Recently, I found a great source of learning acapella recording, editing and mixing. The website is called recordingacapella.com. Here is some random notes I made during learning this material.
Welcome
Setting a good recording level
Keep it in the green. Loudest barely touch yellow/orange. This gives a usable track.
Editing Vocal Percussion
Not useful for me now as I can’t beatbox…
The Bass Octave Track…
This is useful. As David Tao is using this technique in his tuberose.
- Duplicate the track.
- autotune 7: transpose -12 steps, troat length 63, bypass all notes. Select all highlighted audio and render.
- can use melodyne also, might need to lower formant.
- for dup track, eliminate higher frequencies. Channel strip: high pass filter, low pass filter (~100), don’t need below 40. gained up. Compressor 5:1.
- some distortion. Decapitator (Nasty, Grainy Saturation), little extra edge.
- not stereo, no reverb
Aca mixing - basic eq
- bass track: bump in lower end, higher end is minimized
- baritone: distort in high end, cut out in the middle, below 100 is rolled off
- tenor: roughly same as baritone
- alto/soprano: roll off below 300, carve out space for men
Compression
Why do we use compression on an acappella track?
- to control volume, dynamics processor. Gain is reduced and made up. More consistency throughout the track.
- for drum track. soft sounds louder, more spit, more energy, more noise, more attacks, more crisp.
- for bass, much beefier, fatter, bring out sustain.
- automated volume fader.
- start with compressor presets.
Panning
Acappella Mixing: Panning standard practices and recommendations
- lead vocal, drum, bass: center.
- other hard panned.
What Do The Steps In The Recording Process Sound Like
End post
He also recommends several books are podcasts:
- Books
- Zen and the Art of Mixing – Mixerman
- Modern Recording Techniques – Huber
- Mixing Secrets – Senior
- Mixing Audio – Izhaki
- Dance Music Manual – Snoman
- Podcasts
- Pensado’s Place
- Simply Recording Podcast