Audio Recording

This is a tutorial for musicians that are using Notion3 to notate and mix classical symphonies. One problem of most musicians notating music is that they do not know how to mix audio or make their mix sound great using their music notation software like Notion3.

The objective of doing this mix is to make your work realistically sounding as possible. As if it was being performed by real orchestra musicians inside the concert hall.

In Notion3, there is a mixer console feature that you can use to enhance the sound of your mix. This is usually found in the upper left, see screenshot below:

At the end of this tutorial, you will know how to mix a simple symphony orchestra and actually apply effects settings particularly reverb and panning. This tutorial assumes that you have completely notated your symphony or musical piece. Notating can take a lot of time and patience. This is usually done by music degree students or music professionals. In this tutorial, it will be using Mozart Symphony No.25 First movement in G Minor as an illustration.

How to mix symphony orchestra music in Notion3

If you click the Notion3 mixing console. You would immediately see all the instruments in the orchestra used in Symphony No.25 by Mozart. For example, Symphony#25 has one oboe, two horns, two violin section, one viola and one cello sections. To begin with, you need to concentrate on the most important settings which are the following:

a.) Reverb
b.) Panning

Reverb can add warmth and ambiance to the musical instruments. Most orchestra music are performed inside a concert hall which has high reverberation. As a beginner the most appropriate way to set a reverb is to apply it on the master output.

Feel free to click the “Reverb” button and then it will be highlighted. Set your reverb like as follows:
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Someone asked me to review the quality of vocal mixing on one of their songs. This client is still new to audio mixing and constantly looking for the best vocal processing effects and reverb that can be used to the track. But, the client is not sure how to produce the best vocal sound out of the mix and need some guidance.

So the client sent me a sample mix of the original vocal mixing in mp3 format. The background instrumentation has been done entirely with a software (no live music instrumentation). That works well except that client is unsure how to mix the vocals particularly adding reverb to it.

This is a original sample of the vocal mix done by the client:

Quick comments on the original mix:

1.) Simple listening reveals that the vocal is too strong with respect to the background instrumentation.

2.) Too much reverb has been applied on the vocals. It does not match with the background instrumentation or the entire track as a whole.

3.) The vocal does not sit properly with the mix, indicating that it has not been applied with proper EQ and compression settings.

4.) Quick inspection when the sample mix is loaded in Reaper DAW reveals a clipping particularly associated with the vocals. See below (see the red on top of the level meters):

5.) The vocal quality and recording is good only that it needs more work in the mix to make it sound right.

Being conservative with reverb and processing could sound best

When I have original vocal recording wav file; I provide him a sample of what a vocal mix would sound good according to my ears.

This is what I did:
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This blog receives a lot of inquiries. I am interested to share my insights on them to you.

Burning a Audio Mixing Session to a CD

I’m taking a class and I’ve received a session to mix. Every time I burn the wav files using windows media player turns it to regular audio. The problem with that; it loads as audio so it’s a stereo file, can’t get around that. A single kick would load on track 1 and 2. Explain to me when I burn wav files to disc it stays as a wav file. I’m using windows vista.

Potential Issues

a.) Your CD burning software (Windows media player) creates an audio CD. This would automatically mean that even if the audio is mono (as what most tracks for mixing are) it would automatically be converted to stereo.

b.) If you burn the recorded tracks to audio CD, it would lose its original recording resolution since audio CD always has a 16-bit/44.1KHz. Most recording are done at a higher resolution such as 24-bit/48KHz.

Potential Solution

a.) Some CD burning software (like Nero) does include a data disc feature. In this case, you can burn the recorded tracks in its original form and they are not converted to audio CD format (16-bit/44.1KHz).

b.) If you want an open source solution, you can use Infra-recorder:

http://infrarecorder.org/

Then create a data disc. Since most mixing session file are rather big in file sizes, I would recommend creating a DVD Data Disc using Infra Recorder; see screenshot below:

Simply click the DVD button in the data disc options.
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