PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production BIAB Made It to Music Supervisor

Fingers,

I will try and make this as simple as I can. I am glad you have Audacity because that will come in handy toward the end. Everything I am saying is to help you stay within "spec" and not get kicked out. For stuff you want to play for your friends, you can do whatever you want. But if you want it to get passed on this is what I recommend.

1. Less is more. The more effects, or more tools you add to your process, the greater the risk you run of sounding thin and metallic. Same goes for tracks. Seven or eight are enough, though when you start getting fancy you may triple the vocals or double the drums, but in terms of instruments don't go over four or five. Deadly.

2.You need a simple decent DAW and an a good audio interface and a great condensor mic and good solid cables for your guitar. Everything has to be shielded. You have to spend at least $300 on the mic. Go to a music store and ask for help on buying a good condensor mic that has the different patterns, such as the cardioid pattern which you will use most frequently.

3. Get a microphone stand shield for your mic. This is critical. It will save you hours later trying to fix vocals or anything recorded with that mic. It traps the sound around the mic, short non-scientific version.

Mic Shield

4. Get a good audio interface like the Focusrite. That also comes with a bunch of free Eqing software to get your started.

5. Avoid mixers. Go straight into the audio interface. Anything that has electrical power that comes before the audio interface input will add some electrical noise and alter the cleanness of your signal. That will add to the brittle metallic sound later.

6. Your condensor mic will require "phantom power." That button is on the Focusrite. Remember to turn it on when you are using the mic. Turn it off for everything else going direct (like guitars.)

7. If possible, record all your parts dry (no effects) and then add effects to them later. In the free DAW "Real Band" that comes with BIAB, you get Amplitube for free. There are some awesome Band in a Box amp and pedal presets in the free Amplitube that comes with Real Band. Check out all of them. There is some stuff in there that will make your dry electric sound like Keith Urban but it is under control and won't make you sound metallic. There are some Amplitube bass presets that will clean up the bass part well.

8. If you are using a Real Track electric that already has an effect (Not a DI or Direct Input choice) leave it alone. Adding an effect on a track that has an effect is the kiss of death in mixing for these purposes. It will sound thin and metallic. You can add an EQ to it, but you can't add an amp effect on top of an amp effect unless you really know what you're doing. The explanation on that is too long for these purposes.

9. Keep it really simple and let Band in a Box do its thing insofar as the mixes that come with Xtra styles, which I highly recommend if you are going into production work. Get all 4 packs and buy all of them that come out. Trust me on this one. They are pre-mixed. They have all of the modern sounds and modern mixes you are looking for. Again, less is more. They have done the work for you. You can flip through the demos on the web real fast to find what sound you want for a certain sound that is being asked for.

10. Use audiophile version if you can. The sounds are ready to go and you don't need to hardly touch them. If you use the regular version, export the files for each track and then use audacity to do a gain change and shape the tracks until they sound great.

11. Inside your DAW (like Real Band) record just a few really good tracks on your own but KEEP IT SIMPLE. You HAVE to invest in some EQ tools, there is no way around it. I don't use Real Band for mixing, so ask people here who do what EQing tools they use in Real band on drums, Vocals, guitars bass. Create presets you can use over and over. Spend a lot of time finding those Eqing tools and building those presets. Again, I don't use Real Band for mixing, just track generation so I can't say. I use Sonar still for mixing and have about a thousand dollars worth of VSTs I suppose (or maybe more) so I am afraid I won't be of much help in the beginning stage set up.

12. Whatever you do, keep it very very simple and only add the effects you have to to give the vocals some richness, add sparkle and thump to the drums, or tame the bass.

13. Export.

14. Go into Audacity and look at that file. I almost always do three things.

A. I do a 1.5:1 compression on the file to bring it into line. Compressed based upon peaks box unchecked.

B. Then I do ONE pass at compress based upon peaks. "Check" the box.

C. Then I normalize to -0.9. That gives me some head room.

Finally, I go into Ozone and use the simple of very gentle polishing.

I use the TT_DR Meter to make sure I am not clipping, and that my dynamic range is at least 9 but preferably 12. If you can find this meter, get it. It will be your most valuable tool. If it says "over" on the TT DR meter they will kick you out. If the dynamic range is like "5" they will kick you out. Overcompressed. In audacity, if your .wav looks like a big blue brick they will kick you out. It is overcompressed and maxing out at every area of the loudness meters.

Making a production ready song BIAB is very possible, but it takes a village to raise a song.

Dive in and start learning and ask as many questions as you can of the pros and they will help you.

You can start right away using audiophile version if you are doing just instrumentals.

Just create a song in BIAB, let BIAB do its thing, export (save as .wav) go into audacity, do that compression routine, normalize, cut out the click track, give it a one sec moment of silence, a slight fade out at the end to get rid of any noise and a one sec or two sec silence at the end, print, and you are good to go.

Submit.

That's about it for the day.

Let me know how else I can help.

FYI: My song "Running from the Law" was mastered usually EXACTLY the same steps described in Audacity above with only a very mild polish in Ozone. I think it is now on about 15 internal playlists at SongTradr in addition to being forwarded. Check out the .wav form. If you ADD anything to BIAB you should not take a .wav form that looks like this and turn it into a brick or add anything that sounds harsh or metallic. You have to stay warm. The warmth of the tone is EVERYTHING.

Be careful.

https://www.songtradr.com/user/song/david-snyder/running-from-the-lawd120


https://www.songtradr.com/user/profile/david.snyder