11. Essential Audio Tools: Editing & Processing for Beginners
Alright, we’re now entering editing and processing territory. There are 3 golden rules here that I want to start off with.
-
You can't polish a turd.
-
Just because you have a tool, doesn't mean you should use it.
-
The art of creating music is learning when to let it be.
Making music isn’t about making it something, it's about discovering, and then dusting off what you find. If what you find isn't what you like, then it’ll never be what you want. Once you find it, dust it off and let it be.
What does rule #1 mean? Well simply put, if your original recording sounds bad,,, then it's bad. There is no magic tool to make it sound like a million bucks. You can't polish a turd. The most important thing to understand when recording audio is that the original recording is THE most important part of a good recording.
If your recording sounds bad before you start editing, you need to re-record it. There is no amount of processing or editing that will make it sound better. This is the unfortunate and unforgiving truth about recording audio. You can't polish a turd, you can't make a bad recording sound good. Your original recording should get you at least 80% of the way there, the next 10% can be brought out with a little processing, the last 10% is learning to let it bet. The more processing you apply, the more potential for degradation of fidelity.
Rule #2. Just because you have an EQ doesn't mean you should use it. There has to be a reason you are reaching for it. Don’t just apply it because you think that's what you are supposed to do. You use a hammer to drive a nail into wood. You use a drill to make a hole or twist a screw. You use bolt cutters to cut a bolt. Each one of these tools has a purpose. You wouldn’t use bolt cutters to drive a nail into wood. You wouldn’t use a drill to cut a bolt. When you need to drive a nail you reach for a hammer. When you need to make a hole you reach for a drill.
Remember that tools are designed for a purpose and that you only need a tool to execute a task.
Rule #3. Your worst enemy is yourself. Your desire to make something of audio, instead of letting the audio be what it is. I always say that “there is a reason you picked a sound you liked, because you liked it to begin with.” but instead of letting it be what it is, you decide to use a bunch of processing to try and make it something it’s not. This is yourself getting in your way. Being over critical is just that, being over critical. 90% of the people that listen to your music won't hear what you hear.
Learning to utilize your tools to preserve the essence of what magic the audio holds instead of manipulating it, is an art in itself. “There is a reason you liked the sound in the first place” don't destroy it. Learn how to let it be, dust it off without controlling it. It's about the art of discovery. Be creative, be free, do weird things and experiment, there is no right or wrong way to do things. It’s art.
Let’s dive in.
-
11.1 Editing Basics
-
Discussing editing tools: cut, trim, fade.
So you’ve recorded your track. But you have a lot of dead air space in between your lines. Such as the picture below. This dead air space contains noise. Whether it be ambient noise from the room, mouth noise, accidentally bumping the mic, deep breathing, sharp inhales, and so on. It's good practice to remove this unneeded space and information.
What we can do is Cut, Trim, and Fade the audio into a cleaner recording by removing the unwanted noises that occur in between the lines of our recording.
First, let’s cut out all the noise. Each DAW may have a different term for this action, in the case of ableton its called ‘split’ and this action can be done by selecting the area you’d like to edit and then pressing ‘Ctrl+E’
You can now see that our recording is cut, split, sliced, into a bunch of separate chunks now.
We can go ahead and simply delete the big chunks of space that have no audio in them such as the beginning bit.
But what about the smaller spaces? This is where Trimming comes into play. Now that we’ve cut the recording into different pieces, we need to trim each piece by zooming in and finely adjusting the front and back halves of the recording
Now that we’ve trimmed or ‘resized’ the front and back halves of the first line, we can now apply a Fade.
What is a Fade? Fading is when we adjust the volume level going into, and coming out of, the audio clip.
Why do we need to fade? Well, if we don’t fade we can hear the abrupt end of the audio clip. This can introduce pops and clicks which are undesirable and distracting. The goal is to smooth out the transitions between each line as much as possible without removing any vocals. The goal is clean and natural.
(I purposefully cut into the vocals to much to exaggerate the purpose of fading in the images below, normally I wouldn’t trim them that deeply)
The fade should look more like this
This should be applied to each spot that we’ve cut and trimmed within the recording. After all is said and done, we’ll be left with a clip that looks something like this. The front and back halves of each line are cut,trimmed, and faded. Thus removing any dead air, mouth noise, sharp breathing, or mic bumps.
What we Started with Vs. the Finished edit
This is the “editing” process. We’ll take this process even deeper in the future lessons. But for now, understanding the basic editing process is all you need to get started on your journey. Getting rid of the extra noise will help ‘clean up’ your mix. Promoting less processing, requiring less tools, and freeing up auditory space for other instruments and effects.
-
11.2 Audio Processing Fundamentals
-
A high-level overview of EQ, compression, and core audio processors.
EQ or Equalizer
If you don't yet understand what a frequency is, it would be wise of you to check out the lesson on frequencies (here).
An EQ or equalizer, is the adjustment of Tone, Pitch, or Frequency content.There are many different flavors of EQ. But for the scope of this lesson we’ll focus on what their function is.
