Music Production

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This is Music Production. A place to share anything and everything you want about your music making journey! Learning is the goal, so discussion is encouraged!

RIP Waveform.

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Don't share other people's music without commentary, analysis or questions. This is not a music discovery community.
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I will update rules as necessary, but I promise we'll stay light on them and only add new ones after discussion!

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(in no particular order)

Stuff you made/are making. Get valuable feedback and criticism!
Learning resources - videos, articles, posts on any topic concerning a production process, be it composition, sound design, sampling, mixing, mastering, DAW workflow or any other.
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Good to know: As a general word of caution, avoid posting complete compositions, mixes and tracks on the internet before backing them up on a remote and reputable server. Even small snippets or watermarked tracks should be posted AFTER backing it up to cloud. Timestamps from cloud services will help you in case of theft. And, as a public resource, lemmy is not a safe place to post your unpublished work, so please make sure your work is protected.

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anthromusicnote

Proper sound balancing (forum.uncomfortable.business)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/musicproduction

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So not entirely music related, but my don't-use-reddit policy and this looking like the closest not entirely dead community has led me to post sooo...

I have an audio question about recording levels. I'm doing voice-over stuff for some really bad Youtube videos I'd like to make and it never sounds remotely good.

I get that the recording volume should be just the green side of clipping, but how do you take a track, and then add it to other tracks and balance the whole thing to not sound like ass?

It always seems that it's either too loud or too quiet and I'm baffled as to how to tweak the mix correctly so that things sound right.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I suggest you first think about what your sources are? What microphones? Does it match the voice? How’s the proximity? How does the room sound? Can you hear the room? Not saying this is your case and it sounds harsher than what it means, but the old saying of “shit in, shit out” is always a good place to start. Check your sources.

It also sounds like compression might be needed on the vocal to level it. That way, whether you duck the BG music to the vocal, or have just vocals alone, things are even. EQ also plays a part in where stuff fits in the whole spectrum of sound.

Keep in mind that if the dynamics and equalization is off on each individual track, it’s trickier to balance stuff out bc it’s kinda untamed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Seconding track leveling and compression, especially if the parts are recorded separately or you're not used to live performance.

(This isn't to say that track level dynamics aren't important, especially in non-pop music)