Giving music room tone / presence

R

Ryan-Guy

Well-known member
Hey all,

I'm about to start shooting a project that a montage with music only overlaid and will be shot in a studio with an actress/model. I'm looking over music tracks for license and while they are good and some great, they lack a certain roomieness that I need. I'd like the music to have a little relationship with the footage. Nothing strong, just a little personality. Not sure what that is called, presence?

Do any of you guys use a plugin or effect or combination to give it a little extra to match the room?

I'm not really experienced in music/audio post.
 
I don't understand quite what you mean? The music is the important bit and you are using the visuals as secondary, or the visuals are key and the music supportive. The music is either designed to be dead-ish or live sounding rarely much else. The differences are not really just slapping reverb over the top to simulate a space, it's much harder/time consuming than that. Each sound source needs individual treatment ,so it will be eq changes different treatments and some things like drums need lots of work. Any vocals need treatment too. Live vocals have spill, more limited frequency response and different eq.

Is this what you mean?
 
To go the opposite to Pauls point of view when I have dubbed drama we have added reverb and room ambience to suit certain scenes, for example if there is a nightclub scene or if their is a practical radio or stereo playing in a room adding ambience can enhance the reality of it being in the scene.

But is you are looking to make a piece just sound different it is always better to add reverb or ambience to the different individual sources as Paul says as just slapping an effect on will have totally different effect.

As for the tools of the trade I have used Yamaha, AMS, Lexicon and Quantec reverb boxes to do such effects but these days tend to use the TL-Space plug in for Pro tools.
 
What I think you are saying is that the music is too "dry" and doesn't sound like it lives in the space you are shooting in.

Running it through a reverb can do that or go low tech and rerecord it in the room, then you will have a perfect match.

Set up a decent playback system and a stereo pair in the room and then just record while playing back the piece.

You can also do a hightech version of this by getting an IR of the room. Basically recording popping a balloon or firing a starters pistol, or doing a frequency sweep. Then use that IR in a convolution reverb like TL Space.

You can also probably find an IR that is close to your space on line.
 
Basically you guys got it. I need it to sound like it is coming from the room without loosing quality. I see what you guys mean about needing the individual instrument tracks for a better match. I like the idea of recording the whole track in the studio and then mixing it with the original.

The music track, which is a royalty-free thing, sounds too studio like, or dead. No room presence.
 
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A small room reverb can help as it does not make things too muddy and extreme but it all depends on the genre of music!
 
it depends on the amount of reverb you want to add, and also the rhythmic side of the music, the reverberation can make rhythmic instruments less precise. But working on the reverberation time, the predelay and with a little EQ, there is way to reduce this kind of problem.
 
OK here's a little example from a few years ago of a singer I did a video for in my pub when it was open: http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=5994336

The audio was recorded on a mini disc straight from the PA desk with no effects but was very dry so I added some small room and a bit of EQ/compression to even it out a bit, I think you can hear that the bass on the backing track has gone boomy but in the context of the video it matched the pictures as you could see that it was shot in a small room but the reverb also helped the radio mic on the singer sound more natural.

Not ideal but sometimes you can get away with quite a lot for video use and if I can find the video clip I will post a link to it later.
 
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Just uploaded the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RkxjYMQn5g

Had a look at the pro tools timeline and I actually added some medium room reverb and did some compression and EQ to the overall track.

Brought back some great memories of music nights in my pub and Lucie was just 16 when she did this gig as I wanted to help her out, she did the X-factor a couple of times but then got a bit drunk, seriously assaulted her boyfriend with a glass and was convicted then thown out of the x-factor last year. Poor kid and it's funny how things turn out as her Dad was found dead last year too as sadly he was an alcoholic.
 
It's much easier to add 'life' to a recording than to attenuate it, normally poorly recorded with the mics too far from the source. In a your case, any half-way decent recording engineer/mixer could do this in minutes. There is likely no one plugin and/or preset that would do it though.
 
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