Doing a cleanup on the girlysound recordings

[TrampolineFrSpace]

I've been thinking about taking the recordings on tape 1 and 2 and just doing some minor editing.  I don't intend to do anything to the music itself, just mostly edit out all of the dead silence at the front and end of the recordings.  Maybe some of the clicks at the front.  I think that it would make flow a little better.

There was some talk about favorite cuts that are Radio friendly, but if you're going to think about that, why not make them a little better to share around.

So the question is this:  is this a worthwhile endeavor or is this blasphemy?

I'm also considering converting to mpeg4audio using something that FAAC and adding the cover art that was posted in another thread.  I've been re-ripping all of Liz's songs from the 5 albums using Exact Audio Copy + FAAC.  I get a lot better control over the bitrate used and I can add in the cover art in a single operation.  I've been using a quality setting of 78 to 80, which translates into 105 kbps or so.

I seem to remember reading that this setting leaves best performance without sacrificing fidelity that can be heard.

Anything that I do could be shared, if there was interest.  I just don't have professional editing tools, but the hearing tests that I recently got for my "mal de debarque" condition (false ship motion that you get when you exit the ship, and six months later I still got it going on) convinced me that I could do some simple music editing.

[Gevaudan]

Please, don't cut the silence.
Seriously.  I don't think anyone has bothered to really investigate every track, but there are things that are very low at the beginning of a few tracks.   Liz saying "Dad" at the beginning of "White Babies" is the first and best example.  Be careful with what you cut out, if you do it.

Something else that I feel the need to point out - if you are thinking of cleaning them up - remember that you will be cleaning up already compressed files.

I had every intention of cleaning up the tracks, and still want to, but I'm in the middle of a few different projects and a new business right now.  Hopefully within a month I'll have more time to give it all a try for myself.

What program were you thinking of using?

[cherryqueen]

At the beginning of one of the songs, you can hear Liz saying "who did that?" or something to that effect...

At the beginning of Whip-Smart, after the la laing, you can hear Liz saying: "where you goin'?"

At the beginning of Fuck or Die you can hear the faint plucking of a string...which probably wasn't worth mentioning.

Those are the only things I picked up on when I turned the volume up on the beginning static...

[TrampolineFrSpace]

All really cool stuff.  Now, I'll have to crank some of this stuff up and listen for this.

You know, it'd be really cool if all of this collective knowledge could all be culled in one location.

I was thinking about using sound recorder under Windows to do the start/stop editing.  I also run Linux and Mac OS/X on systems, so I can really use the tools from any of the major O/Ses.

I've been using FAAC for encoding, but I got not quite pleasant results from the encoding of Johnny Feelgood.  Oh well, if it doesn't sound right, I can always do it over.  It's not as if I plan to destroy the closest things to the master copies that I have or anything (I corrected myself from saying the originals as that's not right).

Part of the reason that I phrased the question the way that I did was to make sure that it was OK to talk about it.  I plan to be careful--I don't want to hurt myself.

[harkrider]

I think it is very worthwhile.  The full versions will always be available.  Any "enhanced" versions would be labeled as such, and set apart in their own section of the site.  The tape three stuff needs some love.  Hopefully there will be alternate sources available soon.  Who really knows.  But to clean up what we have is time well spent in my opinion. 

And I agree that sharing the methodology by which results are achieved is a good idea -- software, hardware, whatever.  Girly Sound will be bigger in ten years than it is today.  Its inevitable  polishing will play a big part.

[cherryqueen]

I was listening through the static AGAIN. Just in case i missed something. And i did. Only this time at night when it is dead silent.
So I had GGG cranked up at the beginning and all of a sudden, this monotone voice comes on (Liz no doubt) saying something like "hey alena" it's hard to understand what the hell she's saying....but it scared the crap out of me.
At the beginning of Love Song you can hear a sniffle. =p

[harkrider]

I had GGG cranked up at the beginning and all of a sudden, this monotone voice comes on (Liz no doubt) saying something like "hey alena"

I heard that too.  I figured she was saying something about "line one" -- meaning channel one of the four track recorder.

[harkrider]

Something else that I feel the need to point out - if you are thinking of cleaning them up - remember that you will be cleaning up already compressed files.

I suppose we could make the uncompressed generally available.  I wouldn't want to necessarily do that on the main page, because the mp3 files are perfectly suitable for listening.  But you're right, and it's something I hadn't thought about -- any serious effort to clean up those tracks should involve uncompressed, or at least non-lossy formats.

