saturated sound. You might try various types of mics and the distance to the amp and volume of the amp may give different results.
The Bass guitar you can record the same way, or if your amp has an output, wire it to the mixing console, where you might have to play around with the volume and frequency settings to get a good sound.
Now for the drums. As we only had 3 mics available, we placed them so as to get the best possible sound. I placed one behind the Hi-Hat, slightly lower, another one between the Bass drum and snare. Then a more powerful mic above the whole set to catch the general resulting sound. Ideally, recording every sound separately would result in a better sound, but I didn’t want to waste than much time on that and neither did the band I was recording. So one or two more well placed mics would probably result in a more “complete and filled” sound.
For the keyboard you can just plug it in to the console or use midi.
Recording the voice can be tricky, especially if your singer has just had lunch and looks like he would rather take a nap than doing some vocal recording. Best if this is done in the morning. You might have to place a filter in front of the mic if the singer tends to pronounce his P’s pretty hard, at least a small thin filter in any case. He should sing with his mouth as close as possible (but not against) the filter to get a fuller sound. You probably will have to take multiple takes.
