Comments on: Virtual Duet Procedure

By: Howard

Howard — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:57:34 +0000

Hey, Heracleum.
How are you doing? Nice pages! (I often come to your site to play a round of “SUDOKU”.)

Thanks for the good advice here about picking the background music and the key, about the “partner” sending the “mixer” a clean voice-only file. Very good advice for us first-timers.

I think “the devil is in the details” though, for some of us. For example, the part about letting the “sound output” act like a mic is easy with XP, but weird with Vista. And many people don’t seem to know about the “settings” panel in Midomi’s flash-based recorder, where “mic” or “sound output” must also be selected to match the PC’s settings. These are the kinds of questions I expect you will get from novices. Still, EXCELLENT “How-to” procedure. I learned a lot from your first 8 or so steps. Time will tell if more details are needed.

May I ask you, what midi player do you use? I have nothing, so I can only play midis in the”native” key, although I know most people can raise or lower the pitch by the desired number of semi-tones. (My singing range is SO NARROW that this issue makes many midis useless for me.)

Lu2007 and I are in the early stages of planning a duet. I’m practicing the words of a Brazilian song. The same key as the original artists will work in this case, so our half-baked plan is for me to send Lu my vocal and she will be the mixer. We may ask you for help if we are having troubles. (She is practicing the words to a Japanese song, too!)

By: Heracleum

Heracleum — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:39:50 +0000

Hey Howard! Glad to hear you’re a Sudoku fan
Ah yes, about details… I already promised to Dewi to add more in-depth explanation. Soon I’ll write separate posts and just add here links to them on the different steps, just to leave the basic procedure ’slim’ and quickly readable.
Since I don’t know Vista, this is good to know, so let me check if I got it right: while in XP if I right-click a Flash object I see nothing more than the audio device and mic volume in Settings… in Vista you have to specify the source explicitly?
About the Midi player I suggest you VanBasco Karaoke Player, it is good for the Key shift but also to turn off the usual annoying melody track you’ll find in most of midi/karaoke files (I have a post on this topic in Italian, I’ll translate it).
I’m glad to hear about your duet with Lu! Of course I will assist you

By: Howard

Howard — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:44:37 +0000

Sounds like a good plan, Heracleum, about adding details as needed on separate pages.

I didn’t make myself clear about the difference between XP and Vista. Both operating systems see the same “Settings” panel in the Flash recorder. But, if I am not mistaken, one must also set the computer’s “default recording device” to “microphone” or to “stereo mix/output” to match the Flash setting. (Am I wrong about that?) It is there that XP and Vista are rather different.

I should be practicing my Portuguese lyrics, haha! See you at Midomi.

By: Heracleum

Heracleum — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:33:14 +0000

Ah yes, all right, different Flash settings panel was puzzling me eheh.
First I will provide configuration details taking winXP as example (since I guess it’s still widely used) then I’ll try to gather info about doing the same on Vista
I you have this one as operating system I’ll bother you later eheh

By: Lusimar

Lusimar — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:52:10 +0000

Hey guys, I decided to visit this page and what a surprise!You both talking about me!:) Well, I liked it very much Heracleum but I think I’m only able to be the partner, not the mixer as Howard told you!Hmmmm…I don’t know,I need to learn more about that.You understand more about these things than me!!I think you did a good thing posting this “How-To” procedure here.Thank you!!I hope you can do more for us.Did you see that Howard and I will try a duet too?I hope our duet can be so good as your and Fallingsta’s one!Kisses and see you!;)

By: Heracleum

Heracleum — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:43:33 +0000

Yes Lu, there’s a lot more stuff to add, I’ll also try to post an article about the basic steps a mixer should follow, actually not that easy.. but I can try, maybe a simple example involving just an mp3 karaoke track and not Midi mixing, because it’s quite more complex

By: Lusimar

Lusimar — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:18:02 +0000

Ah, yes.It would be good because I always use MP3 karaoke tracks on my recordings and I’d love to know how to mix.Thanks for you effort my friend!!By the way, thanks for singing with me!!Kisses!!!

By: Howard

Howard — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:49:40 +0000

Hi Heracleum, Hi Lusi,
Uh-oh! Lusi says she won’t be the mixer?? We’re in trouble now! Haha!

But maybe it solves one on the problems I came to ask you about, Heracleum.

I came here with two topics to discuss: First, I was wrong when I said that the computer’s “default recording device” must match the Flash Settings Panel’s recording device. I purposely experimented by setting my computer wrong, and the Flash correctly. Flash seems to override. So no worries there. Never mind what I said above.

