Saturday, April 6, 2013

Audio Recording Tutorials #03 to #05 - Layered Multi-Track Recording


Videos #03 through #05 of my Audio Recording tutorial series are now online (and I have some additional study notes further down in this post). These three particular videos explain how to go about making a multi-track recording when you must record the tracks one after another in layers, rather than being able to perform everything simultaneously.

If you're just discovering this series and want to start at the beginning, visit:  djbolivia.ca/audiorecording



Audio Recording Tutorial #03: Layered Multitracking part 1

In this video, we use Adobe's Audition software to record the tracks that we're going to be working with on this project. I recorded a Neil Young song (After The Gold Rush) with four parts: piano, strings, bass, and acoustic guitar. This video described the process of setting up the session, setting up individual tracks and arming them, recording the audio, and making sure the project was ready for editing.








Audio Recording Tutorial #04: Layered Multitracking part 2

In this video, I started to explain basic editing tasks such as using the razor/slice tool to cut a track up into clips, making changes to track volumes and panning, and adding volume and panning automation to individual clips. I also talked about Signal-To-Noise Ratios, the use of subtractive EQ'ing to give your instruments more space in a mix, and archiving.








Audio Recording Tutorial #05: Layered Multitracking part 3

We finished editing the individual tracks, I talked about snapping and zero crossings and cross-fade techniques, and then we bounced the edited tracks, did some EQ'ing, added reverb, and adjusted panning and volumes again. Finally, we bounced all the tracks to a single audio files, did some additional reverb and hard limiting/amplification work on it, and saved the final result to disk.








The Final Product: the song that was recorded

This is a very short video, just over three minutes long. It's the final edited copy of the song that I recorded, "After The Gold Rush." This song was originally written by Neil Young, and was the title track to his third album, released in 1970.








If you want to download the audio files that I was using in these videos, to better hear the audio (or experiment with it) in your own home studio setup, here’s a link to the two zipped folders containing the relevant files:

www.djbolivia.ca/tutorials/audiorecording03.rar

www.djbolivia.ca/tutorials/audiorecording04and05.rar


Once you've watched the two videos above, I'd recommend that you spend some time learning a bit more about a few of the things that I covered in this video:


Computer Technology: SSD's vs HDD's:


Fundamentals and Harmonics:


Zero Crossings & Snapping:





To see the rest of the tutorials in this Audio Recording series, visit:




Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:
    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia
    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia
    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com
    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca