Need advice on how to equalize music & singing recorded at the same time

newtoaudio

New member
Hello!

I haven't been able to uncover anything on the Net that applies to my exact situation, and decided to say "screw it" and just post on a forum!!!

So here's the deal: what I want to do is record a friend of mine singing along with a karaoke background track. Then, I want to mix it/equalize it to where the music volume and tones match up to the volume of my friends voice. i HOPEFULLY will be recording it with a lapel mic; if she decides she doesn't want to do that, she will be using an amplifier speaker for her voice and her phone for the background music, both of which will be coming into MY phone's mic. So... is that doable? is there any way to salvage a recording like that and make it sound nice? I have to find out because she is going to have that recording come hell or highwater, and she's not techy so I'm the one that's been tasked to figure it out.

Any tips and suggestions on it?
 
If you are interested in quality, then you need her to sing with in ears in - you MUST get isolation. An iPhone can record with surprisingly good quality, but what you are actually wanting to do has umpteen snags built in.

Being honest, the really things that matter are what quality level are you aiming for. You can listen to YouTube videos that are real studio quality and other than sound like they are recorded in a train station. A large proportion are also mimed.

You have many options - but important ones are the sound of the recording space, and how close the mic is to the singer. You then need to think about the balance between the two - so that probably means software on a computer where you can adjust the tone and the balance between track and voice - audacity is a popular free bit of software for PC or Mac that does it pretty well. If you really want to spend nothing, then I'd get your track into a computer, and then with her listening on headphones so the track doesn't get picked up by the mic, get her to sing into the phone in your deadest room - bedrooms and curtains are great - with the phone quite close in - maybe a foot from her mouth. Then put that audio track into audacity with the backing track. You can add some reverb, and change the tone of her voice, then balance the backing track with the voice and save it out. Then you cheat. get her to mime to the playback, and if she does it accurately, nobody will notice - you then glue the picture and the sound together in movie maker or other free software and add a fade or two and maybe titles or whizzbang visual effects.

That's one process.

Or, you could record her singing with the track playing live. You can move the phone nearer to whatever is playing the track or further away to make the balance right, but it will, sadly, sound crap in most cases.

If you have mics, sound interfaces and better software then all these things make it more commercial sounding. To a degree it's like wanting to paint a picture, but you only have three felt tipped pens, when you need a real selection, some talent and an eye for it. The three felt tips could do the job, if the picture you paint only needs three colours. Black, orange and blue might do a desert in the sunlight scene, but you're stuck if you need trees, buildings and people?
 
Is this solely audio? Do you have access to the backing track as a music file? If so, have her listen with an earbud (or two - depends on which helps her sing on pitch/key to the music), using her own phone or playback device. Just record that [singing] with your phone - experimenting with placement so you get a good audio recording. If you have an iPhone and GarageBand, record into that, or a similar app that lets you both record and import tracks. Then, import the backing track into the mixing app [GarageBand]. You will then have to move/slide the backing track around to get it and the recorded vocal to be in sync, but once you do that you can adjust the individual levels so that you have a balance between the two.

You can also just export the tracks to a computer and mix them in something like Audacity, or GarageBand, if you're on a Mac.
 
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