how can i make this....

[[B]]

www.purevolume.com/brianholl ("i met a bird", or "cannonball". not "maybe", i know what's wrong with that one) .......sound actually like cd quality. i'm using cool edit 2.1 and using a large diaphragm condenser for my acoustic and vocals. please please please help.

[Dogman]

I listened to I Met A Bird. Sounds pretty good, but live. Is it done one take, singing and playing at once? If it's one track, vocals and guitar, it might be tough to get cd quality. I'm sure you can improve it with some eq, and some compression. I just don't know if this will end up sounding bad. Make sure and save a good copy, then experiment with using some eq to bring out the aspects you want to hear more. If the vocal track is seperate, you probably need to use some compression on it, as it seems to wander up and down a few db throughout, and have some harsher spots. Try that, and see if it helps at all.
Ed

[XLR]

Nice song Brian (I Met a Bird). The guitar's got a solid groove to it. Are you using a 990 mic? (pictured on the link page).

By getting a CD quality sound do you mean the deep-rich-polished-sparkly sound of well done commercial recordings? I'm guessing you don't mean "CD quality" the way it's often used to refer to 16 bit/44.1 kHz wordlength and sample rate.

How to get CD/mastered quality sound is the golden question. There are quickie ways to 'kind of' do it in a superficial way using processing to make things beefier or brighter, but most of the quality depends on the basic things that contribute to the initial tracking. Everything in the source, room, and front end signal chain has a huge effect.

Tim

[[B]]

alright. i'm using a MXL large diaphragm (cheap, $70 mic) and i have a pop filter. i thought the pop filter would take care of such scratchie sound noises but it didn't work like i thought it would. i want it to sound more full and just more rounded. i've messed aroudn with the EQ in cool edit pro 2.1 but it seems to me that just puts different effects on it. should i multi-track the songs? i'm more comfortable singing when i'm playing the guitar with it, though. i know i'm only 15, but i'm wayyy into music and i'd like to get a head start. any help is once again appreciated. thanks to the guys who gave me some suggestions already. take care everyone.

-brian

[[B]]

i forgot to say....the mic is an MXL 990. (could've probably figured that out by the price). and i run with a little 6 channel mixer through my USB interface.

[[B]]

bump. any help would do, guys.

[XLR]

OK, some more ideas...

Yes, do it by multitracking. Lets you process and mix the parts with flexibility later. And after experimenting with multitracking you may find that you get a different feel that you like better in the music when you just do it all together in one take. Maybe not. Neither way's better. But really, try everything you can think of with every aspect of recording no matter how crazy it seems.

Experiment w/mic placement a lot, and where you sit in the room. An inch makes a HUGE difference and can affect your track more and in a better way than any EQ or compression you'd use later.

Your song has maybe a little too much dynamic inconsistency. Dynamics are a good thing (soft and loud) when they're expressing musical things like gentleness and aggressiveness. Places they need controlling though are when they tend to break up the consistency of a line - where they come across as spikes or partial dropouts. There again, it's better to deal with those issues with the actual performance, but once they're tracked they can be finessed a bit with compression. But you gotta watch out with compression because it can ruin everything if it's not used with a little finesse.

A compressor with gentle settings could help your track. Compression's a big subject and worth a few hours searching and studying here and Googling the web and newsgroups for "audio compression” or something similar. Then just experiment. The only real rule is trust your ear.

Tim

[VSpaceBoy]

Yes I would try and track them at seperate times. Your sacrificing quality of your voice and guitar recordings trying the catch them both at the same time with only one mic. Its tough enough with three mics.

Its not too hard to get used to it and it sounds like your wanting to start out the right way, and thats it. You'll get used to it in no time. Just get the guitar nice and loud in the headphones, slap a little verb on your vocals, close your eyes and lose yourself in the song.

[VSpaceBoy]

Uh.. yea and what Timothy said.

[ecktronic]

Sounds pretty rough man, and yeah "live" sounding. Alot of work is needed maybe at tracking and definetly at mixing to get this track sounding like a comercial mix.
Good luck man.
I can hear too much room. I would mic the guitar as close as possible to get less room ambience and then add reverb at the mix stage. I think i can hear room in the vocal also, so the same would apply to the close micing technique.