Btw I'm a musician

So I've been working with an ex-music student of mine from last year on a track she's been working on. She's incredibly talented for a... 15? year old and has a lot of potential to come, but she suuuuuckkks at recording. So obviously she came to me for help.

At first she was like

Here here, could you make this jolly iPhone recording of me singing on the piano sound as delightful as a Danish in a midsummer gown?

And I was like

who u fink I am, Brian Eno? Get outta here, foo'

Unfortunately it would be wrong of me to show the whole track but here's a quick exerpt to get the point:

Damn it why is that so big? And why is that stupid picture tied to my soundcloud. Urgh. Anyway.

Clearly, this is unworkable! I was pulling my hair out and rubbing it in her face with rage.

So eventually she managed to send me individual recordings; one of the piano, one of the vocals.

But they were still coming from a tacky headphone microphone like some kinda gaming nerd loser

So I was like

yo wuss dis? get outta mah face, foo', you won' me to fix dis??

And she was like

Oh you will? Splendid dear pedagogue!

So I was like

Urgh

Well, the thing is, what many people don't often appreciate is really how hard it is to produce good sounding music, and this is just one example. If people don't give you the best recording they can do and rather just send you single-shot recordings regardless of error, technology can't just fix it like people think.

For example, in this recording at first there was the click of the metronome the whole way through both individual tracks. I made her do it again, but she still dropped something halfway through.

Any dog bark outside, strong gust of wind or door opening will likely ruin a song beyond repair.

Not only that but the actual performance has to be perfect. I learnt this the hard way when I thought I was some guitar virtuoso and could play this song or that song with the back of my hand, but when it came to recording, the slightest error, or a string bend being too slow or slightly detuned, or the loose strings at the top of the guitar wobbling loosely, or shuffling a tiny amount on the stool... ruined.

For singers, even breathing in the wrong direction can create a blast of air, or a pop in the microphone if not shielded properly. Balance of volume on higher or lower notes can also make things unusable if you go too loud, breaking the signal and creating a distorted sound. There's so much to think about you wouldn't believe.

Take 150!

But for the case of this recording I was just having fun. The overall goal was for me to write out an electric piano part for the interlude... which I haven't actually done yet... for the track which would ultimately be done at a professional recording studio. But...

I got distracted

So here's the track with individual tracks, compared to the above:

Not much better. At all. But now, you see, I can actually start manipulating things.

First thing's first

Get rid of all the background noise when singing isn't actually taking place, that's just excess static that we don't wanna hear:

Next, you might be struck by how out of tune she suddenly is. This is because when you're recording each part individually, most people can't just remember exactly where each note hits unless they have perfect pitch, a rare gift that a small percentage of the world has, and an even smaller percentage knows it enough to develop it into something useful.

So without listening to the piano and only listening to the metronome, her voice was estimating based on comfort and familiarity, and she fell about a half-step flat. Which to be honest, is pretty impressive. I'd probably go a full octave out of whack.

Correcting a vocal part is actually one of the easier things, but also one of the most time consuming. Take a look:

Here's the voice analyzed note for note and made into a digitized reading:

And here's the same second after I fixed some of it:

Spot the difference?

In this bit here, I raised it half a step, but I also moved some other things around that escaped from their intended note, as well as shrinking the actual wave pattern in parts. This is because a wobbly voice has a kind of erratic wave pattern and you can flatten that wobbliness out to make it stronger and, well, less flawed.

Sometimes notes are out of tune far smaller than steps, and we have to start working in 'cents'

As you can see in the top right, this one note deviates by 25 cents, or a quarter-note. You have to drag that up o down to get to 0, but you also have to consider what sounds 'natural'.

If everything is utterly perfect and in tune, it starts to sound robotic, and if you go extreme you get that T=pain vocal effect. So In many cases I prefer to keep notes a few cents out.

Ok it's in tune, now what?

Well, now we have to start dealing with the very real problem that this was done on a headphone mic. Realistically there's not much I can do in the way of making it fully professional so I didn't spend much actual time on it. I mean, i was supposed to be making electric piano parts, remember?

But first you have to mess with EQ

Along with a range of effects from absolutely necessary like EQ and compression, to optional decoration like reverb, delay and other effects. The same can be said for the piano:

In this case, I doubled the piano and added a heavy, cathedral-type reverb on one of them to really drown it out. Then I panned it to the right side of the audio and turned it down a bit. This way you get a subtle, very wet reverb sound that isn't overwhelming.

With all that in place, it started to sound a bit like this:

Better, aside from the popping an such I mentioned earlier.

Then I was listening to the end and just felt like it should be so much more. Piano-vocals is lovely and personal and all, and I would never take that away from the main song itself, but I couldn't resist adding a bit of a string section and solo cello to big it up at the end.

I'm sure you can hear the potential of this young singer songwriter now, eh?? (You can thank me later, girl)

If I ever decide to actually develop the song further myself maybe I'll ask her permission to post a finished product at some point, but there's a long way to go!

Well, night for now, y'all!