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I'm looking into buying a small, portable MIDI interface. My new job takes me on the road a lot, and while I want to keep writing music, I can't really drag a guitar on the plane with me once a week. I'm eyeing an Akai MPK Mini II, but I'm not sure if there's a better solution. I like the MPK 25 that I already use, but it's too big to fit in my bag. Are there better portable USB MIDI controllers out there, or am I safe with this one? I'm a little worried about the joystick on the Mini II, so maybe the regular Mini would be better? I'm running Logic 9, if that makes a difference.
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Aug 12, 2014 22:36
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Radiapathy posted:The most portable mini keyboard I know of is the Korg nanoKeys. Unfortunately, it's terrible garbage. (USB problems + terrible keys.) Not much better is the M-Audio Keystation Mini. I do not have any positive recommendations, though. Hmm. Okay, good to know. Thank you!
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Aug 13, 2014 02:53
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I can't figure out how to phrase this for Google since everything I think of gets me answers about exporting stems, so I'll ask here. I've got a Logic project that I want to split into 14 individual files for distribution. In Audition, it had a thing where you could set CD track cues and it would let you do a batch export from those markers. Is there a way to do this in Logic Pro 9, or will it be easier to bounce the whole thing as a single .wav and split/export that into individual songs in Audition? I'd prefer not to have to transcode it more than I have to, but I also don't want to fight with exporting every section in Logic by hand and possibly having to redo some so they match perfectly when played back-to-back.
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Mar 21, 2015 21:09
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Flipperwaldt posted:There's no transcoding in the process you describe using Audition as long as you go from wav to wav with the same samplingrate/bitrate. It's a lossless fileformat. You won't lose quality like when opening and re-saving an MP3. Thanks. I didn't think there would be any actual transcoding going on since the formats are lossless, but I get paranoid about stuff like that. Sounds like I have my solution!
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Mar 22, 2015 00:37
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I recently picked up an Alvarez RC26HCE acoustic guitar pretty cheap. It sounds great with the nylon strings on it, but I'm interested in what it would sound like with steel strings. I know that classical guitars can't handle steel strings, but this thing was described as a hybrid, with a "steel-string type neck." I can't find any clarification as to whether that means it can use both string types or if hybrid just refers to it being acoustic/electric and the "steel-string type neck" is thrown in there as a meaningless marketing thing. Anybody know anything about this sucker?
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Feb 1, 2016 01:37
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Thanks! I figured that was the case. Mostly I want the tone to be a little thicker on the low end like on a steel string acoustic, but I don't want it enough to risk the guitar.
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Feb 1, 2016 04:52
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Gilgameshback posted:There is a huge variety in tone with nylon strings - you might get what you want from Hannabach, for instance, or Hense. And of course nylon strings come in different tensions. Low tension might give you the sound you're looking for. High tension tends to be brighter and louder, low a little darker (all tension levels of nylon strings should be safe for any modern classical guitar). Oh, awesome! I've never actually owned a classical guitar before, so I don't really know much about nylons. I'll check that stuff out, thanks!
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Feb 1, 2016 06:57
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^^^ That's basically it. The more time you spend writing your own and analyzing other people's songs the more adept you become at hearing what exactly is going on structure-wise and knowing what those basic recipes and little details they use to create whatever feeling the song elicits from you. Picking apart your own music the way you pick apart songs you already like is a vital part of it, I think. I once went through a period where I wasn't happy with anything I wrote, and it's because I kept writing around this one structure I had come up with. Once I started rearranging those songs and mixing up the structure, I was much happier with them. If you can think about and know what you like about any given song, then you will be much closer to figuring out why you do or don't like about your own music as you write it.
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Feb 1, 2016 23:55
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I have an e-drum kit and a keyboard, both of which have MIDI cables strung over to my audio interface. Neither of them has MIDI Thru and the interface only has one MIDI input, so right now if I want to switch between them I have to unplug one and plug in the other. What do I need to be able to switch back and forth between them without plugging/unplugging things? Searching for a MIDI switch just gives me a bunch of MIDI control pedals that cost over a hundred bucks and don't look like they even do what I want, but I can't think of what else to call this theoretical box that I can't imagine costs more than ten or twenty bucks.
