Adjusting the volume of vocals and music

[Rebecca0630]

I have an audio file of my grandfather singing and playing guitar that was recorded to the computer from an old cassette tape. The guitar is too loud and the vocals are too low. How do I adjust this in pro tools so they are equal and you can hear both well? I have Pro Tools 10 on Windows 7.

[jasonthurley]

This is a stereo recording in which both guitar and vocals are on both left and right tracks I assume?

If so #1 it is very difficult to explain any procedure via message to help to get this recording sound more level #2 there is nothing Pro Tools alone can do to help this other than inserting a compressor that comes with the software (compression can make louder sound less loud and quieter sounds more prominent but there is not a specific setting I could recommend to do so, it takes some "playing around" with certain plugins to make it happen and get it the best you can with what you have to work with.

Maybe someone else can write up a couple things to try but for me I would have to be there to hear it and show you some procedures... good luck

[Demor]

Use a M/S plugin to change the volume of the voice if the voice is mono and the guitar more or less stereo.

[19 frets]

You can play around with the EQ (equalization) plug-ins and suppress or reduce the sound generated by the frequencies associated more with the guitar. Many of the sounds of the guitar that are recorded louder than the vocals will fall into a different frequency range than the vocals.

So start by reducing a narrow band of frequencies and sweep them up and down the frequency range to reduce the frequencies that mostly affect the guitar sounds.

This is not an exact science. It is a trial and error effort that will affect the over all sound of the original performance. But with some careful manipulation, you can improve things. The results will not be perfect, but you should be able to improve it.

I have successfully used this technique to improve older cassette based live recordings. You can also reduce some of the high frequency hiss associated with older cassette recordings using this technique.

[Jakay]

Melodyne is your answer I think. It has a polyphonic note editor that can separate notes within a played chord for pitch correcting, so I can only imagine it would do a fine job of recognizing vocals from guitar and being able to process them independently. I don't which version is best suited to this (Melodyne Essential I think off the top of my head), but it could probably handle this task better than anything else. Plus you get top notch pitch correcting while you're at it.

It's worth looking into if nothing else.

[grovephil]

I can't see how melodyne would be of any use for this problem. It's relative volume levels that need correcting not pitch.

[Jakay]

Originally Posted by grovephil

I can't see how melodyne would be of any use for this problem. It's relative volume levels that need correcting not pitch.

It does volume. I just don't know how well the whole polyphonic bit works. Melodyne Editor is the one I was thinking of, btw, but it's also their priciest naturally. But it's also got a month long full free trial.

[grovephil]

I stand corrected. I just wouldn't want the posters grandfather coming out sounding like Rhianna :]

[albee1952]

I was also coming here to suggest Melodyne Editor. Once the track is recorded into the plugin, you can go thru and click on the notes, and when you find the "blobs" that are the voice, you can up the gain on them with the gain tool(in Melodyne its the squashed open circle symbol). Results will depend on whether the music is hitting the same note as the voice. Worth a try anyway!