The whole track sucks. I just wanna try improving it and make it sound better. Am i doing it correctly? ...can you please give some suggestions? Thanks in advance.

http://picosong.com/FmHh

please note that this is not a serious project and recorded with a laptop's mic. The voice is not mine. She's a little girl i met through facebook. This mix is just 40 percent finish. I'll try to upload the unprocessed one.

 

the unprocessed track: http://picosong.com/FmU5

 

Are you female? Not because your track alluded to that but simply out of curiosity. We could certainly use more women in here to dilute the testosterone a little. And honestly the track wasn't as bad as you seemed to think. You just need to put a little more time and emphasis on mixing and mastering.

What don't you like about the track? Also it would be helpful to know what tools you are using? Are you well-versed in dynamics processors such as compressors, noise gates, etc. Are you well-versed in the use of effects such as chorus, delay, flangers, phasers, reverb, etc? If not there's no shame in this and I might be able to point you in the direction of some good tutorials.

I can tell you right off the bat that you seem to have some noise creeping in. Maybe try a noise gate/noise analysis tool to clean up that hiss that comes in at times. That would give you more clarity and definition. You might also want to do some pitch correction so that the little girl stays in key in case she's not a professional singer. I would experiment a little bit more with how you're effecting the vocals and guitars plus what tools you are using to do so. Maybe that would make them a little more lush in the mix. Or you could have the verses normal and the chorus slightly more effected to create more contrast. Also don't forget about equalization to both remove unnecessary frequencies and enhance the sound. I hope this helped in some small way.

 

The track is actually not that bad..considering it was recorded through the laptop mic it's not bad at all...I really think that it can be turned into a properly produced track.

Of course if you were more serious about recording and producing the song you wouldn't record through the laptop mic in the first place but since this is the case, that's what you have to work with, and like I said it's not that bad.

It does need alot of mixing and mastering work though to make it sound polished and clear like you want it to be.

The vocal first of all needs quite a bit of gating and noise reduction to get rid of room and background noise. It also needs some compression to even out the loud parts with the quite parts and that on it's own will get it to sound a bit more polished. It also needs some good reverb and a touch of delay to give it space an to make it blend with the rest of the elements of the song because as it stands the vocal is out of touch with the rest of the song.

Everything else pretty much needs your standard mixing. Eqing out low frequencies form the vocal and guitars, boosting a touch of bass here and there to make the track warmer, and compression on the guitars and elements of the song.

Like I said, the track is not bad at all, but does need a fair amount of mixing and mastering to bring it up in quality, the recording of the instruments is pretty good, the vocal will need work.

http://audiosex.pro/index.php?/topic/7076-tips-for-sweetening-a-track/page__p__41773__fromsearch__1#entry41773

http://audiosex.pro/index.php?/topic/6997-for-those-who-want-to-learn-about-mixing-and-mastering/page__p__41339__fromsearch__1#entry41339

http://audiosex.pro/index.php?/topic/5093-any-tips-for-making-your-music-more-full/page__p__30939__fromsearch__1#entry30939

http://audiosex.pro/index.php?/topic/6088-how-do-i-get-crispier-sound/page__p__36370__fromsearch__1#entry36370


Go over the comments there and scroll down to where I left replies. Alot of people found them to be quite useful and I hope they are for you as well.


I've written quite a few responses that might help you in terms of mixing and getting things to sound right, I'll just post the links here to save space on this topic

 

the song is not bad,i remember linda perry s 4 non blonde made it a hit,because u know that song is "what s up",don t u?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NXnxTNIWkc

 

Actually i like it, but the vocals are false sometimes, try celemony melodyne and reverbs on the vocals, and compression would also help. I like the clean sound of your guitar, everytime if i want to record my acoustic guitar i have a bad sound, now i bought a shure beta57 mic but maybe it's just the guitar. Btw you could also add some minimal drums later in the track, maybe ezdrummer. Which daw did you use? It's really not bad, it's actually a good ballad song!

 

Agreed, not bad. But, definitely needs drums in my opinion.

And the main riff is definitely 4 non blondes

 

To me it sounds good but you for got to do the first thing anyone should do with a mix you didn't record in person.

Recreate what was in the room with the singer, basically fix what microphone missed.
In other words Equalize to create what you know it sounded like before you try to make it sound at it's best.

Doing that is the important job that the recording sound engineer dose. With out it you find the mix ends up like you have it. It's better and kind of good but not quite right. (Recording engineers do have a purpose)

All it needs is a good Graphic or Parametric EQ. (The more bands the better).