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May 3, 2016 19:44
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Flipperwaldt posted:Selector seems the word used here https://www.meershop.nl/accessoires/philip-rees-2s?language=en That's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks so much!
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May 3, 2016 23:47
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I got my cousin a Casio CTK2400 off eBay for Christmas, and it lets you sample stuff and play it back. His thank you email was a video of him playing Fur Elise with a sample of himself farting and a caption that I had just turned him into Gene Belcher. Not a bad gift for $30.
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Jan 28, 2017 20:44
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JamesKPolk posted:Yeah, I forgot to this time but I'll usually do a reference track of just my mixer out with basic effects and stuff for the whole track, for exactly that reason. I did get both takes of the bass, at least!
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Jul 27, 2017 05:28
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well why not posted:what's the best article/video on current levels to mix to? I'm currently matching some pro songs which I measure at -6.5 LUFS. Is that an OK way to go about it? What's the best practise here? A lot of what I'm reading contradicts other articles. From what I've gathered in my own research, the EBU standard for radio broadcast is -23 LUFS/LKFS, podcasts don't have a standard but seem to work well at -16, Spotify & YouTube will normalize it to -14 no matter what level you master to (so making it louder just reduces your dynamic range when played back on those services), and iTunes normalizes to -16. I don't know if the volume leveling on Spotify/YouTube/iTunes/etc has been fully rolled out yet (it's still just an option in Spotify, at least) but that seems to be where things are heading so mastering at -14 is probably somewhat future-proof. That's all in the mastering, though—I don't really know how that will affect you in mixing, since I haven't actually mixed any songs since I did this research (just podcasts/YouTube videos).
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Sep 9, 2017 18:39
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^^^that is cool as hell, thanks for posting it! does anyone know of any good resources for learning electrical engineering that are geared toward musicians? i got an ms-20 mini last year and have really enjoyed it, but i'd love to get into actually building modular synthesizers and effects pedals on my own. all the things i've checked out so far have been pretty bone-dry & general—MIT has a free course up, and All About Circuits has some good stuff, but i have a hard time tracking with those things because i kinda already know a lot of the basics and don't understand how to apply anything those courses discuss in my intended direction. my ideal is something like a youtube series where someone explains how circuits/resistors/capacitors/etc all work by building a simple synthesizer or effects pedals as a demonstration, but all i can find are people who don't explain things beyond "get this part, put it here" and/or don't know enough about video production/editing to get anything across clearly. i did pick up a copy of "Make: Modular Synthesizers" on amazon but it hasn't arrived yet, so i don't know what kind of skill level it requires as a base and i'm worried it'll be too advanced if my only experience is building cables and repairing my broken e-drum pads.
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Feb 27, 2018 19:06
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ha! his cereal box distortion video was actually what inspired me to finally look into doing this—i've been binging through his channel the past couple weeks, and he does some seriously cool poo poo. his explanations are mostly over my head at this point, though, which is why i've been looking for a resource to explain projects like his in more detail. like, "i'm putting this resistor here because x and this transistor here because y" type stuff.
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Feb 27, 2018 21:45
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oh, good to know! i subscribed to him a while back after seeing one of his videos posted in some thread here but haven't really dug into his channel yet. i'll give it a shot. thanks, everyone!
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Feb 27, 2018 22:13
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https://www.amazon.com/Hosa-CPR-202...2TZAS1WH8G75RE0 i have a set of these i use for stuff like this occasionally. they're not shielded/balanced, so you have to be careful about picking up interference, but they've worked fine for me other than that!
