MMS 172 - ACTIVITY 3

Multitracking

Final Output

Preparation

Similar with bonus activity 3, I wanted this assignment to serve as my test submission for the final project – which is why I decided to make use of one of our test recording sessions. Since this serves as a prelude to the final project, I wanted to work on the short story’s (still unsure of the title) foreword. As usual, the recording was done in my makeshift studio where I’ve already added a duvet sheet on the wall which minimised the noise emitting from the other side of the wall.

At the time of recording, we were also preparing for our summer holiday, and since my son’s room is a bit spacious, we made use of it to store the luggage and whatever it is that needs packing. This added additional treatments to the room making sure that there’s less unwanted noise to be picked up by the microphone. For the hardware, I’m still using my Shure MV7+ dynamic microphone and utilising Adobe Audition as my digital audio workspace

Recording

Initially, I recorded the test recordings for personal use; we wanted to use them to see what needs to be adjusted. Do we need to speak slower? A little bit faster? Do we move closer to the microphone or move farther away from it? What I didn’t expect is the multitrack activity, so to add spice to the audio book reading, I decided to tweak the foreword so that there are times where we both narrate. Working with my 12-year-old was fun – he was really looking forward to our recording sessions; so much so that he didn’t mind re-recording a couple of tracks after I edited the script.

Editing a multitrack isn’t complicated (atleast for now because I am only adding voice tracks and a background music), but it is time consuming. Since I’m still navigating the waves, I need to make sure that the RAW output needs little to no editing if possible. During the recording, I need to make sure that the output is as clean as it can be. Another thing that I kept note of, is the timing of the tracks that I will stack on top of each other. Since I need to have two separate tracks for each speaker, stacked dialogues took the longest to record because I wanted to make sure that the pacing is as close to each other as possible – more on this later.

Here is the RAW output of the voice tracks stitched together:

Post-production

Arranging the tracks was straightforward – after listening to the tracks after recording them, I rename them to as per the flow of the script. Doing this makes it easier to identify the tracks without listening to them multiple times. As mentioned above, editing a multitrack doesn’t have to be complicated (this was also mentioned by Sir Al), but it definitely takes a toll on post-processing. Stacking dialogues proved to be quite a task – apart from choosing top 3 voice tracks for both speakers, in post I also have to time them correctly. In other words, I must stack them in a way which makes the recordings work together. After working on the first stack, it was easier to do the rest. I think I was also lucky that my son does not complain when I ask him to retake his part. After arranging the tracks based on its sequence in the revised script, I opted to adjust the loudness of both tracks to –12 LUFS so it would seem as if the tracks were recorded at the same time. After adjusting the loudness, I opted to add pre-recorded ambient piano audio track from Boris Skalsky which I’ve downloaded on Storyblocks. I also decreased the volume of the background music, so it doesn’t overpower the speaking voice recording. Although I didn’t get much feedback on my bonus activity, I noted Kurt Bernal’s feedback when I applied DeNoise to ensure that my voice recording won’t sound robotic in post. So I added light DeNoise focusing on both low and high frequencies, as I noticed that focusing on only low or high doesn’t resolve the light noise in the background which I was only able to distinguish after stacking the background music. Here is the track after applying DeNoise.

Reflection

Comparing my initial recording, as well as the test recordings I’ve done previously, I can say that I’ve improved a lot, not only because of the knowledge I gained so far, but also because I’ve made a mental note of listening to audios critically at the beginning of the course. While this is the case, I also know that I have yet to improve on mixing down tracks which is why I’ve queued a couple of YouTube tutorials on how to mix multitrack.