In my opinion the changes are somewhere near the following frequencies.

Vocals - boost something near bass 300hz ish / some top nocked out 6000-12000hz / boost upper most top 12000+hz
(laptop's mic missed most of the bass / mic's got too much top / this should prevent the voice seeming imbalanced after addition of bass and should create more natural sound *may cause hiss*)

Rhythm guitar - add some upper bass 150 - 300Hz
(should fill in gaps in the backing)

Other tings you might want to try is stuff like
RBass (creates fake bass tones via harmonics)
Stereo reverb (broadens the instruments)
iZotope RX (remove hiss)

 

Yep. The chord progression sounds like "whats up" . Thanks for the advice.

 

No sir. I'm a male. haha. As i said i only met that girl in facebook.

 

Thanks. I'll try that one.

 

I used sonar... Yep, i was thinking of adding some guitars on the last part of the song too. Thanks for your feedback and piece of advice.

 

*yes* . It sounds like for non blondes indeed. It's a cover song by the girl though. The song's called "Believe in dreams" by flyleaf. Maybe the song was influenced by that song.

 

I was afraid of overcompressing the instruments so i just applied a little. do i need to add more? ..i wanted to keep at least 8db of dynamic range.
the tools i've used are Sonnox Equalizer to clean up the guitars. then added some high end and low end using softube trident A-range, CL-1B compressor, the lead guitars has no compression, just a pultec emu. the strings too. Izotope Nectar and La-2a on the vocals, applied 30 ips tape on each track and analog summing (not fully applied though coz i didn't put one in the master insert yet.)

I already cleaned the vocals using RX but it didn't removed all the noise. I was also afraid that i'd take off the energy from the vocals. coz the noise is so severe if i push the Rx too hard, the track will suffer.
That's probably the reason why the vox lost its fulness. Anyway, I've followed all your advice. I added some low band and rolled off the high around 6k - 12k.

 

Well you're using great tools so that's certainly working in your favor. You should check out Izotope Insight if you haven't already. It gives you some serious in-depth analysis and metering. Some of the displays are simply beautiful and you get a real picture of what's going on in your mix. I do think that you need to get a proper microphone as laptop mics don't cut it and are always horrible. Obviously you want to capture the best possible signal at the source and then build on that.

 

Thank you. I'll surely would. It's just that the girl on vocals doesn't have a proper mic. Anyway, It's just a "practice mix" for me. I just wanna know how I'm doing. (is it great or not) or are there things that's missing.

 

It sounds really good for someone with only 1 year in production. It sounds to me like it could use some tweaking but I'd like to have a little more information please. Are you utilizing master bus compression, individually compressing tracks or both? Also for future reference when you are recording from a laptop microphone you should see about increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. You can do this by going into your audio settings in the control panel finding the microphone entry and making sure the volume on it is turned up. This will give you more signal compared to the hiss and will make it slightly less prominent. I will answer you in a little more depth a little later. I have a lot of topics going on in the forums that I am watching and preparing and honestly I've been on here all day so I need a little break to just relax. I promise to get back to you soon when I can listen to it again and you can have the respect of my full attention which you deserve.

 

Both. but not all tracks are compressed. Only the vocals and the rythm guitars. The vocals, i ran it through CA-2a. then the rythm, on CL-1b compressor (softube). and i added ssl bus compressor on the mix bus.
Again, thanks for your cool advice 'bout the signal to noise ration. I'll relay that to the girl. I'm not the one who recorded the vocals. The girl did. I recorded only the guitars. The strings are samples. I'm not finish working on them though. Ok sir. just take your time. I'm not rushing anyway.

 

Girl reminds of Stina Nordenstam. Nice voice.

 

After listening to it again I must say that you've done a really great job for someone with only one year in producing. If you actually used a real microphone and found a way to isolate and clean up whatever that noise is I think the track would be really solid man. The noise could very well be coming from the laptop microphone in which case if you just replaced it you would be killing two birds with one stone. That would also give you a better capture on her voice because it could be improved (am I going crazy or is it slightly nasally at a few points during the attack/decay portion of her voice?) and that's nothing to do with your work just the tool that you had at your disposal (or rather the tool she had at her disposal). Anything else that I can think of is down to artistic choice rather than technical prowess. That's what makes music so great, give two artists the same material and you will get two totally different takes on it. Really good job mate.