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Apr 16, 2018 21:17
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here's something i'm scratching my head about: why are early '90s demos so lovely and reverby? in particular i'm thinking of rage against the machine's demo and a bunch of nirvana's stuff that they put on their box set, but there's some others i can't quite remember off the top of my head (tool, i'm pretty sure, and also i think pearl jam and maybe smashing pumpkins). the balance is off, they sound very roomy, there's way too much reverb and slapback delay (especially on vocals, but also usually on the drums), and it's like someone just went to loving town with the eq on every channel. i know some of the eq weirdness (esp. the nirvana stuff) is from it being pulled from cassette tapes later on, but i just read an interview with tom morello about how bullet in the head is the same take on both the demo and the album, so i'm curious about the mixing aspect now that i know it's not something inherent to the recording itself. is it just a matter of not bothering to mix them because they're demos, or just handing them to the new guy to take care of because they're demos, or what? i've only really been a musician in the digital home studio era, so i feel like i must be just totally unaware of some part of the decision-making process back when you had to pay for studio time to do demos. i've heard demos from more recent years that definitely don't have these issues—unpolished and in need of mastering, for sure, but the mix is usually relatively "normal" sounding, for lack of a better term.
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May 25, 2018 16:32
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oh, yeah, i guess i should have clarified that i definitely mean studio demos and not the home ones. nirvana was probably a bad example since most of those were the boombox type. this one by ratm and this one by tool are pretty indicative of the specific sound i'm talking about. i kinda figured it was along the time/money line of thought, although i definitely didn't think to consider that there would have been backlash against gated verb around that time. i just thought maybe there was more to the story since it seemed to me like the mixing on those demos are more similar to each other than to what the bands sound like on their respective albums. thanks!
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May 26, 2018 04:15
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i don't think this is it, (i don't have my good headphones next to me to listen closer) but it kinda sounds like a jaw harp with a wah or envelope filter, or maybe a talkbox into the wah/envelope?
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Jul 7, 2018 01:03
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Anyone have experience with Logic Pro X's region automation? I have three different recordings on three different tracks. I want to jump between them every two bars. I split all three regions every two bars, so now each track has 8 different regions on it. What I thought region automation would do is let me go through and bump up the gain on each new region by 3 or 4 dB. What it's actually doing is adjusting the default region automation for every region on the track unless i go in and manually change each one, so ... functionally the same as using track automation instead, but less convenient. There's got to be a way to have the default region automation just be "no change from the track's normal automation unless I change it," right? Googling is no help, because I keep getting results for the opposite problem (region does nothing, track does everything), and there's nothing under the automation settings menu that seems like it would help. Am I missing something or is region automation really useless? If it makes a difference, I'm on 10.2.3 since I'm still running Yosemite until I'm finished with my current project and can update everything, so maybe this is a bug that's been fixed in the current version.
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Aug 2, 2018 18:05
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Seconding Logic as a good (non-free) choice, but I will say that while 95% of my time is spent in Logic, I do really like Adobe Audition for its sample editing, and I generally jump into that over using Logic's. The spectral repair brush alone is worth its weight in gold, imo.
