User:PeterSampson/Tutorial: Re-mixing a CD - Mock Up Version-1

This is a draft tutorial for remixing a commercial CD. This tutorial was originally written by Audacity user Chuck Moore ( Cfmoore1 on the Forum ) who wanted to remix some Beatles 2009 Remastered CDs, the early ones which were originally mono but which the studio re-released in 2009 in a pseudo-stereo mix. The studio mix is indeed somewhat odd as it places the instruments on one side of the sound stage and the voices on the other. Sounds ok-ish on speakers if you don't listen closely - but sounds distictly odd on headphones. Chuck undertook for his debut project with Audacity a remix of Please Please Me and has recently finished With The Beatles. His objective was to create a more natural sound stage by taking sound clips and remixing (ambitious for a starter project). I gave him some help with this via the forum and through some PMs. I have reviewed his results which on the whole are surprisingly good - I tend to prefer them to the 2009 stereo mix (but I still have a preference for the mono originals).

I asked him if he would be good enough to write up his process as a tutorial; this is his draft (which I will Wiki-ise with Wiki markup formatting) - once that is done I will be seeking feedback from the manual "list". He says "I do not mind people putting their knives to what I wrote. The procedure is right but if the wording does not convey to the reader what I did then it needs to be changed."

Peter 22Mar11: this is rough-draft at the moment as I need to do some considerable editing to get it into Wiki mark-up. Peter 30Mar11: I created an intro block ad removed the TOC Peter 5Apr11: Following feedback from the original creator of this tutorial I created a simpler Intro note and moved the previous Intro note to a Note at the end.

=Tutorial: re-mixing a CD= Ed 15Apr11: I did not try to test the "method". I have not (yet) added span divs. I think the spelling is now OK -- I americanized centred to centered. I did some grammar, style & consistency stuff. I think that Chuck & Peter should look back over the "Steps" to make them more generic (no Beatles refs) or put the trailing Beatles stuff back in the intro div (my preference). I also think that Chuck & Peter need to go back through the steps and settle on left/right/vocal/instrumental/channel/track and settle on a consistent naming strategy. I might suggest left/instrument track, right/vocal track, and not use channel until the final mix down into two stereo channels. I also think that initial pan needs to be addressed; also final channel pan before stereo mix down. One note on the method, 40% l/r pan on inst vs. voc might be a bit extreme for jazz & pop or not enough for classical/symphonic some note to the effect of picking a single value for all but trying variations on that value might be helpful. Bill 15Apr11: While I appreciate the time and effort that has gone into this, my first impression is that this is material for the wiki, not the manual. Remixing a commercial CD is a very specific and unusual task, somewhat less general than our other tutorials, not something that many of our readers will want to take on. Second, those Beatles re-issues with vocals on one channel and instruments on the right were a "mistake". George Martin (as far as i can recall) used a two-track machine and recorded vocals on one track and instruments on the other in order to have some measure of control over the final mono mix. In my experience most pseudo-stereo releases used some form of highs-on-the-left and lows-on-the-right scheme (reference the first Procol Harum LP). That said, I have a few comments, but rather than use editornotes (which, as Ed notes, :-) mess up the bullet lists) I'll use strikethrough to indicate deletions, bold italic to indicated additions, show //comments like this// and tag with BW. I got lost on Step 7 of Separate vocal tracks and stopped there. This would really benefit from a few illustrations!
 * Gale: 16Apr11 I agree, not for Manual "as is" because too specific (and in any case how are we removing what we don't want in "Separate the Vocal Track Into New Tracks")? I could possibly see a tutorial on remastering original LP and CD media, with maybe four or five different objectives. I would want to see e.g. re-equalization and coping with over-compressed CDs as examples.
 * Peter 16Apr11: Thanks for the feedback on this chaps, valued as always. I agree now with Bill and Gale that this material would sit much better in the Wiki.  Apart from any other consideration it will give Chuck the opportunity to edit the material himself, which he can't do in the manual.  It's odd that Ed had to "Americanize" the spelling as Chuck is himself an American.  I will do some more work on this in the coming week, incorporating your suggestions, and transferring it to the Wiki.

Many commercial CDs that are re-issues of original mono releases and some early stereo releases can have an unbalanced stereo image, often with the instruments on one side and vocals on the other. This tutorial shows a method, using only a couple Audacity features, for re-mixing such a "stereo" song to produce a pseudo-stereo image that can sound better (especially on headphones) with the vocals centered and the instruments spread.

Separate the Song into One Left Track and One Right Track
Ed 15Apr11: link to tutorial on mono->stereo??
 * 1) Have the song in stereo as WAV, 44.1hz and 16bit
 * 2) Create a new Audacity project: File > New
 * 3) Import the song: File > Import > Audio
 * 4) Split the song into left and right tracks //do you mean Split Stereo Track or Split Stereo to Mono? BW//
 * 5) Save the project. Though not necessary at this time, I do so as with any program when I bring together parts from more than one location to create the base file, project etc.

