LO3 Technical learning

This is what my attempt at editing my beat and adding sound effects into the song looks like. The top track layer is the beat that I added into the software, after doing this I then went to https://freesound.org/home/ to look for sound effects that I could incorporate into the song. So after a while I decide to use a telephone sound plus a sound of a unanswered call as one of my lines is "found out that girl she was calling had to press end that got boring" I also added a small audio clip at the end of some one hanging up on someone else to again highlight that vocal. However after adding them I noticed some clipping so I had to fix that by chopping the beat out using the cutting tool.

After doing this I then added some risers and clashes to give them sections more emphasis, altogehter it created a drop in the beat that made it more hype and funny. This is also the case with the mini audio clip at the end as it feels like it ends the song and would be a good transition to the next beat.

The beat after the sound effects are added.

The beat before the sound effects were added.

Next I worked on how to use the vocal effects that adobe offer for free. This included a compression, reverb, equaliser and autotune effect that I used on an audio clip I took from YouTube.

The clip was from a skit from YouTube that I took and converted into an mp3.

Compression

This is what the compression effect plugin looked like, at first it was quite confusing however, it is similar to plugins I use on FL so I got used to it quite quickly. The way this works is that each knob correlates to either the highs, lows or mids and bringing that knob either down or up would increase the thresh and gain of that part of the clip. So bringing the far right knob all the way up would increase the thresh of the highs in the song; same goes for the lows and mids. This would be helpful when editing my vocals as it can be used to create flat compressed vocals that sit over the beat.

Reverb

This is the output level of the wet and dry of the vocals (there were some other settings in the reverb plugin but they rant that important) As you can see the wet is currently on 0%, this means that the vocals are completely stagnant and sound like I'm speaking in a soundproof room.

However when I increase the wet to 100%, suddenly the vocals are echoing and sound like they are being recorded in a cave. So when editing the final vocals for my song I will have to level this out with the dry to ensure that my vocals have enough reverb to sound listenable.

Equilizer

As the name suggests this plugin offers the ability to equalise you vocals so that your voice sits nice in the mix. In this you can increase or decrease the lows, mids or highs in your voice which can have varying effects. For example, just like in the picture you normally have to roll off your highs for rap vocals. However, its best using another equaliser to deduct some of the highs from your voice as well. Also you need to take a lot of the low end out from your voice and take some areas from the mids that sound bad as it can sometimes sound tinny and like a telephone (this still can be a useful voice effect for some areas of the song) This is all used to make your voice clear and fit perfectly with the mix to prevent clashing in the song.

Finally there is the pitch correction, which is used to fix the pitch of your vocals to match the same pitch as the song. In my song I am not going to add a heavy amount of auto tune as it could ruin the song, instead I will add a like 20% attune as to not get that robotic sound rappers sometimes use.

Altogether, These effects (when used properly) can add to my vocals so that they sound good mixed with the vocals. After using these on a random clip from a video I know now that if I watch more videos and learn how to use them, I will be able to use them to enhance my song even more.