Hello! Welcome back to your sound engineering course.
In the last lesson, you did the important work of comping—selecting the best parts of multiple vocal recordings to create one seamless, powerful performance. You should now have a consolidated audio track that represents the "perfect" take.
However, even a perfect performance can be accompanied by small, distracting noises. This brings us to the next essential step in vocal production. Today, we'll focus on this learning outcome: Perform basic audio edits to clean a vocal track, such as removing silence and unwanted breaths.
This process, often called "vocal cleaning" or "editing," is about removing everything that isn't the vocal performance itself. A clean vocal track is much easier to mix, sounds more professional, and ensures the listener's focus remains on the music and the message. We'll tackle two main types of unwanted sounds:
- Discrete Noises: Things like breaths between phrases, mouth clicks, or headphone bleed.
- Continuous Noise: A constant background hiss, hum from equipment, or room noise.
By the end of this lesson, you'll have a set of practical techniques to make your vocal tracks sound polished and ready for mixing.
Part 1: Managing Breaths and Silence
The first and most common task in vocal cleaning is dealing with the breaths a singer takes between phrases.
This is an artistic decision as much as a technical one. Breaths are natural and can add a human, emotional quality to a performance. Completely removing them can make a vocal sound robotic. However, if a breath is unusually loud or distracting, it needs to be managed.
Generally, the goal isn't to eliminate every breath, but to control them so they don't pull focus from the vocal. There are two primary methods for this in FL Studio.
Method 1: The "Cut and Fade" Approach
This is the most direct way to handle breaths. You visually identify the breath in the audio waveform, slice it out, and mute or delete the clip. The most critical part of this process is ensuring you don't create audible clicks or pops where you've made your cuts.
To see how this is done cleanly, the following video provides a great demonstration.
Editing Out Breaths In FL Studio (OR ANY DAW)
The video 'Editing Out Breaths In FL Studio' by Farai The Producer clearly demonstrates how to cut out breaths without introducing unwanted artifacts.
Watch from 02:02 to 03:37. The presenter shows you how to: Use the Slice tool to isolate a breath. Mute the isolated clip. Apply a 'Generic' de-clicking mode to the audio clip. This automatically creates crossfades at the cut points to prevent clicks, a step you'll remember from our comping lesson.
This method is fast and effective for breaths that you want to remove entirely.
Method 2: Volume Automation (The "Duck and Weave" Approach)
Sometimes, completely removing a breath sounds unnatural. A more subtle and often more musical approach is to simply lower its volume. This keeps the natural feel of the performance while pushing the distracting sound into the background. In FL Studio, this is best done with volume automation.
Let's return to the same video to see this technique in action.
Editing Out Breaths In FL Studio (OR ANY DAW)
The second half of the video demonstrates using volume automation as a more nuanced alternative to cutting.
Watch from 03:37 to 05:11. Observe how the presenter creates a volume automation clip for the vocal track and draws in points to 'duck' the volume down just for the duration of the breath.
This technique gives you precise control and is the preferred method for achieving a transparent, professional result. You're not removing the breath; you're just tucking it neatly out of the way.
Test your understanding!
You're editing a vocal for an intimate, emotional ballad. You notice a breath before a powerful line that sounds a bit too loud. Which of the two methods (Cut and Fade vs. Volume Automation) would likely be a better choice, and why?
Show answer
Volume automation would likely be the better choice. In an intimate ballad, the sound of the singer breathing can add to the emotional realism and vulnerability of the performance. Completely cutting the breath might sound jarring and unnatural. By using volume automation, you can simply reduce the breath's volume so it's less distracting, but still present enough to feel human and emotional.
Part 2: Removing Unwanted Background Noise
Beyond breaths, your recordings might contain other unwanted sounds, like a low-level hiss from a preamp, a computer fan, or general room tone. These noises become especially problematic once you start adding compression, which can raise the volume of these quiet sounds dramatically.
We'll look at two tools native to FL Studio for handling this.
Method 1: The Noise Gate
A noise gate is like an automatic mute button. You set a volume level (the threshold), and any signal quieter than that level gets silenced. It's highly effective at removing noise in the silent gaps between vocal phrases.