The second topic is this: In the duet Lusi and I are planning, it starts out with the female voice singing two verses before the male voice comes in. If I were to send her my vocal, how on earth would she be able to start singing her part and have it match up with mine when my part came in?!? It seems impossible! And yet, YOU have managed this same feat in your duet with Lusi, “We’ve got Tonight”. How did you do it?? What’s the secret? (((But if Lusi says she will be the Partner and I will be the Mixer, this might be a moot point for us.))) Still, it’s an interesting question.

By: Heracleum

Heracleum — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:33:03 +0000

Howard: nice question, I was also sure I mentioned about it in the procedure but I probably left it out to keep the steps clear and short. It depends on how the Partner (P.) -obviously- recorded his/her track: if P. send you a “trimmed” recording, starting immediately with his/her voice only, the Mixer should use his ability (and super-powers :D) to find the point where this recording starts from: it’s not recommended to use “ears” eheh you should use your eyes to graphically recognise the shape of the waveform where the very first word is sang and place it in the correct point. This is why a Midi background music is perfect for mixing: with the help of a melodic track (commonly used in midifiles) you could look at its starting note and vertically align the vocal track with this note.
It depends on the software and it’s not easy exactly as you were afraid of. Thats’a why the P. should avoid this pain to the Mixer (M.):
when P. receives the background mp3 track s/he should place it as a first track of his/her multitrack audio software, then records a vocal track. This track of course will have blank spaces (silence) before and after. When P. exports this track the trick (trick-track??) is to create a full mp3 starting exactly where the background track starts, no matter of silence: this way the “origin” (0:00) is the same for both. So when M. receives this vocal track s/he just have to place it at the beginning of the music project, starting at 0:00 as other tracks does. This avoids the hard work to find exactly where the Partner’s vocal track starts.
Following this directive, if P. has to sing 3 parts in the song s/he should not compact the three parts sticking ‘em all one to the other, because this will multiply the mixing troubles. I hope I’ve explained it well.
PS: Lu’s track was exactly the worst case possible I mentioned above ahahahah! ..but of course it’s all my fault! I forgot (or better, I was too lazy) to mention these steps and I’ve been punished ahah, noo I’m quite used to do such things so no problem at all, but I suppose it’s very hard for a newbie Mixer.

By: Howard

Howard — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:33:58 +0000

I actually think I understood most of that, and it’s bad news! Because I do not have any software such as you describe where I can see the waveform, nor any way of producing separate tracks for a multi-track recording. I used to have a two-track wav file editor, with which I could merge 2 audio tracks into one track, by visually lining up the downbeats. Then with the click of a button, it would create a file that was made of both of the original tracks. It may have been similar to what you described above. That was on an old computer…

I suppose I will just have to get Lusi to sing her version first, as a solo. Then I will use her recording as my “backing track”. It won’t be as hi-fidelity as what you can do, but it’s the only idea I can come up with. (Unless you have a better idea for a newbie mixer with no software.)

By: Lusimar

Lusimar — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:42:15 +0000

Uh-Oh!!!!There you are talking about me again! So, Howard is right because I don’t know how to mix and I suppose we will need your help Heracleum!! Could you help us? I think we (Howard and I) Could send our vocal tracks to you and you could mix them.Would you do this for us, your friends??? Ehh?? Well, I’m sure Howard would be very happy with it like me too!! Kisses for you two my dear and favorite friends! See you!!

By: Howard

Howard — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:54:28 +0000

Good news.
We do need your advice, Heracleum, but we might not need you to do it for us. Not yet, anyway.

I downloaded a free audio editor today. It’s an updated version of the same one I used to use. It’s called “Sound Engine”. It’s just a 2-track editor, but it’s all digital, so I shouldn’t lose TOO much quality by re-mixing on previous mixings.

I’ll see what I can do, and maybe ask for more help later. ( (Lusi, send me your test track in the same key as you sang it before. lol) )

By: Heracleum

Heracleum — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:14:53 +0000

Ok Howard! Yes 2 tracks are good enough
You know, of course for me it’s a pleasure to mix for you everything you want by the way I guess it would be interesting and useful at least to try mixing a simple two track duet.
Let’s say Audacity is a good choice as a multitrack audio software, also to add effects (usually reverb) to your vocals, so when you (even you both) are ready to “take the long jump” and switch to a semi-professional tool I’d suggest Audacity.