Separate the Vocal Track Into New Tracks
Ed 15Apr11: now that the into div does not contain any Beatles ref these following refs kind of hang out in the air; some of the "Steps" are also specific to the Beatles project" "I placed Lennon's harmonica clips..." etc.; these need to be made into generic instructions. I changed the wording on "Duplicate the vocal track twice to make..." as it did not make sense to me--doing so might have changed the "method" incorrectly--please verify with Chuck. I also did some of this in the section for "on ... only"--again verify method. Sentence "Precise removal of overlapping audio..." (step 8) is a fragment; I changed it -- again please verify. [moan] You cannot put editornote divs into numbered bullet lists as it messes up the numbering!
 * 1) Listen to the instrument track and vocal track individually to get a feel where the tracks can be separated into individual clips. Use either "Solo" or "Mute" to turn off or turn on the needed track.  (In The Beatles remixing, only the right track (the vocals) could be separated).
 * 2) Mute "Instrument" track (which was the left track in The Beatles remixing).
 * 3) Duplicate the vocal track twice to make two new tracks (double click on "vocal" track then Edit > Duplicate or Ctrl + D). Name the new tracks as follows:
 * 4) Instruments only
 * 5) Vocals only
 * 6) Remove most of the audio that is not part of the indicated track name. That is, from the Instruments only track remove all audio that is not strictly instruments only and from the Vocals only track remove any audio that is not strictly Vocals only. //This doesn't make sense - we're duplicating the original 'Vocal' track - did it have some instruments on it? BW// Use "Silence" (Ctrl + L) but leave a short amount (about one second) on both ends for more precise removal in step 8.
 * 7) Duplicate the "vocals only" track for three new tracks. //Huh? Am I making one duplicate of the 'vocals only' track to create a total of three new tracks, or am I duplicating the 'vocals only' track three times to create three new tracks? BW//
 * 8) On the vocal channel only // do what? BW //
 * 9) On the Instrument channel only // do what? BW //
 * 10) On both channels // do what? BW //
 * 11) Mute track "vocal channel only"
 * 12) Repeat step 4 for each duplicated track in step 5 then proceed to step 8. // I'm lost! BW //
 * 13) Carefully remove overlapping audio (Ctrl + L) at the end of one track audio clip and the start of a clip on another track. Move the two tracks directly above/below each other while using silence to remove what overlaps.  Zoom in progressively to a thousandth of a second  (three decimal places on the time index).
 * 14) Play all duplicated created tracks from start to end. Listen for rough spots where one track clip ends and the start of a new clip on another track.  Repeat step 8 as needed.

Pan the Duplicated Tracks
Panning is a case of personal taste so experiment. Ed 15Apr11: I changed all the "Pan...channel/track" to "Pan...right/left" -- this might have broken the method--verify but leave as "Pan r/l" as this is industry & Audacity standard language. [query] Do we expect the original stereo tracks to import panned 100% right and left? Testing shows that if I Import a stereo file then Split To Mono both end up panned center. Below on tracks which are set "leave as-is" I think they need to be panned 100% as appropriate.
 * 1) Vocals (only on vocal/left channel): change to mono and pan 40% left
 * 2) Instruments (only on instrumental/right channel): leave as right track, though on a couple of songs I placed Lennon's harmonica clips where his voice is heard. To do this, I duplicated the instrument track (Ctrl + D), removed with silence (Ctrl + L) what was not harmonica, changed track to mono and panned 40% left to place harmonica where Lennon's voice is heard.
 * 3) Vocals (only in the Instrument channel): Change to mono and pan 40% right
 * 4) Vocals (on both channels): Change to mono, pan 40% left, duplicate, pan duplicate 40% right

Create Another Track of Right Instruments from the Left Instrument Track

 * 1) Duplicate left instrument track: Ctrl + D
 * 2) Change the duplicated track to right track
 * 3) Invert: (Effect > Invert) will cause the new right channel instruments to sound slightly different from the left channel by playing slightly out of phase (not sure my explanation is right).
 * 4) Use silence (Ctrl + L) to remove duplicated instrument track clips for which there are overlapping right channel instruments

Mix The Audio
Use Volume and Pan to mix the audio, using the Audacity meters and the Mixer Board (View > Mixer Board) - here too, this is a matter of personal taste.
 * 1) Un-mute the left instrument track
 * 2) Time shift the left instrument track (no more than 0.040 seconds). This can also work with the duplicated track for right track.  The time shift puts the same two instrument tracks slightly more out of phase increasing the sound difference between the two channels and widens the sound.
 * 3) Time shift vocals (no more than 0.040 seconds)
 * 4) Duplicate (possibly) original right channel instruments and all vocals: Some clips might need volume adjustment separate from the whole track and I prefer to adjust such clips with gain rather than Amplify. Also, some clips might sound better in a different location -- again a matter of personal taste.

While Mixing

 * 1) Wear headphones
 * 2) Watch the meters but trust your ears
 * 3) Experiment...have some fun with the sounds! Additional modifications can be made using functions in the “Effects” menu but The Beatles remix did not go beyond gain and pan.

Export

 * 1) Combine the tracks into one left track and one right using Tracks > Mix – Render or Ctrl+Shift+M. Ctrl+Shift+M retains all tracks while Tracks > Mix – Render removes all other tracks.
 * 2) Save the audio as WAV, MP3 or some other format If Ctrl+Shift+M is used double click on one of the tracks to select just this section then File > Export Selection > (name file and select format).
 * 3) If disc space is not a problem, retain the Audacity project for future remixing.

This tutorial was written by an Audacity user who wanted to remix some Beatles 2009 Remastered CDs, the early ones which were originally mono but which the studio re-released in 2009 in a pseudo-stereo mix. The studio mix is indeed somewhat odd as it places the instruments on one side of the sound stage and the voices on the other. Sounds reasonable on speakers if you don't listen too closely - but sounds distinctly odd on headphones.

The user undertook, for his debut project with Audacity, a remix of Please Please Me and has also re-mixed With The Beatles. His objective was to create a more natural sound stage by taking sound clips and remixing (ambitious for a starter project). The results of this re-mix are surprisingly good - I tend to prefer them to the 2009 stereo mix (but I still have a preference for the mono originals). Ed 15Apr11: In the above note div the final sentence is in first person "I tend..." and should be attributed or removed