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Oct 22, 2018 15:34
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oh, weird, it changes for me too. i've never seen anything like that happen on reverb before
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Jan 12, 2019 23:56
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does anyone here have any experience with theremins? i just picked up an etherwave, and while i've been able to tune the pitch antenna pretty easily, the volume loop is acting in a way i didn't expect, and i'm not sure if it's me or the theremin and googling it hasn't really helped. basically, the distance it takes to ramp from silent to full volume seems extremely small and turning the volume knob does nothing until i get it past 1 o'clock, at which point it puts a loud spot a few inches away from the loop that has quiet stuff past it (so instead of a smooth ramp up to a maximum volume as you move your hand away, there's a hard jump from silence and then a slight ramp up from and back down to a medium volume). i would normally assume it's just me not understanding it, but i had to open it up and resolder the pitch antenna's connector, so i'm worried that something is up because i've never seen this behavior in videos of them. edit: oh, wait, continued googling leads me to think i need to make an internal adjustment to the volume circuit. so i guess instead my question is if anyone has advice for adjusting L11 inside one of these suckers CaptainViolence fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Mar 12, 2019 |
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Mar 12, 2019 20:06
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i'm not sure about those guys in particular, but i know a lot of youtubers use SM7Bs instead of 57s. i've only ever close miked with both so i don't know if one sounds better from a distance than the other, but i think as long as you have some sort of acoustic treatment to help with reflections then a couple feet away should still be usable. for stuff further from the camera, the sennheiser g3 series lavalier mics are pretty popular among youtubers. your other option for non-lav micing from offscreen is a shotgun condenser. rode videomics are popular as far as i know. i used to do location sound for TV and everyone i know primarily used an MKH416, but for youtube stuff i use either an MKH50 for indoors or an ME66 for outdoors/foley. those options are significantly more expensive though, and you probably don't need them if you're just doing a vlog-style medium-close. all that said, i'm sure you can probably get good results with a 57 with mic placement and basic acoustic treatment of your space. it'll just require a little more experimentation and prep than a shotgun mic would. as far as effects chains, i usually just do some slight noise reduction and some compression. a huge chunk of people watching youtube videos are on a phone, so as long as it's intelligible you should be good. an important thing to know is that youtube normalizes things down to -16LUFS, but won't normalize up.
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Jun 18, 2019 20:40
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if you're looking for a quick & dirty solution, you can find cheap furniture blankets to hang up/drape over stuff. there are also slightly better/more expensive ones, but i've found doubling up on cheap lovely ones is still pretty effective for the price. i don't use them much for video, but i definitely toss up a couple c-stands or light stands when i'm recording vocals for music to build a makeshift vocal booth and i've been pretty happy with the results!
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Jun 18, 2019 23:59
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i listened on my phone so there might be more going on, but it sounds to me like it's just two sine tones being played, one as a pedal and the other jumping around a scale. should be relatively easy to recreate in basically any daw that takes midi. in audacity or audition it might be more work because you'd have to generate the tones and then chop them up, but still doable.
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Aug 27, 2019 15:19
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i think you might be overthinking it--i'm pretty sure you can just load audio from a ripped CD or whatever directly into melodyne. it has to be in the right format, but you don't need to rerecord it unless you don't have a digital version. but also that seems like way overkill on price if you're just doing transcriptions. you could try just isolating frequencies with an eq plugin in a daw. i'm not great at transcription, and when i need the extra help, eq generally gets me close enough to figure it out. depending on the songs, too, you might be able to find multitrack/stem versions. i think most of the songs that were in guitar hero and rock band are easily available, and there's a handful of others floating around too. those are the literal tracks before they got mixed, too, so they will be infinitely more intelligible/useful for your purposes than any other method. the only real issue is that there's a good chance your songs won't be available since so relatively few multitracks have ever come out.
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Dec 14, 2019 08:21
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something i've learned about myself that might be useful is that i just cannot start a song from scratch if i'm not in the right headspace, so accepting that and working around it has been much more productive than trying to force it. i keep the voice recorder app on my phone handy any time i'm just goofing around on the guitar, and i record any little riffs or chord progressions i come up with, good or bad. then when i go to write an actual song, i just dig through them until one strikes me as having potential and then i build on it. most of the time they end up being nothing, but having dozens of jumping off points takes a lot of the pressure off. i'm constantly building this library, and it's nice because the further i get from originally recording something, the more possibilities i hear. it's very satisfying to rediscover older ones i had written off and finally understand how to transform them into something i think is good. basically i feel much more adept at building a song around a melodic phrase than coming up with the phrase in the first place, so splitting that step off into its own thing helped tons. it's also nice because it lets me shake up how/where i'm writing those phrases—i come up with much different things when i'm at my parents' house for the holidays or playing a friend's guitar than i do in my studio space, and working those ideas in the studio later feels way more flexible and free than trying to do both steps at once in the same environment.
