Mixing Techniques


Mixing is the process of making the sounds you've put together during the editing process sound good. You mix the individual tracks to make sure that your podcast listener isn't turning up the volume one moment, then yanking off her headset to avoid permanent hearing loss the next. You also mix to combine trackshave two tracks playing at the same timein order to make sure that the track you think is most important is the one that's most clearly heard.

Let's look back at the podcast we've been working to build. You know the music we used to lead into and out of our podcast? We've decided we like it, so we want to have it playing under our setup and wrap up tracks. The first thing we want to do is copy the music enough times to have it play under the complete setup. This process, called looping, is a common technique for creating a long-playing soundtrack behind speech or other sound. When we've done this, the track looks like the screen shown in Figure 8.10.

Extending Our Loops

There are two things we have to do now: First, we have to cut the last copy we made so that it matches the length of the setup. We'll use the technique learned earlier, setting edit points and cutting the last clip to length. Now, if we were going to be listening to this at a high volume, or trying to make it match a subsequent piece of music, then we would need to very carefully listen to the music and choose the right point in the beat pattern so that the cut made musical sense, just as we would be careful in editing spoken voices. In our case, though, the music will be in the background behind a spoken voice, and we'll do a fade to silence before the music leading to the interview starts.

The first step is to set the volume of the music so that it's behind the spoken setup. Since we already found a volume level we were happy with when we were creating the first fade, we just have to match it. We begin by setting a level low volume in the first clip, as we show in Figure 8.11.

Figure 8.11. Volume is set during the first repeat of the clip.


Now, we simply match that level across all the repeated music clips, as shown in Figure 8.12. Notice that we don't have to insert edit points in the repeated music clips, since we're not changing the volume during the clips, we're just resetting it for the entire clip.

Figure 8.12. Once the level is set, it can be carried across all clips.


Finally we insert edit points in the final music clip, because we do want a fade to silence. Since we're going to be matching the end of this music to the end of the spoken setup, and since we'll be bringing the next music up under these two tracks, we're not going to want just a simple straight-line fade, so we'll create several edit points and create the curved fade profile shown in Figure 8.13. How did we know how to create this profile? We listened. You'll do the same thing, listening to your tracks, creating edit points, and changing the volume to create the sound you want. Just remember that, whether you're using 2 edit points or 20, the process is the same. You don't have to get flustered or confused; just keep moving the volume at each edit point until your podcast sounds the way you want it to sound.

Figure 8.13. Listening will tell you how to shape the fades and crescendos.


Building on the Cross-Fade

This process that we've just gone through, lowering the volume of one track while raising the volume of another, is called a "cross-fade," and it's one of the basic techniques used by DJs in creating dance mixes and long-format radio music programs. You can move the tracks back and forth on the timeline (which you see at the top of the track portion of every screen shot) to make sure that beats match, and that the music flows smoothly from piece to piece. How do you make sure that the music matches? You guessed itlisten. Watching the sound wave display can help, but differences between the way the display and your ears react to different sounds means that there's no real way to do it purely based on the display. You have to use your ears when you're mixing tracks.



Absolute Beginner's Guide to Podcasting
Absolute Beginners Guide to Podcasting.
ISBN: B001U8C03Q
EAN: N/A
Year: 2004
Pages: 167

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