I posted a thread a bit back about my vocals not sounding quite as I want and got a lot of great feedback about my boxy room and possible treatments, better headphones, mic technique--even singing tips and general encouragement. All very helpful!
Now I've been fooling around with songs recorded and manipulated with Audacity. My first priority is to sing as well as I can, so I am going to try quite hard with that as well as get a good acoustic environment or at least a better one. But I believe the vocal effects are critical to getting a pro sound. But I'm finding I am really a babe in the woods regarding what I'm doing and what makes things sound better. I'm basically just trial-and-error-ing it, throwing some reverb on or some delay or EQ, or "classic filter" and just hoping something or some recipe works.
But this is inefficient and it both wears down my patience, concentration, and my "ear's judgment," so to speak. I am sure the whole enterprise would go better if I knew what I was doing--or at least knew more.
So, some specific questions:
1. Are the effects provided with Audacity (I'm also using the MeldaProduction realtime effects that I downloaded into Audacity) good enough? My next DAW will be Reaper but so far I got stumped at how to even get sound into it and just need to hunker down and figure it out.
2. Are there any "can't live without" digital effects [software, not hardware] most singers should use? I don't want to fully "cheat" with effects. I don't want AutoTune or anything like that, just digital versions of what singers in studios had in the 1960s through early 1990s. For example, I'm already finding that volume variations (with some parts suddenly too loud) are creating some ugliness in my vocals. Some of that is my moving relative to the mic, some is my voice being too uncontrolled, but I would think some of that could be helped out by a digital process that can even that out somewhat. But I am not sure what that is or how to do it. The "Loudness normalization" in Audacity doesn't seem to help much there.
3. Is there some guide or video you could recommend that walks one through putting effects on vocals judiciously?
4. Anything else I should be thinking about?
Thanks again!
Now I've been fooling around with songs recorded and manipulated with Audacity. My first priority is to sing as well as I can, so I am going to try quite hard with that as well as get a good acoustic environment or at least a better one. But I believe the vocal effects are critical to getting a pro sound. But I'm finding I am really a babe in the woods regarding what I'm doing and what makes things sound better. I'm basically just trial-and-error-ing it, throwing some reverb on or some delay or EQ, or "classic filter" and just hoping something or some recipe works.
But this is inefficient and it both wears down my patience, concentration, and my "ear's judgment," so to speak. I am sure the whole enterprise would go better if I knew what I was doing--or at least knew more.
So, some specific questions:
1. Are the effects provided with Audacity (I'm also using the MeldaProduction realtime effects that I downloaded into Audacity) good enough? My next DAW will be Reaper but so far I got stumped at how to even get sound into it and just need to hunker down and figure it out.
2. Are there any "can't live without" digital effects [software, not hardware] most singers should use? I don't want to fully "cheat" with effects. I don't want AutoTune or anything like that, just digital versions of what singers in studios had in the 1960s through early 1990s. For example, I'm already finding that volume variations (with some parts suddenly too loud) are creating some ugliness in my vocals. Some of that is my moving relative to the mic, some is my voice being too uncontrolled, but I would think some of that could be helped out by a digital process that can even that out somewhat. But I am not sure what that is or how to do it. The "Loudness normalization" in Audacity doesn't seem to help much there.
3. Is there some guide or video you could recommend that walks one through putting effects on vocals judiciously?
4. Anything else I should be thinking about?
Thanks again!
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