Hi all,
I am a semi-professional opera singer (i.e. not professional, but training), soprano, based in Oxford, UK; as a result of the pandemic, all lessons and performances have moved online, necessitating me suddenly to learn a lot more about recording equipment, and I would like to invest in equipment that will allow me to function well in the confines of my home. I am a complete noobie when it comes to tech, so any assistance would be very gratefully received.
There are 2 purposes I have essentially:
1) Having singing lessons with my teacher via Skype/Zoom. Presentation of these doesn't matter, but sound quality needs to be representative/good. My basic laptop/iPad microphone basically doesn't work - the high notes cut out, although it sometimes just about works if I stand 3-4 metres away and face sideways.
2) Making audio and video recordings at home for auditions [I tried to post a link but can't because this is my first post - you can find a representative recording on the Youtube page for Eglesfield Music Society; I am Antonida Kocharova - it's quite easy to find].
The setup for these currently is: the piano recording is made separately (the pianist in this case is the same, but may vary - this is outside my control); I listen to the backing track through headphones (Bluetooth); I record both sound and video on a GoPro; I mix the audio tracks separately using Audacity; I mix the video tracks separately using Lightworks (free version); I then mix audio and video together using (don't laugh) Windows Photos.
One of the key issues for me for recordings is that I want to be able to record video at the same time as sound, and I need to be able to act, so I need my venue to look suitable enough to be a 'stage', and I need to be able to move around.
The venues currently available to me are:
a) A currently unfurnished house, which you can see in two of the three videos in the link - part of the reason why the quality is so bad is because it is currently a literal building site, so I have to zoom in quite a lot to stop wires coming out of walls and half-removed wallpaper being visible. There are bare wooden floors, now plasterboard on walls, now ceilings (not very high). Not a lot of background noise. I use this venue for recordings.
b) The room in the flat I am currently staying in, which is about 4*5m[SUP]2[/SUP], ordinarily furnished, carpets, not very high ceilings. I use this venue for lessons, but it is not suitable for recordings.
My current assets are:
- An ok Asus laptop (it does its best but it struggles - but it will have to do for now), with Windows 10, Windows Photos video editor, Audacity, Lightworks (free version 14 or something), USB ports, but not much else (also running out of memory massively, but I have external hard drives I can use);
- A medium-size, not bad iPad, with whatever proprietary stuff comes with it including Garageband (I am not a natural Apple person, so don't really know what's what);
- An old Samsung S5 phone with a basic voice recorder and camera but zero space left - on my jobs list to replace;
- A Tascam DM-40 recorder - which is fairly good, but I am not good with capabilities (have only used to record and then transfer the files off the SD card); as far as I can tell I can't connect it to my laptop to use as an external microphone with Skype, and I have checked the manual, but tell me if I'm wrong;
- A GoPro video camera.
So the questions are:
1) What microphone should I get? As part of that, is there any point considering USB microphones, or should I just splash out for a proper mic and audio interface?
It needs to deal with loud high notes. I have seen lots of recommendations for condenser microphones. Rode NT1A seems to be the most consistently recommended, but I have also seen recommendations for AKG Lyra, Sennheiser MK-4, Shure, Behringer C-1U USB condenser, Blue Yeti USB, Zoom H4n, H2n, H6 etc. There are so many, it is very hard to tell the difference if, like me, you don't know the stuff.
2) Connected to this, how do I get the right volume?
I often find that using either of my recorders I end up with recordings that are too quiet, and I cannot amplify them enough without clipping - how do I deal with this?
3) If I should get an interface, which one?
I have heard people getting the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, but have also read about M-Audio.
4) Do the right cables tend to be included, or do I have to get them separately? If the latter, which should I get?
I have read about XLR3 male to female cables, but that means nothing to me.
The next few are linked:
5) How far away from the microphone should I stand?
6) Is there point getting that semi-circle of soft material to dampen the sound?
7) Can Audacity provide the tools to add in decent reverb if I do this?
8) If not, is there a free or cheap alternative programme I could use for sound editing?
