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The objective of this unit is to have you produce a two-track voice-music file. This part covers making an original recording using Sound Forge. | |
Begin by setting up your mixing board and equipment. Next, start the computer. It will boot up automatically. Double-click on the SOUNDFORGE desktop icon to open the sound editing application. Once open, you are ready to proceed to the next step. 4.1 Create a sound file Begin on the computer by selecting: File>New> [16 Bit, 44,100, Mono] >OK |
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Open the Record Panel by pressing the RECORD button. Select Mode: Multiple Takes. If the RECORD button is not visible on the menu, go to Menu>Special>Transport>Record Window.
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Set up your microphone for proper use. The mic should be about one hand’s width away from the mouth, and about 45 degrees off center. To avoid feedback from the audio monitor, whenever your mic is on, turn the audio monitor all the way down. Position the copy you are going to read so that you can also glance over to see the record panel monitor columns while you speak. Then as you speak, on the mixer, begin to raise the level of the mic channel so that the signal from the mic can be seen in the channel level windows.
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As you speak, be sure the RECORD level does not go over –6 by too much. If yellow area above lights up consistently, the level is about right. But of the red area and CLIP sign lights up, the signal is too loud. a bit too high and should be adjusted downward slightly.
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On the computer, press record button. Start speaking. There is no need to rush and you don’t have to read it perfectly because you can edit out the mistakes after you make the recording. Just remember to pause between retakes, however, because it makes editing the mistakes out later easier. For this tutorial, record a voice track that runs 24 seconds in length.
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Check the sound level of your recording A good recording will have the loudest peaks reaching but stay within the –6 markers. Sound louder than this is likely to be distorted. If, so, re-record. The same applies to music tracks. |  |
This part covers how to work with sound from an audio CD | |
Record a music track from a CD Next, you will need to import (capture) a music track. For this tutorial, you will need a track that is 30 seconds in length. Capturing music from a CD When extracting music from a CD, place the disc in the tray and on Sound Forge, from the menu do File>Extract Audio From CD, which will open a window that will allow you to select tracks. Record the entire track, and then select a portion of it for the music background of your voice track.
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Convert Stereo to Mono or Mono to Stereo Programs that are primarily spoken-word can be produced in MONO. To convert STEREO to Mono, RIGHT-CLICK on the STEREO field which will open a selection window. Select either Left or Right and select> OK. |
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Display two or more tracks in the window Rearrange the two track windows so they can be seen easily on the screen by doing: MENU Window>Tile Horizontally. In this example the Music Track is on top and highlighted. The Voice track is below.
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Rename the two tracks so you can tell what they are. Right-click in the track field area of each sound track and type in a new name. 4.11 Edit the track to remove errors Edit your voice track to remove any errors. Select (click and drag) and delete the areas you want to remove. Edit out the unnecessary silent parts in the very beginning and end of the voice track too.
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Edit the track to a specific length Next, edit the music track so that it can be used with your voice track. The voice track should run 24 seconds and the music should run 30 seconds, giving you a couple seconds of full music at either end of the finished product. Double-click on the track field and its total time is displayed in the lower right window of the selected file. In the upper track here, only a portion is highlighted. The three windows in the lower right area of that tack display show three values, the beginning time of the highlighted area, the ending time of that area, and the total time of the highlighted area. By Zooming in on specific areas of the timeline, you can achieve very precise selection areas.
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Once the music track is edited to 30 seconds, add a fade-in and fade-out to the beginning and end respectively. Zoom in to select one second of the track, and from the menu do Process> Fade>In and Fade>Out to the appropriate portions of the track.
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Mix levels for Voice and Music If you mix two tracks together at this point, with both audio levels at full VU, the music will be too loud for the voice. So you will need to create an area in the music track where the music has a lowered volume level to go under the voice. Do this by first selecting a portion of the music track and lowering its volume. In the example here, 26 seconds of the music track is selected so that its volume can be lowered. (The complete voice track is 24 seconds. So this will provide for a one-second fade-down just prior to the voice and a one-second fade-up just after the voice.) When you select that portion of the music track, and do Process>Fade>Graphic, it will open a special window that will enable you to control the volume levels for only that selected portion of the track.
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Set the sound level for a part of the track Press the Reset Envelope button and the orange volume line will reset to the top of the volume control window. By double-clicking on the orange line you create points that can be dragged to different audio levels. In this case, three points were added and arranged in this manner. The resulting orange line indicates that the sound for that selected area will go down to about 15% very quickly, will remain down throughout the selected area, and will return to full volume quickly at the end of the selected area.
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The resulting effect on the track display will look like this, showing the music level lowered in the middle where the voice track is to be added. |
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To mix the Voice Track to the Music track, highlight the voice track, hold down the mouse and drag the highlighted voice track to hover over the music track area. When the voice track is hovered over the music track it will show as a shaded area, and at the leading left edge the letter “M” should be visible next to the cursor. (If not, while you hold down the left-click, right-click to get to the M.)
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When you have centered the voice track inside the area on the music track that has the adjusted audio level, release the mouse. This will automatically display a level adjustment panel. Leave both channels to 100%, then >OK. The mix level will be applied. If you don’t like the mix, do CTRL+Z to undo, and do it over. The final mix can be saved as a wav file or other formats such as wma using the File Save As drop-down menu.
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Audio editing applications commonly produce files in the wave “.wav” file format. When you choose to save files to high quality media such as audio CDs or DVDs, the wav format yields the highest quality sound. You should edit and always save your sound file in the .wav format first. But .wav files are large, often too large to add to web sites or to send through email. The solution is to compress the files to a format that will yield a smaller file size. Compressing sound files means you sacrifice some sound quality, but for most listeners, the resulting sound quality will be acceptable. Sound files are usually compressed to either the .wma format (Windows Media Audio) for streaming audio, and mp3 for downloading.
File Compression Procedure Procedure Send a compressed sample sound file -- You may need to email an audio sample. To do this, open the .wav format file and do File>Save AS>, and in the Save File Type dropdown menu, select either Windows Media Audio (wma) or mp3. | |
