Karaoke Forums

Ok all... I've been working in Cool Edit for many years now and have basically gotten it down to a science.  I've gotten many requests for a proceedure and I hope this helps some of you out there with your recordings.  This proceedure should work in Cool Edit 2000 and Cool Edit Pro 2.

Preparations:  

• First you'll need to make sure your Microphone is plugged directly into the back of your computer in the microphone jack of your sound card.  When you sing, you don't want to be eating the mic, hold it away from your face and at an angle when the mic is pointed at your mouth, but not where if you were to say words with P's and B's in them you'd be blowing directly at the microphone.  This will prevent those type of sounds from contaminating your vocals.  Don't use a headphone microphone that is attached to your headphones.  They have the worst vocal quality and make your voice sound very tinny.  I suggest going to Radioshack and picking up a good microphone that you can hold in your hand.  You can buy something expensive or something cheap, but always remember, you get what you pay for.  Just remember that you'll have to buy the adapters for it to fit into the sound card jack... and no matter what the salesman says... YOU DON'T NEED AN AMPIFIER OR MIXING BOARD.
• Have a pair of good headphones plugged into the speaker jack of your sound card.  The ones with the big bowls tend to work best by keeping the sound from contaminating your vocal track with the sound of the music.
• Have a copy of Cool Edit Pro installed on your machine.  These days you can usually find one on the P2P's but I recommend buying it.
• Have your music ready.  Usually you can find karaoke CDG tracks on the P2P networks.  But you can do the same with the CDG karaoke songs that you purchase as well.  You will want to pull the music off the CD into an MP3 file. (The P2P Cdg ZIP files usually contain the MP3 and a CDG file.  You'll want to use the MP3).

First you'll want to right click on this link and then choose Save Target As and save the file to your Cool Edit main program folder. http://davisworks.net/Dynamics.xfm and then open Cool Edit Pro. The first place to start in Cool Edit is in the Multitrack view.. this is where all the magic happens and it will be a little button in the upper left hand corner or you can just press F12 to switch between Multitrack and Single Track views.

Recording:

1. Right click on top most track in the Multitrack area and select Insert/Add Wave from File and select the background music for your song.
2. On Track 2 make sure the "R" button is depressed by clicking on it.  This is the area that your vocal track will be recorded.
3. Make sure your microphone is plugged into the CPU's sound card and press the Record button at the bottom left.
4. Sing your song to the music. Your vocal track wave will be very small, and if you were to play it you would barely hear it. Follow the next steps to bring the volume of it up and mix it will the background music.
5. When done, double click your recorded singing track to bring up the Single Wave Edit window.
6. Click on the "Zoom Out Full Both Axis"; button on the bottom left hand    side.
7. Select a small empty area of the track (an area where no sound is or just a flat line about 1-2 seconds worth) with your mouse (make sure both L and R areas are selected).  Don't select too big of a area or you may get odd results... just a small area is all you need.
8. Click on the top menu Effects/Noise Reduction/Noise Reduction/Get Profile from Selection/OK
9. Unselect the small area or press ESC and click on the top menu Effects/Noise Reduction/Noise Reduction/OK... This will basically remove any bad background sounds from your vocals, making them crisp and clear.  
10. Click on the top menu Effects/Amplitude/Dynamic Processing/Vocal Compressor (Great)/OK... You should notice that your vocal track has gotten very large.
11. Click on the top menu Effects/Amplitude/Dynamic Processing/VocalComp, 8:1, -24, Fast Attack/OK... You'll notice that the vocal track has now reduced in size.
12. Click on the top menu Effects/Amplitude/Dynamic Processing/3:1 Compressor > 30dB/OK... Now it will look like the track has gotten very small again, however, all the wave peaks are at the same level... this is the secret of recording.
13. Click on the top menu Effects/Amplitude/Amplify/Tab-Constant Amplification set to 18 dB/OK..  Now all your vocals are amplified to a good level to match the background music.
14. Click on the top menu Effects/Delay Effects/Delay/Mono - Light Echo/OK... Many singers think that alot of echo will make them sound better, but just a light echo is all you really need to match the background music.
15. Make small adjustments like removing bad breathing sounds, coughs, etc.  You can do this by zooming in on the bad area and playing it, then selecting just the area of the wave you want to get rid of and choose Effects/Silence
16. Go back to Multitrack view (F12) and Play the entire song.  You'll notice that everything tends to fit into place.  Make sure to listen to the entire song... not just the first few seconds of it.  You don't know how many times I've made that mistake!
17. At this point, you can fiddle with your vocal track to match the music or add any effects you want.  If you have a slow system you may notice that your vocals will not match the background music, you can add silence inbetween your singing to make it catchup, etc.  It all depends on your machine.  Keep going back and forth to the prior step until your happy and move to the next step.
18. When you're happy with your vocals, Click on the top menu in "Multitrack View" Edit/Mix Down to File/All Waves
19. You will now be taking to Single Track View - Select any empty space before and after music and press Delete to remove it. Many CDG tracks have alot of empty blank area before and after a song to accomdate the ads and titles and copyright info.  You don't need it in your song.
20. On the top menu, click on Effects/Filters/Graphic Equalizer/Destination: Home Theater/OK
21. On the top menu, click on Effects/Amplitude/Normalize/Normalize to 101%
22. On the top menu, click on File/Save As/Name of your music in MP3 format.

