I've been getting some questions about my podcast services lately so I will post an example here in my blog with a detailed description of what I did to this interview with the hope that future clients will see that I can do the job of Podcast Producer and, maybe it will help boost the SEO rankings of our website here.
First, the intro music was done entirely by me and a friend. We used our mouths to make the instruments using an isolation room to record in. I arranged all the instruments, snapped them to the grid, and then I processed all the tracks lightly using compression & EQ. Those recordings were done using a high-quality microphone which is more than can be said for the rest of the podcast at this point, but that's okay because I want you to see how I make lemonade out of really crappy lemons. I arranged and edited the spoken parts so that the speakers were not talking over each other, and so the conversation was clear, fluid, and natural sounding. After removing any unwanted background noise I used the RX 8 Dehum tool for the removal of buzz in my speaking audio for Murkeye. I have since changed my workflow to better suit audio recording from the control room. I used Avox EVO's Mutator to detune my speaking voice by bringing it down 4 semitones because I found that to be enough to mask my voice, but at the same time is clear, and easy to understand. I also used the Mutator's neck and throat modeling to make it sound more realistic like it was coming out of another creature that was alive and in the same room as me. I applied just the tiniest bit of reverb because all three recordings were done in different rooms, and with different microphones, so applying that little bit of reverb will help make the space sound more native to each source. I also applied a de-esser to the reverb to tame the early reflection so they were a little less obvious at just the right time. I used R-Verb from the Waves plugin suite. The settings I used were of a small room size with no pre-delay and cranked down the decay. This blends well with the natural reverb of the small rooms they were recorded in. I used the notation tool to keep track of when the character Murkeye would be speaking as I was editing and cleaning up the vocals. I also wrote Murkeye's dialogue into the notes, as this is good practice, especially when sharing projects. In case it isn't obvious I should point out that I am also the voice behind Murkeye, the deep-sounding voice. I used the Waves Q10 equalizer to find and filter out the boxy sounding frequencies in each vocal performance between 200 and 500 Hz. I routed all vocal performances through a bus track where I applied gentle compression and EQ. Again, I did this to bring them together as well as to even out the volume differences between each performer. The quality of the recordings was poor, but in a pandemic setting you don’t always have the luxury of requesting the highest quality recordings, so you make do with what you have, and I'm completely comfortable making lemonade out of lemons. I used two different plugins to phatten the sound. I used Izotope's Ozone on the bus track and the One Knob Phatter from Waves on my normal voice track. Headsets and cheap mics tend to underrepresent the lower frequencies of the voice, that's one trick I use to get around that, without making the recording sound like they got too much EQ, and at the same time avoiding having to bring out the unwanted lower frequencies I filtered out earlier in the sound chain. Aside from making sure not one compressor was working too hard I left some of the hard work for the master track. Again, I used Ozone in the final track in the actual video project for this video on Youtube, but it was only just kissing it, to bring it together with the game sound I like to use as an audio pad for the show since I upload the episodes with the corresponding game playing in the background. And with that, I'll have to thank you for reading this post because it's coming to an end in this paragraph. I hope you enjoy my work and that it inspires you to want to work with me in the near future. Please feel free to ask me any questions or comment below. You can easily get a hold of me by using the contact form on this website, emailing me, or contacting me on social media. |
AuthorIt's me, Jose. I'm a Multimedia Producer and Sound Engineer. This here is the blog for my business Dope Vocals. ArchivesCategories |