First i’d like to thank the people who wrote this,due to money problems i have never been able to record my music but now i am and it is so very much appreciated.
I am quite new and never really had a computer for long of my own until now so bear with me
1)is their anywhere that explains what the effects do and how to use them?
2)is their a good reason to upgrade to ardour 3?I cant find an explanation nor do i really know how to “compile source code”
I guess that is it for now dont wanna be too annoying yet…
Thanks so much for your help
The very beginning step to a good mix is making sure the arrangement of the music allows space or room for the vocals to be heard. For example, you would not want too much of the guitar part to be in the same note range as the voice. If the voice is in a high range, use guitar chords in a lower range. If the vocal is in a low range, use chords in a higher range, or do not play the lower pitched strings.
Allow space in time, make the guitar parts more active between the words, and don’t be afraid to play less while the words need to be heard.
Make sure that the melody is in a comfortable range for the singer, not too high or too low.
After the arrangement is as good as possible, then work on recording and mixing.
Are the vocals recorded at a separate time, or at the same time as the guitar and drums? The answers are probably different depending on whether it is hard to hear the vocals because of the arrangement, because of the mix, or because the vocals and guitar are recorded at the same time, and the guitar is just really loud in the room.
hey thank you for responding,i find it so hard to get help and i read everything i can find but im kinda a computer idiot,i used hydrogen for drums ,recorded myself playing guitar on 2 tracks (i ran my guitar into mymixer then into mycomputer,then i added my vocals.
If you are struggling with the basics of audio engineering then I don’t think you need to be using Ardour 3. Ardour 3 is not yet released it is still in an alpha state. There will be more alpha releases then some betas then the final release. This could be some way off. Having said that, if you read the news items on the Ardour web site you would see that you don’t need to compile code to try out Ardour 3, the alphas are provided as a ready to run binary with an installer that even puts an icon on the desktop and an entry in the main menu.
@steph
A good place to learn the basics is at home with Ardour! What i mean is that you’ve got to do a lot of experimentation to figure out what you 're doing and what you like. Also, browse these forums in addition to posting your own questions. There are a lot of good tips on here.
Do you know how to adjust the faders on your vocal and guitar tracks? Also, when I record a track, I try to get the input level as high as possible without clipping… These are the most basic starting points in my view.
To make vocals heard over loud guitars you usually pan the guitars left and right to make room in the middle for the vocals. The next step is to use an EQ (likt the triple band parametric eq from the swh-plugins) and reduce some of the vocal frequency range from the guitar sound, thereby scooping a frequency-hole for the vocals to live in.
One thing you may not have figured out yet is that you can add an “automation” track to any track, the automation being the ability to record and play back changes to settings for that track, and the ability to go back and make changes until it matches what you want.
As an example similar to what you are dealing with, I recorded a song recently with a child singing, and simple power chord based guitar part. I added an automation track to the guitar track, and lowered the gain on the guitar track while the vocals were present, and raised the gain slightly when there were no vocals.
I considered that the second best choice. My preference would have been to change the chord patterns to fit around the vocals better, and re-record the guitar part with the dynamic changes incorporated into the playing, but there was not time to re-record the guitar parts appropriately, so I worked around it as best I could in the mixing.
You should be able to find information on automation tracks in the tutorials. Once you add an automation track, you just change the track fader to make the track volume what you want, and the automation track “remembers” the changes. There are some subtleties to be aware of about how the automation tracks work, for example re-record all the settings from the beginning, keep most of the current settings and only change when you move the fader, and you can get the track locked so that no changes are possible. Just pay attention to the tutorial and make sure you get the automation track set to the proper mode, then change it to play only (no changes recorded) when you are finished so you won’t accidentally make changes when you don’t intend to.