Tips on Improving your GOS songs

CarneVaca · #1 10-28-2002, 09:50 AM

I see that GOS songs are back in the limelight, understandably, as the release of the next Fleetwood Mac studio album draws near.

Some folks have made the observation that vocals are hard to hear on some tracks, which is certainly the case. I have remedied this on some tracks with help from my computer. Here's how:

If you have audio editing software, such as Cool Edit from Syntrillium, open a song, say "Someone's Got to Change Your Mind," in Cool Edit. Use the mixing options to improve the sound.

I found that in a lot of songs, including "She Smiled Sweetly," "Down on Rodeo" and "Someone's Got to Change Your Mind," just raising the treble lever was enough to improve the level of the vocals on these tracks. This did not work in "Gift Of Screws," which is probably the fuzziest mix of them all. By raising the treble lever I found that what appeared to be a distorted cymbal sound became rather overbearing. On "Twist of Fate," for instance, I found that just raising the volume overall and the treble slightly, the sound improved considerably. I even used the same technique on "Here Comes the Sun," with acceptable but limited results; it created a considerable amount of background shhh.

I raised the volume level on just about every track, again with only minor success on "Gift of Screws." The version of the song we got is simply a crappy file, and there isn't much we can do to it.

If you have Cool Edit or some other audio editing software, try these tips. If there is a place to which I can send these files for whoever is interested, I'd be happy to do this. I noticed that while I was using audiogalaxy, at least a couple of the files I had manipulated were picked up. When I downloaded "Shuffle Riff" a second time because I didn't like the way I had manipulated my copy of the file, I found that the one circulating on audiogalaxy was the one that had been uploaded from my machine. Doh!

DownOnRodeo · #2 10-28-2002, 10:17 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by CarneVaca
When I downloaded "Shuffle Riff" a second time because I didn't like the way I had manipulated my copy of the file, I found that the one circulating on audiogalaxy was the one that had been uploaded from my machine. Doh!

LOL!

Yeah what (um, David or John Run) said in the TFTS thread about the songs being unmastered is the rpbolem here. Man I hate having to fubmle with the voulme controlk each time a different song starts. Too bad there isnt a way to normalise an mp3 library.

jwys_soapbox · #3 10-28-2002, 09:16 PM

I've Normalized all of mine. They sound great to me. She Smiled Sweetly comes out too loud though.

John

estranged4life · #4 10-28-2002, 11:11 PM

of GOS sound great as is...But I had heard alot of people had versions that sound less than perfect though...Brian J.

DownOnRodeo · #5 10-29-2002, 05:21 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by jwys_soapbox
I've Normalized all of mine. They sound great to me. She Smiled Sweetly comes out too loud though.

John

How do you normalize them jwys_soapbox?

Lol, 'She Smiled Sweetly' IS the one you want to be louder lol. i always crank it up for that gem.

jwys_soapbox · #6 10-29-2002, 10:07 AM

I have a mac so I don't know if you can do what I did on your computer if it's Windows.

I have two ways to normalize a track. I can either use Macromedia's SoundEdit 16 to actually change the clip or I can use Adaptec Jam to normalize while recording it to CD without changing the actual mp3 file.

As for the quality of my mp3 files, I downloaded them as they were posted on SaraRhiannon's site so maybe they weren't subject to later re-mp3 encoding. I don't know. They sound as good as a cd to me.

John