I know that the impact of the room acoustics is massive, and I have read about whether to dampen the sound as much as possible and then add reverb back in or to use a mixer on recording - again, apologies, I didn't really understand what that all meant. I have previously been told to stand 3-4 metres away from the recorder, but I have seen the recommendation on other threads to be more like 1-2 metres. I have also once done a studio recording with a proper condenser mic and dampener around it, in a dampened studio, with significant editing to make it sound decent, but I doubt I have the skills to do this. The problem is that operatic singing without reverb is (to my ears) awful, and I would rather have the acoustics of a small room than no acoustics or bad steely reverb. Assume for the purposes of this that a better space is not an option, and that I do not have the resources to add extra dampening to venue A other than by buying the right equipment.
9) Can anyone point me to helpful resources to understand how to properly use an audio interface and sound editing software?
I currently play around with Audacity and occasionally refer to Youtube tutorials, but very often the level of explanation is "To add reverb, click this button and move this number to x and that number to y...", which leaves me with absolutely no idea of what any of these numbers actually mean. To demonstrate the level of my ignorance, I only recently realised that when you use Amplify, the number you put in is how much you multiply it rather than to what level you amplify it... Short of asking you all to just teach me, which would be an abuse of your time, I would like to find a consistent way of learning it.
10) Any pointers on the video side of it? Good free/cheap software? Decent basic hardware?
I'm sorry this has ended up such an essay, but what I have gathered from other threads is that there is no easy answer to this and it doesn't work to just get a fine mic.
For background, I have already done a fair bit of googling, various threads among singers on Facebook, and read through four other opera/micing threads on here (again, can't link). They were quite helpful in many ways, but the level of my lack of understanding is that there are quite a lot of words in there I just don't understand, and unfortunately us singers are a bit dim when it comes to technology, so asking others for advice works for details but not for comprehensively understanding what I am actually doing. So if anyone feels able to help, I would be very grateful.
Many many thanks in advance.
Best wishes,
Tonya
I am a semi-professional opera singer (i.e. not professional, but training), soprano, based in Oxford, UK; as a result of the pandemic, all lessons and performances have moved online, necessitating me suddenly to learn a lot more about recording equipment, and I would like to invest in equipment that will allow me to function well in the confines of my home. I am a complete noobie when it comes to tech, so any assistance would be very gratefully received.
There are 2 purposes I have essentially:
1) Having singing lessons with my teacher via Skype/Zoom. Presentation of these doesn't matter, but sound quality needs to be representative/good. My basic laptop/iPad microphone basically doesn't work - the high notes cut out, although it sometimes just about works if I stand 3-4 metres away and face sideways.
2) Making audio and video recordings at home for auditions [I tried to post a link but can't because this is my first post - you can find a representative recording on the Youtube page for Eglesfield Music Society; I am Antonida Kocharova - it's quite easy to find].
The setup for these currently is: the piano recording is made separately (the pianist in this case is the same, but may vary - this is outside my control); I listen to the backing track through headphones (Bluetooth); I record both sound and video on a GoPro; I mix the audio tracks separately using Audacity; I mix the video tracks separately using Lightworks (free version); I then mix audio and video together using (don't laugh) Windows Photos.
One of the key issues for me for recordings is that I want to be able to record video at the same time as sound, and I need to be able to act, so I need my venue to look suitable enough to be a 'stage', and I need to be able to move around.
The venues currently available to me are:
a) A currently unfurnished house, which you can see in two of the three videos in the link - part of the reason why the quality is so bad is because it is currently a literal building site, so I have to zoom in quite a lot to stop wires coming out of walls and half-removed wallpaper being visible. There are bare wooden floors, now plasterboard on walls, now ceilings (not very high). Not a lot of background noise. I use this venue for recordings.
b) The room in the flat I am currently staying in, which is about 4*5m[SUP]2[/SUP], ordinarily furnished, carpets, not very high ceilings. I use this venue for lessons, but it is not suitable for recordings.