Congratulations, you've just created a CD quality song that can be burned to CD!

Now you'll want to save your session, so that if you want ot go back and do any editing later you have a clean vocal track.  In Multitrack View on the top menu, click on File/Save Session As and save everything.  It will ask you if you want ot save the Track-2, say YES.  Now... if you want to save your vocal trakc before you did any editing to it at all, double click on the vocal track and it should bring it up in Single Track Editing mode.  Press CTRL-Z until all the changes you made are gone.  Then click on File/Save As and name it whatever you wish with the words "RAW VOCAL" somewhere in it to distinguish it from the edited vocal track.  My hard drive is pretty much filled up with sessions and vocal tracks I've saved over the years.

NOTE: If youre recording comes out sounding like its underwater, turn off any virus-scanning programs you have running in the background. If your voice comes out sounding like its going ahead of the music, try turning off any other window or program you have running on your machine at the same time and just run Cool Edit Pro after rebooting.  If you still find you're having a problem... you may want to check your system for virus'.  Yes, even thou you have a anti-virus program installed on your machine and running all the time, you can still get a virus.  I suggest using House Call Anti-virus Scanner... http://housecall.antivirus.com/housecall/start_corp.asp they can find things that even the best Norton or McAfee can't.  Whatever you do, DON'T GET FRUSTRATED!

I hope this has helped some of you in your recording.  I know it was pretty much impossible to find any help in this area for myself when I was first getting into it.  I love the share the knowledge and trust me, I've been doing this exact sme proceedure with every song I record.  If you've found this tutorial helpful, let me know... and I look foreward to hearing some of the songs you all produce from it!

-=> Jim! <=-

!

We've had a thread for years now on CEP

http://www.karaoke-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=1767

A member's site:
http://www.geocities.com/karaokequeeen/ ... 4861497890

Another member's site:
http://www.atomic01.pwp.blueyonder.co.u ... o_help.htm

Sorry about that... these are the notes I've taken personally for my recordings and I was asked about it.  Guess I have a little different approach then the sites you listed, but as long as it gets the job done it's all good eh?

-=> Jim! <=-

no need for apologies, nor was I saying that the other sites were "right" or "wrong".

[font=Comic Sans MS]thank you jim!!!   there's a lotttttt of great info in there that i haven't read anywhere else....you can be sure you'll be helping more people than me.....thanks for taking the time and trouble to post it..... [/font]8)

Yes, like
and or how about this one So Mr CEP, you do download CDG's illegally!


ps: You never normalize above 95%. You want to stay below the distortion level, not just above it.

You will want to pull the music off the CD into an MP3 file.

No .......it should read WAVE file.



and the use of a mixer  .............are you saying that even if you have a mixer you should not use it.? The pre amp of any mixer  is far BETTER than the pre amp from stock sound card of your pc.[/quote]

_________________
I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

Thanks much for this I'm gonna give the vocal part a try


RUss

Thanks for the info.....It's printing as I type!

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SAY IT WITH MUSIC!!!!

Well seeing and Adobe bought out Cool Edit and changed it into Adobe Audition and you can't purchase Cool Edit anymore and Audition only works on WinXP, that's about the only place you can get it and it works in Win98 and XP.



Let's face it... P2P's are here to stay and no matter how hard they try, they aren't going anywhere for a very long time.  I'm not condoning the use of them, however they are used more and more every day.  I recommend purchasing your CDGs and copying the tracks you need yourself... from the CD!

ps: You never normalize above 95%. You want to stay below the distortion level, not just above it.[/quote]

I guess it really depends on the background track... I've had many background tracks that I've had to normalize to about 125% just so you could hear the music.  But I've found that anywhere between 95-101% works well... it all depends on your own personal preferences... what you feel sounds best for you works.

-=> Jim! <=-

Well I've found that if you pull it off into a MP3 file it tends to be a much smaller filesize (about 3-5megs) as compared to WAV format which takes up about 30-50megs.  You do the math on which would take longer to process?  Sure, WAV format may have much more high quality, but you're talking 30 minutes of processing time per every step, as opposed to 30 secs!




