{"id":79,"date":"2011-07-31T00:42:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T00:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/blog\/post\/2011\/07\/31\/Hearing-voices-(3)"},"modified":"2011-07-31T00:42:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-31T00:42:00","slug":"hearing-voices-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/31\/hearing-voices-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Hearing voices (3)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After completing the &#8220;comping and correction&#8221; stage, I now have five or so mono tracks of vocals ready for the next stage. I like to apply one last destructive edit before applying any FX or panning or mixing: &#8220;normalizing&#8221;.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Audio_normalization\">Audio Normalization<\/a> is generally understood as making a collection of audio clips have the same peak value of 0 db. Many audio tools let you do this at the click of a button, but that&#8217;s not going to be helpful here. I need to do two or three things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>ensure that the average level throughout each of the vocal tracks is constant, i.e it sounds like one consistent take;<\/li>\n<li>reduce breath sounds and noise between vocal phrases;<\/li>\n<li>make all vocal tracks sound the same volume when set at 0db gain.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I do this by adding a Gain Envelope to each clip, boosting and cutting where appropriate, and comparing across each of the five or so tracks:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011%2f7%2fNormalizing_Vocals.PNG\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>on average, I&#8217;m generally boosting the tracks 3-6 db, and reducing the &#8220;intake breath before each line&#8221; by 6 db, and silencing anything else. When I solo these tracks, I can actually hear the bleed-through of the backing music from my headphones being picked up by the vocal microphone, so I make sure to replace those sections with silence.<\/p>\n<p>After a final listen to each complete track to check for things I&#8217;ve missed, we get to the destructive part: For each track, I select all clips for an entire verse or chorus, and &#8220;bounce to clip&#8221;. This replaces the audio data with the new version, with the gain envelope applied:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011%2f7%2fNormalizing_Vocals2.PNG\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>That screenshot is of backing vocal tracks, showing the last phrase of a verse, followed by the chorus (hence the separate clips on each track).<\/p>\n<p>I know it is unfair of me to talk about this process without providing audio samples, but I&#8217;m not quite secure enough for that. Even with pitch correction and gain normalization, these &#8220;naked&#8221; vocals are pretty unimpressive. Perhaps later.<\/p>\n<p>Next: Mixing, routing, and effects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After completing the &#8220;comping and correction&#8221; stage, I now have five or so mono tracks of vocals ready for the next stage. I like to apply one last destructive edit before applying any FX or panning or mixing: &#8220;normalizing&#8221;.&nbsp; Audio Normalization is generally understood as making a collection of audio clips have the same peak [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studio-diary","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}