OK.....people seem to ask just about everyday how to get started in audio. I used to get the same old answers from people, "just read a tutorial." But who the fuck understands any of that language anyway? We all have to start out from day one sometime.....so this is going to be a Day 1 Audio Tutorial.

Things You Will Need

Mic
This could be anywhere from a high quality condensor mic that could run you up to $100, or what I use, an $8.95 computer mic.

Register With Soundclick
You can do this by going to www.soundclick.com and click on register. You want to register yourself as a band/artist to be able to upload songs

Cool Edit/Adobe Audition
These are the same programs. Cool Edit changed to Adobe Audition. Yes you can get these for free and no I will not tell you where. All I can say is there are plenty of shareware programs on the internet right now.

Contrary to popular belief, this is all you need to put out audio songs on the internet. Now, having a nice pre-amp and condesor mic with a good soundcard to back it up will always help your quality, but you can get semi-good quality by looking up a few tutorials already written down for you.

Cool Edit

Ok....I will try to make this as easy as possible....

Cool Edit Familiarization

You should first familiarize yourself with this program.

1. A component that you should learn is how to toggle from multi track to single track modes. In the top left hand corner you will see a button right underneath the file button. Click on this a few times. The screen that shows only one track is the single track mode, the one that shows multiple tracks is the multi track mode.
2. Directly underneath the track toggle button, you will see a button that looks like a folder. This button is how you will import your instrumentals/beats into Cool Edit from your hard drive.
3. Another important thing you might want to do before you start recording is set you mic level. To do this, go to the multi track screen and click the option button at the top. Scroll down to Windows Recording Mixer. Make sure that the item selected is the microphone and that the volume level is not too loud or too soft. This may take a little tinkering with.

There are other components you may want to play with, but I'll get into them later.

Importing A Beat

There are plenty of places to find an instrumental or beat to record with, but for now I am just going to use a beat from www.soundclick.com as an example.

1. Once at soundclick's home page, click on the link that says Beats/Instrumentals. This will take you to the endless pages of beats or instrumentals that members of soundclick provide for use either for free, or very little money.
2. To find a free beat, simply search through the members pages until you see one that has lo-fi, hi-fi, and MP3 downloadable capabilities. You will know this because it has these links next to their songs.
3. To download the beat that you like, simply right click on the MP3 link and scroll down to Save Target As. Your computer will ask you where you want to save it and what you would like to call the file. I suggest you remember these things (you may want to write it down the first couple of times).
4. Once you have successfully saved the beat to your computer, you will want to open Cool Edit. While in Cool Edit, you want to click on that folder looking button I was mentioning earlier.......you know......the one below the screen toggle button.
5. Now you will have to look for where you saved the beat. Once you find it, just double click on it and it will upload into Cool Edit.

Recording In Cool Edit

1. Once you have the beat uploaded, you will want to go to the multi track screen.
2. While in the multi track screen, highlight the name of the beat.
3. Now look above at the buttons that just lit up, you will see three of them that are bunched together. Click on the one in the middle. This should have inserted the beat into an empty track.
4. To the left of each track you will see a red "R" button, yellow "S" button, and green "M" button. Go to an empty track and click on the red "R" button. This allows you to record a vocal sample onto that track.
5. Now, get ready to do your thang, because all you have left to do is hit the Record button at the bottom of the screen and you will be audio.
6. When you finish rapping or singing or whatever, make sure you hit stop so you aren't recording yourself taking a bathroom break.

You can keep on recording over the same track until you get it right. Once you get something recorded that you are satisfied with, you will be ready to edit your vocals.

Editing Vocals In Cool Edit

Everyone has different techniques and secrets that they use to edit their vocals and you will soon find your own, but until you find them, here are a few tips that I use on a regular basis.


This is a very important tip that I got from a tutorial by Alcatrakz. The important part is to never clip. If you see the bar at the bottom of the Cool Edit screen go into the red, you may want to adjust your volumes to counteract it. To lower or raise the volume of a particular track, just go to the left of the track you want to adjust and click and hold on the "V0" button. Drag it up or down to adjust it accordingly.

Now, I am not going to go into intricate detail on how to make your songs sound like studio quality, there are other tutorials for that. I will however point you in the right direction.