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Feb 12, 2020 19:32
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when i traveled for work a bunch, i grabbed a pelican case for my electric guitar. you can shape the foam so it's nice and safe, and as a bonus everyone always thinks it's a rifle case so nobody fucks with it. you usually have to go up the luggage counter and provide ID for that same reason, but unless you're in a rush to get out of the airport then it's probably not an issue. this was all US-based travel, though, so it may not work elsewhere
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Feb 27, 2020 02:29
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GreenBuckanneer posted:What's a Piezo? it's a contact microphone, which senses vibration directly from the instrument instead of through the air. there are high end ones for pianos and such but you can also get cheap ones for like $3 each.
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Jun 25, 2020 21:23
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there was definitely a very girl talk-esque goon album like that, it was named "bad apollo i'm burning farts 4." it was by tanner4105 or something along those lines, and was a little weirder than girl talk. i mostly remember that it started with a sample from a pokemon song and also maybe avril lavigne, if that sounds like what you're looking for. edit: was it this? https://tanner4105.bandcamp.com/album/bad-apollo-im-burning-fart-iv-volume-two-no-butts-for-lmao CaptainViolence fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 20:52
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i think that's just the nature of audio. i was a TA for the department's studio my last year of college and partway through the semester i had to develop a whole checklist process for fixing a specific situation of broken monitor routing out of the interface. it read like an arcane ritual because the steps/solutions seemed completely disconnected from each other aside from fixing the same symptom. even now i'll have days where zoom stops recognizing my poo poo right before a work meeting and i have to scramble to restart everything in the right order because if i don't i have to start over. come to think of it, my experiences both involve focusrite interfaces too 
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Aug 23, 2020 05:50
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experience is definitely going to be the key--i've been doing sound design for a few years now and i'm still constantly learning how to apply EQ effectively, and especially learning how to articulate stuff that i have a sense of but not enough to apply on demand. it sounds like the major thing you're running into right now is that part, and it's one of the hardest parts imo, if for no other reason than how our language around sound is based very much on visual terminology. you can find EQ guides all over the place, but i found them very hard to follow until i got a handle on the language. lifeless might mean it could stand to be brighter, so you could try a wide, low boost around 5-6k, but it also might mean it's overly compressed so you could back off on that if you have it going. lifeless is a hard critique to get because it can mean so many things! i think one of the most useful exercises i've done is slapping a parametric EQ on something, setting one of the segments to a pretty narrow Q, boosting the gain a bunch, and then sweeping it across the spectrum until i find whichever sound i hate  i spent a week or so doing it to every recording made in the studio i work at till i finally nailed down what kind of cut i needed to make to get rid of the boxiness i was hearing, and it was extremely satisfying.so it's useful that way, but also useful in terms of teaching you what frequencies make things sound like the thing they sound like, so you know what not to cut, which is useful for layering things like you're probably doing. so maybe instead of boosting the frequencies of the voice, you'll know which frequencies you can cut in other layers. music knowledge helps because it's a very intense version of that, but you've already got some of that knowledge--your congestion clearing HPFs were a nice chainsaw, you just need to use a chisel to do detailed versions of that same thing. also, remember to take frequent breaks! i'm really bad about this, but your ear quickly gets numb to certain frequencies as you listen to stuff, so try to take breaks every 20 minutes or so or else you'll feel like you're never making progress. and you're not, because the goalpoasts keep moving on you! hopefully some of that is helpful!
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Nov 17, 2020 00:59
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i just listened to the studio version and i think the instruments are like 40 cents flat so maybe that's it. i can kinda hear what you're talking about now that you pointed it out, but i hear it in the chorus too. i don't think it's ever bothered me because it seems like just part of his slightly strained/gravely vocal style
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Oct 14, 2021 19:49
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Agreed with for fucks sake that the sort of cohesion you're looking for isn't something you can do (easily) late in the game, but I will say that if your synths are largely in the box you can definitely go back and rework them easily enough. Basically, if you want the songs to sound like they belong together, it helps to give them some particular element of focus that spans all the tracks. When I'm doing synthy stuff, I tend to build on the same drum kit and bass sound, and while I stack some other drums or bass synths on top, those are more to add flavor on an already solid foundation. Finding something like that--and it can be pretty much anything that consistently sits fairly forward in the mix, like vocals or a particular guitar sound--will go a long way. You mix those all the same/a similar way in each song to start, and from there mix all the other elements relative to that element. Another thing to keep in mind is that mastering is going to help glue things together, but mastering is a relatively light touch compared to mixing. Mastering is the fine detail work at the end, and if you're still trying to do major sculpting, you're going to be fighting to do so because you have so much more space to play with that stuff in the mix. And not to say mastering is not still creative, but it's definitely got a heavier technical element to it in terms of determining the final eq balance and loudness (again like ffs said, -14 is a good spot if your goal is streaming). Basically, unless the mixes are already in the same ballpark, mastering's not going to add that unity, so don't worry about your master too much until your mixes are where you want them. I know there are musicians who do a lot of stuff on the master bus in the mix, but they make that decision already knowing exactly what they want that to add to the overall mix, so if you're not sure I'd say not to worry about it because it can definitely do more harm than good unless you know for sure what your goal is. You can let the songs unfold as they may, but guiding them and restricting them in certain ways is that magic pixie dust you're looking for!
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Jul 4, 2022 20:22
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yeah, especially in professional pop music, the vocals are likely going to be processed pretty heavily, even if it's fairly transparent when placed in the final track. that's usually some combination of compression and equalization, and even manual volume leveling via automation (which is kinda like compression, just more detailed because it's manual). all of that will be with the express purpose of sitting alongside the instrumental track. you also might be fighting with the instrumental a bit because youtube (and maybe unmix?) are going to get rid of a lot of theoretically unneeded information, so you're doing the equivalent of photoshopping a high res raw photo into a low res jpg. you're definitely right that it's a big question, but it's certainly not a dumb one. gotta start somewhere, right? to answer your two direct lines of questioning: EQ: the sound you're hearing is made up of a bunch of different frequencies occurring together. depending on the source and the way it was recorded, some parts of the frequency spectrum are going to be emphasized more than others. the two types of equalizer you have in the picture, as well as the tone knob, all control how those are emphasized. tone one in the bottom middle is probably the best visual explanation of it in your screenshot: each of those little sliders is attached to a frequency, and has a certain width before you get to the next slider, and pulling that up or down changes the gain for each individual segment. that equalizer is good for making surgical adjustments around problem frequencies, but not as good at making overall adjustments. the parametric eq does the same thing, except you get to choose the width (sometimes called Q, although on yours it's just the furthest right knob that has the \__/ and V next to it) and center frequency (your furthest left knob), and so is very customizable and useful for bigger changes. gain is just how much you're adding or taking away from the volume in the particular area that you've defined with width and frequency. the tone knob is an even more simplified version of all that, and though they can work in different ways, probably the most common way is that it has what's called a high shelf (so instead of a little bump with other sliders on either side, it just raises or lowers everything above a particular frequency). with those tools, you can add or take away frequencies to emphasize different parts of that track. which parts is the hard question, and kind of unanswerable without hearing what you're working on, because it depends on what sounds you have and what ones you're trying to match. it's pretty easy to overdo these adjustments, so if things just sound terrible, it can be worth it to start over and make