Managing Silence

[aur3lius]

Right so this might sound stupid, but its honestly throwing me off. How does one go about keeping silence and sound in check?

For example, I'm currently working on a relatively clean remix. At one point a guitar playing something that acts as a transition to another part of the song comes in. and that's where my confusion lies. Now since this particular part comes in later in the song, I don't start recording from the beginning, meaning before the actually recording there is nothing there. absolute silence. When the part finally does come in, the first thing heard is the natural hum and hiss of the guitar amp (since I give myself a measure or 2 of time to get ready to play the part.). And it sticks out. Its a very noticeable contrast, complete silence to amp hiss. Maybe the start of it isn't such an issue because I can just shave that recording to the point where the actual playing starts. But the end sure seems to create a problem. After the strings finish ringing out I'm once again left with the natural hiss of the amp. And since its just a short part that was recorded, there's complete silence after it. And so it sticks out in what sounds to me like a bad way.

I'm not sure how to address this issue, and so I'm wondering how other people go about this. I guess one way to do it is just to have that initial sound there from the start to end. But that doesn't strike me as very efficient. So far I have about 3 different guitar channels going, and I'm guessing having all 3 humming and hissing at the same time is gonna take away from the potential overall loudness of the remix. Plus, if there's dead silence before an instrument comes in, I feel it ends up having that much more impact when it does come in. But again, that creates that problem of contrast when the recorded part finishes. It seems to not be such an issue if the mix is busy at that moment with other instruments. Since there's more going on sonically, when the part recorded cuts to silence, that cut in sound seems to be mask by the other instruments. But honestly, I don't think I want the mix to be busy with drums or other instruments at that moment. The remix is actually pretty sparse in sound scape to begin with (by design) and I think I want to keep it that way until the end.

So for those of you who record with mics and amps, how do you go about managing this?

[Aster]

Its a very noticeable contrast, complete silence to amp hiss. Maybe the start of it isn't such an issue because I can just shave that recording to the point where the actual playing starts. But the end sure seems to create a problem. After the strings finish ringing out I'm once again left with the natural hiss of the amp

Use a noise gate in post production.

Revalver has the gatekeeper which is one of the best, you let the hiss play and hit the pedal to let the noise gate learn the hiss noise and it removes it.

I understand that there may be other VST effects that are free but I don't have any knowledge about them. Perhaps if you can't find a good noise gate then you could upload the track so someone with the right tools can gate it for you on the forums.

[Rozovian]

No, not in post production - in the main production. I think post-production would be after the mixdown. (nitpicking) What a noise gate does is to let you set a minimum level of the track - when it's just noise, the track is silent. When there's something else, you hear everything. You could get away with just automating track volume level, tho you'd probably have to fiddle with the timing a bit. If it's just a single guitar part, you'd only need to fix the beginning and end, tho if you have a lot of pauses in it, you'd do better with a noise gate.

Theres also tools to remove noise, and Audacity has one that works surprisingly well (at least on noise vs. spoken word). Removing the amp hiss might make your guitar recording sound weird, but it's worth trying.

[Moseph]

I've heard (professional) mixes where there's noticeable mic hiss/room tone when the vocal track starts. Background noise is just something you have to deal with the best you can, and the situation is never going to be perfect, especially when you're dealing with a guitar amp.

My approach would be to handle the mix not so that the noise is never there (since that probably won't be possible) but so that the entry and exit of the noise isn't obvious or distracting. When the instrument enters, this probably means trimming the clip right at the entry so that the noise enters exactly with the guitar. If that's still too noticeable, you could try having the noise enter in a previous busier section of the mix or giving the noise a slow fade in.

At the end of the guitar section, you'll probably either want to fade the noise out slowly instead of using a hard cut or fade the tail of the guitar's sustain out before the noise becomes too obvious. Possibly a compromise between the two.

[Frederic Petitpas]

[........]

[aur3lius]

Thanks for the Responses!

Yea, for the example specified, I tried gating once already although I had a feeling it wasn't gonna work for me. The part is a crescendo coming and going so while I was able to get the gate to react the way I wanted at the start, as the sound tapers off the gate just really doesn't let the sound do what I feel it needs to do. I think the big thing that just doesn't help the situation is that as the sound tapers off, more and more the amp hiss becomes apparent. By the time the sound dies off by a sufficient amount, too much amp hiss has blended back in for me to try and cut it away without it being noticed.