1. First, you will want to put your vocals into the single track mode. To do this, you must first click on the track that has your vocals on it, then click the screen toggle button in the top left hand corner.
2. Once you have your vocals there, you can start editing. I usually like to start by highlighting the portion from the far left of the track, right to the beginning of the huge spikes. Then I will go up to effects at the top of my screen and scroll down to Silence. This makes the track completely silent in the highlighted area. I would then do the same thing at the very end of the track.
3. Now, highlight the remainder of the track that still has your vocals in it.
4. Click on Effects and scroll down to Noise Reduction.
5. While in there, click on the Click/Pop Eliminator.
6. While in this screen, choose the setting that says "Hiss and Lots Of Clicks." This may take several seconds, maybe even minutes to complete.
7. Once that is complete, you will go into effects again, still scrolling down to Noise Reduction, but this time choosing Hiss Reduction. While in Hiss Reduction, you will choose the setting "High Hiss Reduction."

Now my part is done. To further edit your vocals to give them a very nice quality, I suggest following this link. It gives you various settings to put in and shows you how to save them for next time. Overall, it may take you about 30 minutes, but believe me, it's definately worth it.

Saving Your Song

Once you get your vocals editted and your volume levels of the beat and vocals aren't making you clip, you will be ready to mix down your tracks.

1. To do this, simply go to Edit at the top of your screen (while in multi track), and scroll down to Mix Down To File. Then go to All Waves. Keep in mind, if you have any tracks muted, they will not appear on the mix down. To mute and unmute, you simply click on the green "M" button to the left of the track that is muted, or you want to be muted.
2. Once the tracks are mixed down, it will automatically take you to the Single Track mode. I suggest you listen to your whole song again to make sure it is exactly the way you want it.
3. If it's ok, go to file and scroll down to Save As. Make sure you know where you are saving this to and remember what you are naming it. Also, it must be saved as an MP3 File!!!! I cannot stress this enough.
4. To make sure it is saved as an MP3 file, just look down to where it says "Save As Type." Make sure it says mp3PRO(FhG)(*.mp3).

Once it is saved, you are ready to upload the song to Soundclick.

Soundclick

Ok, now that you have your song saved, you are ready to upload it to Soundclick.

1. Log into your account and get all the way up to your main menu.
2. On this screen you will see three different links to your actual webpage. Directly underneath them, you will see a link that says Add New Songs. Well what are you waiting for, click that puppy.
3. Now it will take you to an agreement page. Basically, it says you can only upload your songs that you personally made. It says you cannot upload a song that you do not have permission to upload. Basically, if you are in this tutorial, click I Agree.
4. It will then take you to the next screen that has two choices: Robust Upload or MP3 Slurp. Choose Robust Upload.
5. Next, it will ask you various information about your song. The only requirement on this page is that you have a song title, the rest is optional.
6. Once you are finished with this page, scroll down until you see the Proceed button and click it.
7. Next it will ask you about copyrighting your song. I suggest you answer no to the first question, then click Proceed in the bottom right hand corner.
8. Now is when you will need to remember where you stored your song. Click the Browse button and go look for that bad boy. Once you find it, double click on it, then click on Upload MP3 at the bottom right hand corner. You should see a progress bar pop up, Do Not Exit From It!!! Basically, you have to sit and wait until the song is uploaded before you can even go to another website. I suggest taking a nice long dump because this may take a while.
9. Once the song is uploaded it will ask you if you want to upload a picture for your song. If you want to, by all means, be my guest. If not, just click OK at the bottom of the screen.
10. It will now take you to a screen that shows all of your songs, even though this will probably be the only one there since most likely it's your first.

Anyway, to find the link that you can use to post on Rapverse so we can listen to your masterpiece, click on the link that says Main Menu. You will once again see three different links that will all take you to your songs page.

RapVerse

I am sure most of you know how to set up a thread by now, but just in case you don't, here's a little help.

1. First, go to the songs forum.
2. Click on the button that says New Thread near the top of the screen on the left hand side.
3. Once in here, make a title for your thread, most likely it will be the name of your song.
4. Then, put into the next block whatever you want to say. To make the link appear as an actual link that we can all click on to get to your page and not beat your ass for making us copy and past it into our browser, simply use this formula:

[.url]www.yourlinkandpleasedon'tputthewordsyourlink.com[./url]

but without the periods inside the brackets. Then click submit and you're done. You have just successfully become an audio head on RapVerse.com

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