Is it possible to make instruments sound natural through audio editing like this?

[Ryan Elder]

Oh well so far the composer does not have the bass sax or the electric viols. He says he may be able to make acoustic viols sound electric with effects though. I think the only one he didn't have was the bass sax so far, but one of the example tracks had sounds I want, which I find out were orchestral chimes, and I am not sure if he has that or not. I can ask. But I can have him put that on hold until the movie is done though. He also has a bass flute the samples were not played in types of sounds that I was looking for in the example tracks, but you said before if we can just get our hands on the bass flute, to just blow into it and make them sounds ourselves.

[Greg Miller]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

Watch François Truffaut's "La Nuit américaine" "Day for Night" and you have a flavour of it.

Day for Night (1973) - What is a Director? Scene (2/10) | Movieclips - YouTube

Wonderful film!!!

[Paul R Johnson]

I give up Ryan. I'm not sure if you don't understand or are deliberately obtuse. I play the sax, and have flute and clarinet here too. The idea of you blowing into a bass flute is really funny. You actually expect to produce notes, even if you can actually find somebody daft enough to lend it to you? Playing a bass flute is a possibility for a flautist, but probably a bit optimistic for you.

You crack on - you and the composer do seem rather on top of it. I'm sure between the two of you you will certainly produce something, er, quite special and unique. PS, orchestral chimes are probably better known as Tubular Bells - remember Mike Oldfield? In my sample libraries, I have loads of tubular bells, but no orchestral chimes. Best of luck with the music - I give up.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh well it was said before on here, to just blow into the flute myself, unless that was incorrect and should not do it. The composer can just use samples then if that's best. I will ask him. But let's say I save all the music for post and the picture is locked. Should I then put the example tracks in the movie, if getting opinions from an audience on the example tracks does not work, because the audience does not know enough about it, like it was said before, then what do you do then? How does a filmmaker get opinions on what music works for a scene and what not befor asking the composer to do that type of music and feel?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Greg Miller

Wonderful film!!!

Just watching that scene makes me want to see that movie. I'm putting it on my watch list.

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

I give up Ryan. I'm not sure if you don't understand or are deliberately obtuse. I play the sax, and have flute and clarinet here too. The idea of you blowing into a bass flute is really funny. You actually expect to produce notes, even if you can actually find somebody daft enough to lend it to you? Playing a bass flute is a possibility for a flautist, but probably a bit optimistic for you.

You crack on - you and the composer do seem rather on top of it. I'm sure between the two of you you will certainly produce something, er, quite special...

Sounds like you've had too much fun for one day. lol Ryan is like beer after 2-3 posts that's my limit. Anymore and I'm getting a hangover headache.

Unrelated, I got a relatively simple audio recording project and I've been trying to educate myself on using multi-track audio programs. I'm currently making my way through Reaper. I can't believe I've been using Audacity all this time. I only do basic edits but still I had no idea how much better these other programs were. I also purchased a MixPre 6 but now I wish I got the 10 instead. As soon as you start recording musicians you need lots of tracks. It should be fine because I don't anticipate becoming an audio engineer.

[Paul R Johnson]

My forehead is sore from the wall banging.

Once you get a proper DAW, some of the things they can do really make life much better. Years ago it was always X vs Y vs Z and everyone disagreed, but now, they're all remarkably good, just different, so Reaper Logic, Cubase and the others really are all good - just different. Cubase for years has had decent MIDI editing, and now that familiar screen we all used in the 90s doesn't really look much different, and the basic operation is the same, but now it can show you real audio and let you fix faults. I've got the latest version of Cubase and it has a plug in - well, a link to a separate piece of software called spectral layers, and I was so impressed I bought the full version. You can remove reverb - something totally impossible only a few years back, but you can also take a commercial recording and it splits out stems - so vocals, bass, drums, keys, guitars etc - each one as a separate track. It can fix all kinds of noise - and I've not scratched the surface. As I use Adobe, I still do little audio edits from Premiere by using Audition, but Cubase and Sound Forge are my usual tools. Spectral tools doesn't have a preset for fixing bass flutes though.

[Ryan Elder]

You can remove reverb now in audio? Wow! Is their much quality loss if you do?

[Josh Bass]

Yes and sometimes yes. Izotrope can do it, and there are several other programs.

[Brian Drysdale]

You need to listen and hear if it works in a particular situation, However, these things are usually best avoided, unless there's no escape.

How to Remove Echo in Premiere Pro - YouTube

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks, if this is only a few years old now, no one in the filmmaking community has been talking about it that I caught wind of. It's mostly the locations that have some reverb, but I can live with it, as long as audiences are not bothered by it.

[Greg Miller]

Split out separate stems from a mixed track? That's hard for me to envision ... it sounds like the nonsense on the CSI genre of TV shows. (Of course ten years ago I'd have said you can't remove wow and flutter automatically. And fifty years ago CEDAR hadn't been conceived.) Paul, is Spectral Layers a standalone program, or does it work only under Cubase? I don't need all the editing facilities but I certainly would like to clean up some audio, especially older recordings.

[Paul R Johnson]

To my shame I’d never heard of it, and it appeared in Cubase 11 pro. I tried it and it removed the vocal from a track I’d tried to do myself and failed and it worked. It also retained the stereo field which others usually destroy. It also left me the removed vocal as a stem. I did a bit of Googling and discovered it’s a separate product Strienberg sell. So I bought the full version. It’s does so much I’ve only scratched the surface.
If you have a mix where say, the vocal has too much reverb, you can extract the vocal, dereverb it, then put it back. You can also adjust the stem balance. If you listen to the stems there are artefacts. But as they are just unwanted bits of other tracks, when you remix, they stop being artefacts and sit back where they should.

EDIT
I've a track I'll share for scrutiny - it was recorded before covid struck. The backing harmonies and the music were sorted, but vocal wise, all we had was the guide vocal Ellie sang in one take, and she didn't even know the song very well - so it was a kind of rough run-through so the BVs could be sorted. In some places she even sang the wrong notes - AND - she sang with the studio monitors like a PA - never intended to be used. With covid the project died. I thought I'd try Spectral Layers to clean her track up, and then see if it was clean enough to fix the wrong notes. It's quite exposed at the start, so now you know how it was recorded, you might be able to hear the artefacts. I think they're pretty low. I'd welcome comments.

YouTube (Short URL)

[Josh Bass]

They can extract a vocal from a mix? Insane.

[Paul R Johnson]

Not just vocals, but vocals, drums, bass, keys and 'others'.

Here's the unmix feature

YouTube (Short URL)

[Josh Bass]

Im afraid I cant watch that cause my brain just exploded