different, more subtle adjustments. Volume: you're almost certainly going to need a compressor, which squishes down the loudest parts of a track so they're closer in volume to the quiet parts. that might sound counterintuitive, but having extra headroom means you can use makeup gain to raise the volume of the entire track, making your previously quiet parts loud enough to hear. it also has some side effects that are kinda complicated, and tbh it took me about 10 years to get comfortable with compression because it's a deceptively simple idea with a lot of nuance and complexity to it. to start, i'd just see if your DAW has a compressor with a vocal preset. the compressor should have a Gain Reduction meter on it, and you'll want to set your threshold so that you see some gain reduction on the loud parts, but not on the quiet parts. it's easy to overdo it, but also relatively easy to hear when you do (it'll just sound wrong and make your head feel like it's turning inside out if you compress it too much). it's also pretty common to add a little splash of reverb to the vocals, but that's yet another thing it's easy to overdo. when i'm mixing vocals, i start out by turning the reverb down to the point where i just barely can't hear it anymore, and adjust from there. but don't spend too long on it, because your brain is exquisite in its ability to filter out reverberations, so you might find yourself turning the reverb up and up and up as you work on it, then coming back later and realizing you've made it sound like you're in a cave. hopefully that answers at least some of your questions, and if you're comfortable posting some examples we can give much more detailed advice tailored to your specific project! edit: lol i spent so long writing this i missed the other posts CaptainViolence fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Feb 4, 2023 |
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Feb 4, 2023 02:01
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Sweaty IT Nerd posted:666 Hz lol Pollyanna posted:What is a problem frequency? basically any frequency that causes a problem i know that's not super specific, but like everything we're talking about, it really depends on the source material and what that's being mixed into. it can be something that emphasizes a boxy sound, or a nasally vocal, or just two instruments overlapping each other in such a way that some part of the spectrum gets muddied up and both become indistinct.i guess maybe i can explain it in terms of how i run into and deal with it every day, and maybe that will make more sense? my day job involves a lot of dialogue mixing for educational videos. usually no bed music, sound design only under animations, pretty simple stuff overall. but, not having anything else to hide behind, sometimes that lets things show through that might be hidden otherwise. our main studio is acoustically treated, so we don't have a lot of high end reflections or reverb to deal with, but the studio was also not built as a studio so the ceilings are kinda low. i use a specific mic placed to reject as much ceiling reflection as possible without getting into frame, but because the pickup pattern is wider you end up with a little bit more of that room sound in the low end. also, there's a street outside, and low-frequency rumble from trucks driving by is not uncommon. what happens is i end up with a couple different problem frequencies: that boomy, boxy sound is from a buildup around the 350 Hz zone, so i cut out 4-5db with a Q of 1-4 (depending on which host, because each of their voices is different). additionally, i have a low-cut sitting somewhere between 60 and 80 Hz to cut out those truck rumbles. i use the waves ssl e-channel for both compression and eq, so it has a set slope of 18db/oct, which is decently steep, so i don't have to set it too high. if it's ever a problem enough that i need a more detailed eq pass, i'll usually set the slope in a separate dedicated parametric eq to 48db/oct, and keep it between 30 and 60 Hz. i came up with those numbers just by getting to know the material and space and figuring out what frequencies were making the weird qualities i was trying to get rid of, and also which ones i needed to not touch—if i bring that low cut up too far, it starts affecting the host's voice, which i don't want. if those adjustments are too large or contain too many frequencies, you start getting rid of frequencies that aren't causing the problems you're hearing, which creates new problems. there's cheat sheets all over the place that list where common problems show up in the frequency spectrum (that's originally what i referenced to start looking for my boxy frequency), and they're a good starting point as long as you only use them as a starting point and not a bible. i think one of the best tricks someone ever showed me was that if you set up a really extreme parametric eq notch (so, like, Q≈10-15 adding 15ish db), you can sweep it around the frequency spectrum to hear what it's going to be emphasizing. your actual adjustment is probably never going to be that extreme, but if you pass it through a frequency and suddenly hear a ton of whatever it is you hate, you know where to put a cut! Beer_Suitcase posted:i really heard it on this one cool! i am definitely hearing what you're talking about now, and i think you're probably fighting the recording in mixing. you've got distortion on your voice, but it sounds like digital distortion from having your recording gain too high and clipping the input signal. part of that is that it happens