You can use the Fruity Limiter plugin, which contains a great noise gate section.
To understand how to set it up, let's look at the key controls.
FL Studio Noise Reduction Tutorial
The article 'FL Studio Noise Reduction Tutorial' from Boris FX explains the gate settings within the Fruity Limiter. This will help you understand what to adjust.
Read the subsection titled 'Limiter.' Focus on the explanations for 'Thres (Threshold)' and 'Rel (Release).' These are the two most important controls for setting a gate on vocals.
In summary:
- Threshold (Thres): This is the most important setting. Raise the threshold until the background noise disappears, but be careful not to set it so high that it cuts off the beginning or end of your vocal phrases.
- Release (Rel): This controls how quickly the gate closes after the vocal stops. A release that's too fast will sound abrupt and "choppy." A slow release will sound more natural, but might let some noise through at the end of a phrase.
A noise gate is a real-time effect, meaning it works as the track plays without permanently altering your audio file.
Method 2: Spectral Denoising with Edison
What if the noise is present during the singing, not just in the silent parts? A noise gate can't help with that. For constant noise like hiss or hum, you need a more advanced tool that can surgically remove the noise from the entire recording. FL Studio's audio editor, Edison, has a powerful tool for this called a denoiser.
The process involves two steps:
- Acquire Noise Profile: You "teach" the tool what the noise sounds like by selecting a small portion of the recording that contains only the noise.
- Apply Denoising: The tool then subtracts this "noise profile" from the entire recording.
This is a destructive process, meaning it permanently changes the audio file, so it's wise to work on a copy.
The following video gives a perfect walkthrough of this process on a vocal track.
How to Remove Noise from Vocals and Recordings (Hiss, Hum, Background Noise)
The video 'How to Remove Noise from Vocals and Recordings' by In The Mix provides a fantastic, practical demonstration of using Edison's denoiser.
Watch from 04:23 to 06:33. The presenter walks you through the entire process on a vocal recording: Opening the vocal clip in Edison. Finding and selecting a section of pure noise. Right-clicking the 'brush' icon to acquire the noise profile. Left-clicking the 'brush' icon to open the denoiser window and apply the effect.
A Crucial Warning: Don't Overdo It!
Noise reduction tools are powerful, but they are not magic. Aggressive noise reduction can do more harm than good, creating strange digital artifacts or making the vocal sound muffled and lifeless. Your ears are the final judge.
How to Clean Vocal Tracks: Crossfades, Noise Removal & ...
The article 'How to Clean Vocal Tracks' from Sonarworks provides an essential list of warnings about the overuse of noise reduction. Internalizing these points will save you from ruining good recordings.
Read the entire section titled 'Don’t overuse noise reduction software!' Pay close attention to the potential side effects like creating artifacts ('chirping') and dulling the sound.
The key is to find the right balance. Aim to reduce the noise to an unnoticeable level, not to obliterate it entirely. Always listen to the vocal in the context of the full mix, not just in solo. Sometimes a little bit of noise is perfectly acceptable and won't even be heard once all the instruments are playing.
Conclusion
You have now added another critical skill set to your vocal production toolkit. By cleaning your comped vocal, you've prepared it for the creative stages of mixing.
Key Takeaways:
- Manage breaths with care: Use volume automation for a natural reduction or the cut-and-fade method for complete removal. Always use fades to prevent clicks.
- Use the right tool for the noise: A noise gate is excellent for removing noise in silent sections. A denoiser (like in Edison) is for removing constant background hiss or hum from the entire recording.
- Listen critically and be subtle: The goal is to make the noise unnoticeable, not to sterilize the recording. Over-processing can damage the audio quality and introduce new problems.
In our previous lessons, we recorded and compiled a great vocal performance. Today, we cleaned it up. Now, the vocal track is structurally and sonically clean. The next step is to start shaping its tone.
In our next lesson, we will dive into the world of Equalization (EQ). You'll begin by learning to identify the main frequency ranges (sub-bass, bass, mids, highs) by ear, a foundational skill for all mixing engineers.