An Equalizer’s job is to equalize the tonal balance of an audio recording or sound. They were originally created to balance the uneven tonality of the telecommunication phone lines and radio broadcasts. Their job is to shape the tone, reduce hash frequencies and remove unwanted information from audio.
An equalizer is a key player when it comes to processing audio. It allows us to remove low frequency rumble from vocal recordings, or reduce the harshness of cymbals. They can also be used to increase the amount of low end frequencies in bass guitars or enhance the high end of a female vocal recording.
We’ll dig into which ones to pick and how to use them in the future lessons, but for now we’ll introduce the 3 primary types of EQ.
-
Graphic Equalizers
A Graphic equalizer is a “fixed frequency” equalizer. This means there are very specific frequencies that are set in place. They can come with a handful of ‘bands’ all the way to 60 frequency bands in some niche hardware. Graphic EQ’s only allow for the increase (boost) or decrease (cut/ attenuation) of the respective frequency band’s gain.
-
Parametric Equalizers
Parametric EQ’s will be the most predominant type of EQ you’ll find in the music industry today. This is due to the computer era. A Parametric EQ is a very versatile EQ.
The bands are not fixed, they can be moved anywhere in the frequency spectrum (20Hz - 20KHz). Each band can be widened (low Q) or narrowed (high Q) by the adjustment of its Quality factor or ‘Q’ (this does not mean higher or lower fidelity quality). This makes the Parametric EQ an infinite potential tool. Where the Graphic EQ has set frequency bands, the Parametric EQ can move anywhere in between and be adjusted to incorporate more or less frequency bands by the turn of a single knob.
-
Filter
Lastly we’ll discuss the filter. A filter is a single band EQ. Meaning it only has 1 job, remove the high’s or remove the low’s. This is at its most basic form. For now you just need to understand the concept.
This can be a tricky one to talk about because it's a ‘perspective phrased” tool. You’ll often hear their names intermixed based on the reason why they were used.
A Low Pass filter is the same as a High Cut filter.
A High Pass filter is the same as a Low Cut filter.
As you can see in the illustration below, the same filter that lets the low information pass, is also cutting the highs out. The same filter that is cutting the lows out, is allowing the highs to pass.
This is why filters can be tricky at first. Not to worry though because you can pick whichever term makes the most sense for the application and it will be right.
- Compressor
The Compressor is probably one of the hardest tools to 1. Grasp the concept of and 2. Actually hear what it's doing. A compressor compressing the audio. Great description right?
What does it mean to compress audio? First and foremost it is crucial to understand what dynamic range is. So if you’re unsure on what dynamic range is, check out the lesson on what dynamics are (here).
A compressor’s job is to reduce the dynamic range of a single sound or a group of sounds. We’ll have a full lesson dedicated to how to use a compressor, but for now we’ll cover why it’s used.
A very dynamic sound can be nice on its own, but in the context of a full mix, it might get lost in translation. By compressing a sound's dynamic range, we are reducing the audible distance between its quietest and loudest points. When using a compressor, gain staging becomes paramount in order to accurately use it. While the initial compression of a sound might make it seem quieter, it’s important to increase the output gain in order to compensate for the compression.
A compressor can ‘squash’ the sound. It can make it more ‘snappy’ or ‘beefy’. While these terms may not make sense at the moment, we’ll get way into it in the compressor lesson.
The main purpose of a compressor is to reduce dynamic range using Ratios like 2:1, 4:1, and so on, allowing the floor of the sound to be closer to the peak.
- Limiter
A Limiter prevents any sound from going over its designated threshold. The threshold being whatever level you set it to. A limiter is essentially a compressor but with a ratio of infinity to 1. Meaning no sound will never pass the set limit. You can see in the image below how the blue information has a hard line where the blue and grey meet. With the red information being the audio that has attempted to exceed the limit. This tool should always be the last thing on your master channel to prevent your master channel from clipping.
Again, we’ll have a lesson dedicated to limiters and how to use them. For now just keep one on you master channel with the output gain set to -1dB we don't ever want to hit 0dB on the master and this is the tool to help us do that.
Frequency Analyzer
A frequency analyzer allows us to see a full frequency spectrum view of what our audio is doing. It allows us to visualize what is going on within our mix. The image shows Voxengo Span (mine is blue though it's normally grey) which is a free plugin and amazingly helpful. It helps us see the things we can't hear, along with a multitude of other helpful meters which help us refine our mix in ways we otherwise would have to solely rely on our ears for, which at times can be hard or almost impossible.
All in all this is the very tip of the processor iceberg. There are so, so, so many tools and variations of them. This can seem daunting at first but I promise you, over time it gets more intuitive. We will cover how to apply these processors in the future lessons with dedicated lessons for each one. We’ll cover the hows, whys, and whens of each in order to give you a much greater understanding of each. For now, its best you just play around and experiment with them. The best way to learn how to use them is to use them. Keep in mind that gain staging will provide you with an accurate auditory before and after when comparing before and after processing with any tool.