My current assets are:
- An ok Asus laptop (it does its best but it struggles - but it will have to do for now), with Windows 10, Windows Photos video editor, Audacity, Lightworks (free version 14 or something), USB ports, but not much else (also running out of memory massively, but I have external hard drives I can use);
- A medium-size, not bad iPad, with whatever proprietary stuff comes with it including Garageband (I am not a natural Apple person, so don't really know what's what);
- An old Samsung S5 phone with a basic voice recorder and camera but zero space left - on my jobs list to replace;
- A Tascam DM-40 recorder - which is fairly good, but I am not good with capabilities (have only used to record and then transfer the files off the SD card); as far as I can tell I can't connect it to my laptop to use as an external microphone with Skype, and I have checked the manual, but tell me if I'm wrong;
- A GoPro video camera.
So the questions are:
1) What microphone should I get? As part of that, is there any point considering USB microphones, or should I just splash out for a proper mic and audio interface?
It needs to deal with loud high notes. I have seen lots of recommendations for condenser microphones. Rode NT1A seems to be the most consistently recommended, but I have also seen recommendations for AKG Lyra, Sennheiser MK-4, Shure, Behringer C-1U USB condenser, Blue Yeti USB, Zoom H4n, H2n, H6 etc. There are so many, it is very hard to tell the difference if, like me, you don't know the stuff.
2) Connected to this, how do I get the right volume?
I often find that using either of my recorders I end up with recordings that are too quiet, and I cannot amplify them enough without clipping - how do I deal with this?
3) If I should get an interface, which one?
I have heard people getting the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, but have also read about M-Audio.
4) Do the right cables tend to be included, or do I have to get them separately? If the latter, which should I get?
I have read about XLR3 male to female cables, but that means nothing to me.
The next few are linked:
5) How far away from the microphone should I stand?
6) Is there point getting that semi-circle of soft material to dampen the sound?
7) Can Audacity provide the tools to add in decent reverb if I do this?
8) If not, is there a free or cheap alternative programme I could use for sound editing?
I know that the impact of the room acoustics is massive, and I have read about whether to dampen the sound as much as possible and then add reverb back in or to use a mixer on recording - again, apologies, I didn't really understand what that all meant. I have previously been told to stand 3-4 metres away from the recorder, but I have seen the recommendation on other threads to be more like 1-2 metres. I have also once done a studio recording with a proper condenser mic and dampener around it, in a dampened studio, with significant editing to make it sound decent, but I doubt I have the skills to do this. The problem is that operatic singing without reverb is (to my ears) awful, and I would rather have the acoustics of a small room than no acoustics or bad steely reverb. Assume for the purposes of this that a better space is not an option, and that I do not have the resources to add extra dampening to venue A other than by buying the right equipment.
9) Can anyone point me to helpful resources to understand how to properly use an audio interface and sound editing software?
I currently play around with Audacity and occasionally refer to Youtube tutorials, but very often the level of explanation is "To add reverb, click this button and move this number to x and that number to y...", which leaves me with absolutely no idea of what any of these numbers actually mean. To demonstrate the level of my ignorance, I only recently realised that when you use Amplify, the number you put in is how much you multiply it rather than to what level you amplify it... Short of asking you all to just teach me, which would be an abuse of your time, I would like to find a consistent way of learning it.
10) Any pointers on the video side of it? Good free/cheap software? Decent basic hardware?
I'm sorry this has ended up such an essay, but what I have gathered from other threads is that there is no easy answer to this and it doesn't work to just get a fine mic.
For background, I have already done a fair bit of googling, various threads among singers on Facebook, and read through four other opera/micing threads on here (again, can't link). They were quite helpful in many ways, but the level of my lack of understanding is that there are quite a lot of words in there I just don't understand, and unfortunately us singers are a bit dim when it comes to technology, so asking others for advice works for details but not for comprehensively understanding what I am actually doing. So if anyone feels able to help, I would be very grateful.
Many many thanks in advance.
Best wishes,
Tonya