Friday, August 16, 2013

4 Basic Audio Tweaks To Improve Home Studio Vocal Recordings

By Frank Lubsey


You might invest a lot of money buying the perfect beat for your next hip hop track, but if the vocals don't match the beat quality, you might just end up creating a track critics will enjoy tearing apart. Hip hop is as much about great vocals as it is about beats and instrumentals. You can never find the perfect excuse for buying great beats only to mix them with horrible vocals. It can be difficult producing high quality hip hop tracks using the cheap equipment found in a home studio but it is not entirely unachievable. Here are 4 audio changes that will set you on the way to creating great hits.

Make use of noise gates. When recording tracks in your home studio, you need to keep in mind the fact that background noise will always be present no matter what measures you take to reduce it. You will therefore have to find ways to deal with this noise during recording. Today, you can use software to eliminate background noise from the recording. Noise gates are example programs that help you eliminate this noise. Majority of the recording programs such as the open source software, Audacity come with this tool. Noise gates are used to eliminate background noises during silent periods. However, such noises are still present when the noise gate is switched off and vocal recording continues. This tool is great for elimination of small background noises such as an overhead fan. You should be careful when using noise gates as they can result in the production of unnatural sounding recordings. If the background noise is very loud, intervals might sound too quiet after 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.

Use compression. This is a tool that makes the track louder or quieter without necessarily having to use the volume switch. Like the noise reduction tool, use the compression feature sparingly as excessive use can ruin the whole track. Simply use this tool to select the maximum loudness of the track. After this, adjust volume using the volume controls for sounds that are over the selected volume. This tool regulates track loudness and simultaneously gives over the vocal recording volume. The visual effect created by this tool can be seen as waves. Your goal should be to ensure that the voice recording takes up most part without touching the edges. If the waves touch the sides, the loudness is too high resulting in distortion.

Understand normalization. The normalization feature can be used to increase sound to its highest point without any distortion. This feature is useful in instances where the track volume is low and, volume faders or gain can't be effectively used to increase track volume. In such instances, track recovery is the only option to get the right volume. This tool is also useful when you want to set the peak level of your recording.

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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