Moseph - Yea I agree that something like this is something I'd probably would never be able to completely get rid of, the natural hiss from amps and mics I mean. But at the same time that subject is such an enigma to me, because I've heard some freaking crazy clean recordings that just blow my mind at how little background noise there is. If any. While searching for a similar thread for instance, I came across a recording that someone did. I can't really remember, I think it was in some amp sim thread and the person's name was nekofrog I think. But he had uploaded a sample of a recording he had done with a recently purchased POD HD500 or something like that. Anyway, like usual, I was left wondering how the hell a person does that. I'm guessing it was some EQ thing, a low pass or high shelf like metal man mentioned. But I just really don't know. From what I can tell, by the time I start to get some decent drop in hiss volume, I'm in 2khz territory, and I feel that changes my sound a little too much. I was always under the impression that stuff like air and hiss was found at 16khz and above.

I mean I don't think natural sounds from amps or mics are terrible or anything. In fact, I quite like it sometimes. Blue in Green, off of that Miles Davis album, is swimming in it from start to finish. First and last thing you hear, and it's just perfect. I love it. For the mix I'm working on though, I feel that sound isn't warranted. Although I have to admit, It's actually alleviating a problem I'm having with some of my guitar recordings. My guitar recordings are suffering some kinda interference and, I didn't realize at first, but the amp hiss was actually masking that clicky/static sound I'm getting. I might just have do a take where I record some amp hiss straight through the mix, and leave it like that to get around that noise issue. I'd rather just eliminate it completely, but I'm not sure if that's an option for me.

But yea, I was tossing around the idea of just automating a slow fade in volume instead of a hard cut like was mentioned. Not sure how that would end up. Guess I should just try it. I also thought doing something like a hard cut or a gate and letting just the reverb die off would work fairly well, but I'm not sure how I would go about doing that.

[Rozovian]

Air and hiss are pretty high, yeah, but noise tends to consist of a wide range of frequencies. Try Audacity's noise removal tool, not sure what exactly it does but like I said, it works well on spoken word. You select a part with just the noise and it analyses it and removes those levels of those frequencies (I guess) from the overall audio.

Try it. Audacity is free.

[aur3lius]

Yea I'm gonna give a shot as soon as I download and install it. Hopefully I can also see what it does to the frequencies, if anything, so I can get a good grasp on where I can do some effective cuts. thanks for the suggestion.

[Moseph]

Have you looked into techniques for reducing amp/guitar noise such as shielding the guitar's wiring, staying away from sources of electrical interference like CRT monitors, using a guitar with humbuckers instead of single-coil pickups, etc.?

[aur3lius]

I've taken a look into shielding as that seems like the most I would have control over in terms of preventing interference. But I've yet to purchase and try out anything like copper foil, which I believe is suppose to be good for shielding. As for things that cause interference, I don't really believe I have anything like that. Monitor is LCD, lights are usually off but even when they're on their really isn't any change in noise, cell phone is outta the way, etc. I suspect the wiring in my apartment to be incredibly crappy though. Not sure if it's properly grounded. Not much I can do about that though. At least, I think not.

For the example I've been using, my guitar volume knob has been at 0 at the start and end of the recording. When it's at 0 the amp hiss I get seems to actually be relatively free from the usual hum and clicking/static noise I get. It still strikes me as a bit loud, but that may be just the nature of the amp sim (amplitube 3).

As for pickups, I actually do have humbuckers. I've done some work on them so that I can split the coils into singles. Even when the coils are split, so long as I turn to the right direction, they quiet down. When split, they do still end up a tiny bit louder hum wise than when humbucking. Actually, I don't think I even get any hum when humbuckers are going. Either way, I suspect some shielding would help quiet down things when coils are split.

Either way, I've gotten some good advice from everyone, as well as one way a person might approach working with background noise. So I'm thankful. I'm still interested in how people might or do approach this, so hopefully this thread will keep going. Maybe I'm just being too nit picky and there shouldn't be much to this issue. If it even is considered an issue. might not be for most. I wouldn't mind that being the case, would be one less thing for me to worry about.

[Nabeel Ansari]

These are all suggestions I don't really like. Just use a noise gate and you'll be fine. Download the free version of Guitar Rig 5 Pro if you don't already have it and just stick it on the mixer track of your guitar and set the gate threshold as much as you can without it cutting out your actual guitar playing. Make sure this is happening before all of the other effects.