Sunday, September 8, 2013

4 Simple Changes That Will Enable You Improve Home Studio Vocal Recording

By Frank Lubsey


Sure you can buy beats with superb quality for your hip hop mix but if the vocal recording is bad, your final mix will be a disaster. This is one of the reasons why we need to emphasize the need for great vocal recordings especially in hip hop. Why should you go into a lot of trouble to buy beats that are cool when the quality of the vocals ruins the entire mix? Producing records with flawless quality using cheap equipment in your studio may not be easy but it is possible. To help you out in creating the perfect mix, here are some tips.

Noise gates are a must. The truth is that there will always be some noise within your home studio no matter how hard you try to eliminate it. Modern technology has enabled the development of software that can help you minimize noise. The noise gate is the primary tool to use for this purpose. Most music production software come with noise gates. A good example is Audacity, a popular open source recording program. Noise gates eliminate any noise present during silent periods during recording. This noise elimination program is especially useful for noises within the studio such as an overhead fan. Turn the noise gate on when going through a silent interval. Caution must be taken when using this tool as use might result in unnatural sounding records. A background noise that's too loud can result in an unnatural sounding record once vocal recording is complete.

Tweak #2. Employ Noise Reduction. Just like noise gate, this tool is present in most recording programs but you have to use this with caution and ONLY when necessary. Noise reduction makes a record sound as if it was taken underwater. To make this tool work for you, you have to indicate how noise sounds like, but this only works well if noise is not that audible because if it's pervasive and loud a huge portion of the record will sound bad.

Learn to use compression. This feature is designed to regulate loudness within the track without constantly adjusting volume. As with the nose reduction tool, avoid using the compressor too much. This tool gives you freedom to select maximum loudness of the vocal recording. You can afterwards use volume controls to increase volume above the selected maximum loudness. This gives you better control of the voice recording volume while at the same time regulating track pitch. This tool displays the track in the form of waves. Your aim is to ensure that the waves occupy as much space as is possible within the display without touching the edges. If this is allowed to happen, distortion of the recording will occur.

Tweak #4. Know the powers of normalization. This can increase the audio to its peak volume without distorting the sound. This is especially useful when track level is so low that you would not be able to use gain and volume faders for increasing the record's volume and you don't have any choice but to salvage the track. You can also appreciate this tool when you have to set the peak level.

However, be warned that the need for these tools would depend on your mix.You should use them with care to ensure that your vocal tracks will blend well with your instrumental whether you decided to buy beats from professional producers or create them in your home studio.




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