[avj]

I suppose we could make the uncompressed generally available.  I wouldn't want to necessarily do that on the main page, because the mp3 files are perfectly suitable for listening.  But you're right, and it's something I hadn't thought about -- any serious effort to clean up those tracks should involve uncompressed, or at least non-lossy formats.

I just came upon this thread after trying to hit the old lizphairexperience.com girlysound site and finding it's obviously no longer alive. I have done a lot of listening to the first two tapes (in MP3, as posted on the other site) and had the same idea with regard to cleaning them up. I'm a mostly-hobby audio guy and I'd love to take a crack at this project. The original non-lossy source files would be an awesome starting point, which is what I was planning on asking the guys that posted the first two tapes -- I think Ken was the name of one of them.

I have no interest in editing the composition of the material, but merely cleaning up the sound -- all the spaces would remain intact.

Would you be interested in making those available so I (or others) could give it a shot?

[harkrider]

Would you be interested in making those available so I (or others) could give it a shot?

I think it's a great idea.  The site has plenty of disk space and bandwidth, and I can certainly set things up such that it would be easy to manage the files.  However, I don't have personal access to the non-lossy versions.  The guys that do have them are periodic visitors of the forum, and they should chime in at some point.

In the meantime, let's discuss which of the songs to work with first.  The only versions worth cleaning are probably those from tape1 and tape2.  I haven't seen ANY tape3 stuff except for the MP3 files hosted on this site.  That said, there is plenty to choose from between tapes 1 and 2.  All of the songs exhibit tape hiss,  and mechanical noises (from the tape mechanism, I guess).  Simply getting rid of those would be great.

Which song would you prefer to work on?  This is actually a question for everyone.  It think that working with one at at time would be a good start.  I'd be interested in the details of the clean-up process too, and would like to document them in a thread.  We could capture the 1) software 2) hardware, 3) config settings, and 4) procedures.  These, coupled with the "build" of the deliverable MP3 files, would help to develop a repeatable methodology for doing this.

[avj]

With the original source material not being readily available, I went ahead and did a quick clean-up on one of the MP3s after converting it to WAV. It was then converted back to a 192 kbps MP3.

It turned out fairly mediocre, but this was a quick test and I didn't spend a lot of time nudging the EQ around after removing the noise. It also seems to have some strange audio artifacts at some points, which I'd like to attribute to starting with a lossy format from the beginning, but I can't be sure.

Again, this was just a quick pass because I was excited about being able to do this and wanted to share some preliminary results with the group.

I'll update when I have made more progress.

IMPORTANT NOTE: With the tape hiss removed and no silence removed there are a few clunks right away from what sounds like the tape leader catching up, but it's pretty silent until another bump at 0:11, with the guitar kicking in at 0:13. I didn't want anyone to get their heads blown off by turning it up loud and getting slammed by the guitar.

Here's the link:

http://sdre.org/gscu/lp-hs-cleaned-alg-02.mp3

Edit:
At the time of this edit, I uploaded another version, but used an entirely different method for removing the noise. I think I prefer the version below, as it retains a little bit of the noise; I think trying to remove it entirely sort of removes the life and spirit from the recordings.

http://sdre.org/gscu/lp-hs-cleaned-eq.mp3

Any thoughts on the differences?

[harkrider]

Those sound really good.  I can't tell too much of a difference between them on my first couple of listens.  But they are both big improvements over the original.  I guess it makes sense to merely reduce the noise to an acceptable level.  So while I can't hear the difference just yet (using only some cheap earphones), I would opt for the 2nd recording (lp-hs-cleaned-eq.mp3).

Good work.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

I'd like to see what could be done to some of the Judee Sill mp3s as well. 

I suspect that they're just bad originals (the ones after the first 6).

[shmoopy]

If someone is planning on doing a clean-up of Girly Sound I'd like to see it done by someone who knows what they are doing and who is using quality monitors and a good editing program.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

I imagine that someone just has to do it.  If it isn't good enough, then hopefully someone will improve on it.

The problem is that the people who are most qualified to do this are probably overworked and don't have the time.  Of course, if they see someone flail away at it, maybe they can help out.

I know that I don't have the equipment and I seem to be spending a lot of time in both the GS Forum (not enough time) and the LP Forum and not that as much time reading and updating the music collections on my iPods.

One of the things that I have to deal with in my job is to motivate other people to take over what I've started, because I simply don't have the time.  It's called delegation and it's really hard to do.  If I can just come up with the ideas and then hand it off, sometimes that's all I can do.