only when you're singing loudly and not quietly, so if it is on purpose it might be helpful to make that more consistent or at least pick and choose moments so that it sounds planned instead of just reacting to however you were singing. if it isn't on purpose, just turn your gain down when recording! it'll sound quiet until you mix it, but you can alleviate that by also turning the instrumental down and turning your headphones up. then you can do some of that compressor stuff we talked about to make your voice loud enough to match the full volume backing track. another part of what makes it sound like clipping instead of intentional distortion is that the distortion is very brittle, with a lot of emphasis on the high frequencies. to bring it back to the tone knob idea, the instrumental sounds like the tone is set in the middle or even a little more toward the bassy end, whereas your voice sounds like it's cranked to almost full treble. that combined with the uneven volume levels keeps your voice and the backing track from sounding integrated. the third part i'm noticing is that even when there's no distortion, your voice has a very "USB condenser" quality to it, which can somewhat be alleviated with eq, but not entirely. it's just not picking up a lot of the low end of your voice, and the high end lacks a lot of detail. if you're not looking to buy an interface and better mic, it might be worth looking for a USB dynamic mic (assuming they even make them, i've never checked.) dynamic mics have what's called the proximity effect, where the closer you are to the mic the better the bass response, which is how radio hosts get that cool, deep sound. you probably don't want to go full NPR nerd, but you'd be aiming for something in the middle of that and what you have now. if you stick with this mic, i would try emphasizing the low end with big, wide eq boosts combined with some notched eq cuts to get rid of any boxiness you add with the boost. you might also try duplicating the vocal track, putting a high cut on to get rid of the high end, then adding saturation/distortion to emphasize those low parts you're missing, and mixing that back in with the main vocal track to try to balance it out. i don't know how far you'll be able to push that mic, but the isolation shield you got should help clarify the midrange a bit. be warned, though, some of those shields (especially cheaper ones) add in weird reflections and interference that sounds kind of like a comb filter, so it may end up solving some of your problems while creating new ones. and finally, i think you have a better handle on the mixing than you think! the way you brought in the reverb for the choruses of enclosure sounds like it would fit wonderfully if the recording quality of the mic were better. my initial impression is definitely that you are fighting the mic more than anything. i'm interested to hear if anyone else has any ideas for how to approach it—my go-to for usb mics has always been to lean into the lofi feeling and saturate the hell out of them, so i don't have a lot of experience trying to match them to a song that doesn't call for that.
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Feb 4, 2023 20:25
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you could try an rc505, maybe? you'd only have access to 5 loops at a time and you'd need a bluetooth transmitter, but it's self-contained with a bunch of built-in effects, has faders for each track so you could fade them in and out pretty easily, and depending on the model you can keep the mando and keys plugged in at the same time. it might be overkill if you're just planning on having premade loops, but bluetooth aside it sounds like it would do the job.
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Aug 22, 2023 02:13
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does anyone with field recording experience have recommendations for a good stereo mic/array? i invested in some location audio gear last year, and this year i decided to start doing more field recording/foley work too. i picked up a parabolic mic, a binaural mic, and a hydrophone that i'm happy with, but my regular old stereo setup isn't doing it for me anymore. i usually run a sennheiser ME62 stacked on top of my MKH416 for mid-side, but the stereo image feels pretty narrow. i used to use an ME66 and an SE4400a set to figure 8 which i was happy with in terms of image but not in high-end (even after EQing) and was really obnoxious to set up. i'm considering using the 66 and 62 together, but i'd need to buy a second K6 module for that. i could instead grab an MKH30, but from what i've read those are usually paired with an MKH8060 and getting both isn't in my budget so i'm wary of spending that much on something i won't be happy with if it doesn't play nice with the 416. also, pretty much everything i've read online is from 5-15 years ago, so i'm wondering if there's anything new in this realm. in my wildest dreams there's an XLR-based mid-budget equivalent to the M-S capsule zoom makes for their handy recorders. i have one that i use on an F1-LP, but like everything zoom makes it's a hiss factory. i'm not opposed to an X-Y array, but i've never seen one that fits inside a rycote blimp so i don't know if they exist. i'm also open to an ambisonic array but since 90% of what i deliver is in stereo, surround feels excessive (both in number of channels and also price). any suggestions?
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Feb 16, 2024 01:16
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