I am a performing musician and a guitar instructor. I discovered NCH Software products quite by
accident a number of years ago. I liked
the way the products worked and have now used about 6 different titles. In both my teaching and performance lives I’ve
found many uses for NCH software. One of
my favorite programs is WavePad Sound Editor which I use so much it’s like I
can’t function without it. I have it
licensed on 3 computers now.
One of the activities I did in my guitar lessons was to
record my student’s performance of some song or piece of music they had
learned. Once they had the piece to
“performance quality” we‘d record it for their “history” file. I also would put out compilation CD’s of
several students’ performances and would distribute them to all the students in
my studio so they could hear what others were doing and how well they played
and so on.
Our recording set up consisted of a drum machine for
constant tempos, my student’s guitar (and sometimes voice [Taylor Swift
lovers]) and my guitar for support/accompaniment or embellishments. We would record “live” to a Tascam digital
field recorder, so we got what we got.
I would take these recordings to WavePad where I could trim
any dead air, manipulate overall levels, and add effects and EQ if needed. Those were the usual operations.
One episode stands out in my mind for a number of reasons
and turned out to be a great demonstration of what you can do with
WavePad. My student, a 13 year old girl
and dedicated Taylor Swift fan (as well as a good little guitar player and
vocalist) had learned to play and sing one of Taylor’s songs. When we recorded it, she nailed it but I had
too soft a vocal mix so we opted to do it again. After a second take, which she nailed again,
I realized I had overcorrected and now the vocal was too loud. We were also out of time that day. So I wound
up with 2 non usable tracks. That’s when
inspiration struck and I turned to WavePad.
Because we had used a drum backing beat at the same tempo
and because my student had nailed her performance both times, I realized I had
2 identical length tracks, one with too little vocal, one with too much. I went to WavePad and was able to stack the
two tracks on top of one another and magically came out with a perfect
track! Because it was really 2
performances, it had that “double
tracked” effect, and it sounded amazing.
Also amazing was that my student had not missed a single syllable in her
retake and her guitar playing was flawless so her 2 takes were like carbon
copies and they fit together perfectly.
Try doing that sometime!
- Tom B. of Las Vegas, NV
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