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In the studio: Tweaking and layering your sound

Posted on Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 in In the studio, Pacific Break competition

Once you’ve mastered the art of making a basic home recording, you might want to take things a little further by adding effects, tweaking your sound and recording extra layers. We’ve scouted out some free software tools to help you on your journey from the microphone to your speakers!

More control over recording, EQ and effects

Ask anyone what the best free audio editing/recording software is, and you can be guaranteed to hear mention of Audacity.

There’s a version of Audacity for almost any operating system you’re likely to find yourself with, and being open source software, it’s built and maintained by a community of programmers. This makes it fairly reliable to work with — which you’ll appreciate if you’ve ever lost your work due to a program crashing!

Audacity gives you more control over the levels of your recording and playback than the basic programs we covered yesterday. But, importantly, it adds effects. These will allow you to change the sound of your recordings – from basic EQ (graphic equalisation, for shaping the volume of specific frequencies) to delay (echo), reverb (room simulation) and pitch effects.

Annoying sound making your ears hurt? No problem: just turn that frequency down in the EQ. Want to try something different? Create spacey effects with a delay effect (which repeats your sound according to your chosen settings). Make your voice sound underwater using a swirling phaser effect, or sound like a chipmunk by shifting its pitch 7 notes. Even better, you can layer these effects until your sound is completely new and unrecognisable.

The variety you can achieve with effects is endless, and you’ve got nothing to lose by experimenting, because you can always click ‘undo’ if you go too far. Indeed, the biggest risk you run is simply not knowing when to stop playing with strange sounds.

There’s one extra benefit that comes with the fact that Audacity has been around for years — there are lots of knowledgeable users who are happy to help you get started. Try this guide from GuidesAndTutorials.com as a starting point. But don’t worry: you can survive just fine by trying things out all on your own, too.

Adding layers

While Audacity can handle mixing and layering of sounds, it isn’t always the easiest to use this way. Plus, once you’re working with more tracks at once, you may need more powerful mixing capabilities. For these reasons, we think you should consider using a multi-track recording program.

Multi-track recording programs are more closely related to software versions of equipment you’ll find in many traditional recording studios. There are mixers designed to look like mixing desks; even effects intended to resemble the real thing. But most useful to you will be the better layout of indicators for things like track volumes, overall volume, effects and track arrangements.

While it can seem overwhelming at first, entering the world of multi-track recording shouldn’t be scary. After all, it’s like somebody handing you the keys to a studio and telling you to experiment to your heart’s content — except you can’t get in trouble for breaking anything! If something seems to be going wrong, you can always restart the program and try again. And multi-track recording allows you to refine your sound, bringing you closer to the musical detail you’ve heard so many times on your radio.

A good point of entry is Quartz AudioMaster, which gives you four audio tracks to play with — enough to experiment with, but not to get too confused by.

In addition to audio tracks (that is, ‘real’ sounds you record or bring into the project via files), Quartz gives you the ability to use software instruments with MIDI (short for ‘musical instruments digital interface’, or put simply, a way to record musical instructions rather than the sounds themselves).

Using MIDI means a few things. MIDI data is usually recorded when a musician plays the part on a MIDI keyboard. This keyboard is connected to the computer, and the computer in turn records the notes the musician plays. It uses these notes to synthesise sounds according to what settings the musician has made.

For example, MIDI allows a keyboard player to record a song using any sound. She can then change the sound to that of a trumpet, piano or guitar. The only limitation is what MIDI instruments you have available on your computer.

You can even record drums using a MIDI keyboard, and some software will allow you to use your computer keyboard as a MIDI keyboard, so you don’t have to buy a separate one (though a computer keyboard is not going to be as expressive).

Quartz also comes with some helpful tools to make MIDI seem less scary for the new user. You can limit the scale you’re able to play, so there are no wrong notes. You can also put effects on both audio and software instrument tracks, but only four effects are supplied. Most importantly, it gives you a simple introduction to multi-track recording and the kinds of interfaces you’ll see in professional programs like ProTools, Cubase and a host of others.

Next: We delve a little bit further into the world of electronic music production.

What are your favourite effects?
What other tools have you found helpful in learning to use multi-track or MIDI production?
And how many tracks do you normally use in a song?

Join the discussion — leave a comment.

Disclaimer: Our aim is not to endorse recording software that we mention on this blog; instead, we wish to enable our readers to make their own informed choices. We are not affiliated with software developers and cannot provide technical support. This series is intended as a resource to enable broader access to free recording technology.

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