Hey... if you got a mixer use it... however, we're only talking using it to capture vocals here... not the london symphony orchastra.  The reason I suggested plugging the mic directly into the sound card is... 1) It saves you about $150 bucks on a pre-amp mixing board... 2) Everyone has a sound card they can plug into... and 3) For the rest of the steps to work properly, you don't need a mixer in the manner of the instructions I laid out.

If you really feel as if you need a mixer... go for it... just don't worry about amplifying the vocal track in the steps I laid out... no big deal.

The process I laid out is pretty straight forward and is quite inexpensive.  I think the biggest thing I spent money on was a good quality microphone instead of using a cheap headset mic... and that was about $50 at Radio Shack not including the plug adapters.  The Cool Edit program was given to me by a friend of mine who had purchased it and couldn't figure it out back before Adobe took it over.

But... if you've got all the components I stated, give it a try for yourself the way I laid it out and see if it works for you... if it don't... at least you have a good working knowledge of the program to adjust it to your preferences.

-=> Jim! <=-

Thanks for that Knight... its one of the reasons I don't post messages on forums much anymore... so many out there that just wanna rip every word you say apart without realizing that hey... I just was trying to share a bit of knowledge here.  Then there are the ones that treat you as if you don't know what you're talking about and try to berate you at every turn.  Comon people... I mean really!  Do you want to learn something new or do you just want to find something... anything you can harp on for hours on end just to make yourself look smarter or more intelligent.  I'm not saying that about you Knight... just in general.  My momma always said that those who talk alot usually don't have much good to say... but watch out for the ones that are quiet in the corner because they are the ones that are truly listening.  Know what I mean?  Sorry about the ramble... just felt a bit attacked for trying to post something helpful.  Thanks for your post... made me feel alot better!

-=> Jim! <=-

Oh you're so welcome darlin... And thank you so much for that!   Let me know if it helps you at all and if you have any questions!

-=> Jim! <=-

Hehehehehhehe... I truly hope it helps ya girl... can't wait to hear what you're able to come up with!

-=> Jim! <=-

I hope it helps bro... you've got some great tunes and I can't wait to hear what happens when you apply my instructions!  Lemme know!

-=> Jim! +-

I have a question about this, ok, no matter what headphones I use, the karaoke version always creeps into my vocal recording, it's like it's not recording just on the mic but internally as well.... doesn't make any sense, any one have ANY ideas?

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[scroll][glow=darkorchid]~I'm the girl your mother warned you about~[/scroll][/glow]

Hey Butterfly!  Well first off you should make sure your music is turned down enough in your headphones so it doesn't creep in.  If you have your windows recording properties set properly, you should always have just the microphone selected to be your recording device... some chat room programs if you want the music to come thru with your voice as well, you would set your windows recording settings to WhatUHear or Stereo Mix... if you're not sure how to bring up your recording properties, the easiest way is to double click on the little speaker next to your time on your taskbar and then selection Option/Properties/Recording... that will show you all the devices that you can record with... if you are recording just your voice, just make sure that the Microphone is selected.

Now... if you are still getting the music creeping into your vocal... it usually means that your headphones volume is up too high... turn the sound down... when you're singing and the headphones volume is up too high, you're holding the mic close enough to the headphones for the music to come thru.  (Kinda like when you hold the phone away from your head, you can still hear the person talking, but just barely).  If that happens, just turn the sound down on your computer and try singing the vocal track again.  I've got a sensative mic and it happens to me as well... but during the Noise Reduction step, most of the music that creeps in is eliminated from the vocal track entirely.

Lemme know if this helps at all!

-=> Jim! <=-

Maybe you can explain better steps 10,11,12, like why you are doing what you do, for what reason.

I dont have a preset for step 10 in Audition 1.5...

Also, if i follow step 12, my waveform becomes enormous. Should that be -30?.

I want to understand compression better, so I like to know whatz it doin?

thanx

russ

Hey Russ... been working on a better form of this tut... I created a bunch of screen captures of the entire process and added a bunch of other tidbits to it... you can get to it here:

http://davisworks.net/cer

Lemme know if that helps out some... with the screen caps it should give you a better idea of what's going on so that you can apply it to Audition.

-=> Jim! <=-

My understanding of CEP is that it load any audio tracks as wav and not mp3. So if you start with a wav file then there is not conversion involved when importing that file. Mp3 files when imported to CEP are converted to wav. I don't know what version of CEP you have but mine look like it process only audio file in wav form. Maybe that's the reason why its so slow and I hardly use CEP.  I may be wrong.

_________________
I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott