Coming from having 0 experience with editing audio, my expectations were pretty high about what i could achieve within a matter of weeks. I got into contact with a colleague who regularly records wind ensembles to get some tips on where to start. I spent a week trying to work out Ableton and gave up as I was using so much of my time figuring out where the tools were rather than on the process of working on the audio. I switched to Band lab and had some issues with importing large files. I ended up cutting up the audio in Soundtrap and moving this over to Bandlab (I was really stubborn and wanted to use a new DAW).
Once the audio was in I looked at; ,lining the audio clips up, adjusting the gain and making sure it didn't clip, panning mics to align with the side of the hall, using volume automation and applying EQ. All of these points I did research on before I attempted it; YouTube was my best friend here.
I started using volume automation to change the balance of the ensemble and hide dodgy parts and bring out other lines that I wanted to hear. My goals became unrealistic again and I started trying all these wacky ideas. I tried to chop out external sounds such as footsteps, whispering and stands banging that were noticeable in the recording some of the methods I tried included chopping up the file and applying separate EQ on that section. I learnt how to use a Noise Gate. I experimented further with EQ and volume automation to see if I could get rig of the external noises that way. None of these methods worked as well as I wanted. I got quite frustrated and called Julia for some advice. This was a smart move, she reminded me that its nearly impossible to get a perfect recording with no external noises outside of a studio. I did some final edits and undid my weird experiments and then sent off my audio for Julia to pair with the video.
The main issue I found was as soon as Julia exported the video from imovie and embedded it both the video quality and the audio were absolute trashed!! The recording went from something I was quite proud of- semiprofessional standard to looking and sounding like a monkey had attempted this... I am still to figure out how to embed this without seriously sacrificing quality.
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