So, yet another productive day has come to a close; Julia and I both finishing up with our business obligations by lunchtime today. After a quick lunch, Julia asked if I could help her out with Audacity; give her a few pointers on making cleaner recordings, work things more efficiently, etc.
I was up front with her. I told her, as far as Audacity’s concerned, I am still a work in progress and by no means an expert.
When she spoke of her frustration with the quality of her recordings, I pointed out that a $129.00 microphone is hardly going to be enough to give you RCA Studio quality recordings. It’s just not going to happen. Unless you’re willing to invest a few extra grand in equipment, you’re going to have to hone your skills with audio editing. There’s just no way around it.
She agreed and then made the comment that, depending on how things go, it might be worth spending the extra money Down the line. Which is true, but in the meantime, we make do with what we have. “Right?”
That’s what everybody does. So… How do I get the quality recordings that I do when working with Audacity and just in recording in general?
Background sounds cover up a multitude of sin. Even if you just leave your microphone on and hit record and walk away for about ten minutes to record the sounds in the room that you usually do your recordings… It’s royalty free and you have a soundtrack ready-made that you can run alongside the recording of your voice; whether you’re reading a book or you’re doing meditation stuff, producing a course, etc.
If you have royalty free music or something reasonably close to that you can use, that’s also kind of handy. The trick is to set it in the background so that it’s not overpowering to the point where people can’t understand what you’re saying, obviously.
For instance, with Audacity, when I set up a soundtrack to go in the background as I’m speaking, depending on what the noise is I may use a volume of anywhere between -17 and -20 DB.
And, “Yes!” You can use “Amplify” to lower the volume on recordings as well as to raise them, in case you didn’t know that. “What does this do?”
It tends to cover up some of the imperfections that I could not edit out of the track. And… Where room noise is concerned… Sometimes it even gives a little extra body to my voice.
Can you use recordings of birds and things from outside? “Absolutely!” Hang the microphone out your kitchen window for a half an hour if that’s what thrills you. But when you’re doing audio editing with a low budget and you’re trying to produce meditation type tracks, or courses, or anything that involves speaking, having a little extra background noise goes a long way.
What I like to do is do a track, like what I’m doing right now, and then use noise reduction on it to take as much of the background noise out as I can. Then, after I’ve gotten rid of all the little clicks and pops and bings and everything that I can, I’ll either, put music to the background, as people who have been following this podcast may have noticed from other things they’ve heard put out by me in the past. Or… I’ll just use sounds of nature… Room noise… I’ve even been known to just walk into a restaurant and just leave my phone surreptitiously sitting off on the corner of the table with Voice Memos recording for a little while so that I have background noise available to me that has people talking… Restaurant sounds… That kind of thing.
So, in addition to doing your best to keep your speech even when you talk, and at least have a halfway decent microphone, this is at least some of the stuff you can do to help yourself. And… The rest is up to you.
If you want stuff that sounds good? You’re going to have to spend some time with it. If you just want the quick and dirty and get it out the door? Well… You might not have spent the time, but you may quickly lose your listener, too.
A reasonably good recording is what you are gunning for. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be A+. It doesn’t have to be RCA quality. But it you intend to get close to that and you have the follow through to make that happen, “You most certainly will.”
Of course, after working with Julia on her recording in Audacity for a better part of the afternoon, we decided to head over to Friendly’s for dinner, where Brianna took care of us. She saw us. She had us seated (I’m thinking that booth should probably have our name on it) and then came back out and handed each of us a coffee, much like Siro did at the Hampton Diner.
Julia Was a smiling. She likes service like that. And… I do too. Julia is right. “It is good to be remembered.”
After dinner and dessert (That $8.99 soup and salad isn’t a bad deal) we headed back home and just had a quiet evening. Julia did some more experimenting with Audacity and I just kind of kicked back and observed the proceedings.
And… She’s singing loudly again in the shower. So… I’m thinking it’s probably time for me to get out of here and, “Go Join Her.”