I lay down much better vocal tracks in my home projects when I sing simultaneously with my piano playing (synth, Roland Juno DS 88). The timing and emotion are much better than if I overdub the vocals onto an existing piano track (my preferred vocal style is to often not sing right on the beats, so after the fact adjusting the vocal so it is more quantized isn’t a great solution).
Of course the sound of the keys getting pressed winds up in the recording. It’s very hard to make those clicks and thumps go away, at least I haven’t been able to do that without affecting the vocal sound (I’ve been using spectral editing, SpectraLayers).
Does anyone know if there’s a product that can do this? I was wondering what kind of product that would be, maybe one that uses AI to identify those sounds and skillfully remove them, or maybe some advanced transient plug in …
Anyway, if someone knows of a product on the market that can do this, or better yet, a way I can do it that doesn’t take forever and a day, please LMK
What modules do you find works best … a declicker, a denoiser?
I’ve got Steinberg’s SpectraLayers, but I really haven’t learned it much beyond stripping vocals off.
Does RX have an AI algorithm to automate getting rid of the sounds from the keys? I can’t imagine applying a manual process to remove every major key press.
But first, I think you need to clarify. Are you saying that you are producing useable takes of vocals and keyboards in one pass?
You can investigate the key-action, and perhaps modify this easily with two strips of foam. One for key-down and one for release. Simply cutting out key-return noise might go a long way.
The good news is that you like the performances. But you have discovered mechanical operation-noise is intruding on your mic recording. It shouldn’t be too hard to locate and remedy - physically.
Recording the mechanical noise and then attempting to fix it in software, doesn’t make sense to me.
I’m not very mechanical, so taking apart my keyboard probably isn’t going to happen. I’m having trouble visualizing how to place a sonic barrier between the keys and the mic that doesn’t also block my view of the keys, but I’ll keep thinking about that.
I’m also having second thoughts about whether it’s even possible to remove the key click/thump sounds without noticeably adversely affecting the vocals, given how wide a frequency range the key sounds have. They frequencies of the key bed sounds overlap considerably with vocal frequencies (as visualized in my SpectraLayers) - I’m having trouble seeing how the vocals wouldn’t be noticeably affected.
On reflection, I think you’re asking the impossible.
Hopefully you’re using a click track?
One option is to record your keyboards first, then simply mime the keyboard part on a soft surface whilst singing.
If your total timing is free, and there’s no click, with vocal and keyboard timing firing off each other, then you have no other option but to physically reduce that keyboard noise.
Any reputable music instrument engineer will gladly open up your keyboard and insert strips of foam to quieten the action. You wouldn’t be the first to do this.
You could use a high-pass filter, and take out everything below a certain frequency on your vocal mic. This would help a little. Start at 100hz and see if it makes a difference.
I presume you are using a valve condenser mic? If so, experiment with different cardioid patterns. A tighter capture area would help.
Podcast, Radio interviews etc. These have desks with their own issues. They seem to manage. So there should be youtube vids on minimising noise and optimising vocal capture.
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