GPW - Experiment 5 - What sounds good to you?
Beauty is in the ear of the beholder (apologies for the misquote)
The ultimate subjective subject - what do you think sounds good?
There is only your answer. Other people might make suggestions but this one is what you think.
How did you get on playing with the EQ? Looking at waveforms and interpreting what is going on is a good skill to continue developing.
Today's experiment is to get you thinking about a reference point, or more exactly, a reference track.
Go be curious and take a look at something you like the sound of. Do you like the look of it too? Not sure where to start? Here is a file you could download and experiment with.
- Look out for breaths.
- When do they use music? What does it look like?
- What is the difference in level between the background music and speech? In Audacity you can check levels by selecting a small bit of audio and then using
Analyze > Contrast > Measure selection - What works well to your ear?
- What not so much?
If you can find a good sounding episode - either your own or a podcast you like - you can use it as a reference track to compare against when you are editing but can't settle on whether levels are too high/low or music out of keeping compared to speech.
Checking out other people's audio can be a good way to learn.
What is your favourite podcast to listen to? Drop me an email and let me know.
PS in case you want to go back here are the links to the experiments so far
Experiment 1 - What could you learn by experimenting?
Experiment 2 and text - Read it like you want to hear it.
Experiment 3 - dipping a toe in EQ
Experiment 4 - EQ your own audio
The Waterside (Swansea) Ltd
A longer gap than expected between Experiment 5 and 6 - perhaps we can edit it out in post? Sorry for the virus-induced slow down - just a normal virus I think, and now much improved. In our final experiment I want you to think about when you edit out, leave in, or adjust. Breaths, silence and um's. Take them all out, leave them all in, or somewhere in between? I think it all depends, but how do we decide? My guiding principle is to remove distractions and whatever interferes with the flow....
Time to have a play with some settings. First of all we had a play with hearing it. Now we get to adjust some of our own audio. Record something new or work with one of the recordings you made in an earlier experiment. Here is a video of me fiddling with EQ in Audacity. It can be a bit like watching paint dry I know. Hopefully it helps make sense of what you can do with EQ and makes it quicker. Watch the video Open up your editing software and record or import a piece of audio. I suggest a...
EQ - stands for equalization. Hope you had some fun with reading like you want to for Experiment 2. Today I thought we would take a quick look at EQ, which I find to be one of those simple mysteries. I understand it (in theory) and have had some success adjusting it but it is also a great example of how to make things worse really quickly. Adjusting audio has two parts - know what you want to do; know how to do it. This means training our ears and understanding what we are hearing. The sample...