Editing out breathing noise.

Jay Moore · **Voice Talent** Joined: 29 Sep 2007 Posts: 19

I'm using PRO TOOLS LE 7.3 and am slowly getting the hang of it. However, I'm not sure I'm using the best method to hide my breaths. Currently, I'm either inserting silence or just clearing the small selected area.

Also, I'm not using any types of effects or plugins for that matter. Is there something I should be doing on almost every audition as far as running the entire consolidation through some type of noise reduction filter?

THANK YOU!!

J.S. Gilbert · Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007, 19:37 (GMT) Post subject: different schools of thought

Some people process their auditions through noise gates. For example, if you record your audition with the normal dynamic range of your voice running between -18db as the very quietest readins and -1 as the very loudest, with say a -5 or 6db overall, your breaths might shop usp as -36db or so. If you run a noise gate at -31db, this would effectively remove your breaths (except for the absolute loudest) but keep in the rest of your recording. Where you need to be careful is making sure you don't cut off things like eff sounds and other low volume sounds that may be things you actually want to keep. Fo this, most noise gates have an attack and release setting, which will help the gate from "kicking in or out" too quickly, thus removing quiet beginnigs or ends of words.

Noise gates can be found as both outboard gear or as software plugins.

Some people think that gated material sounds unnatural and there are other things you can do.

When doing your audition, read a line or two, whatever you are comfortable with and back off the mic slightly or turn your head and take a breath. Then continue. You should be able to very easily cut these areas of relative slience out. This would also help in some instances where the sentence is overyl long and you get that I'm running out of breath but I have 9 more words to go sound.

another trick is to not remove the breaths, but to lower their relative volum in comparision to the rest of the read. This would make your read sound very, very natural and only very loud breaths or breaths that appear at strange moments would need to be edited completely.

Waves also has a program available as a plug in for pro tools called de breathelizer. It is a pretty sophisticated and very cool piece of software and a free trial can be obtained from the Waves website.

Play aroeund with any or all of these methods to determine what works best for you. Given that most auditions are only 30 seconds to a minute in length, a little hand tweaking to the file before sending may always be in order. Just avoid spending copious amounts of time with clkeaning up any given audition and you'll be fine.

Hope this helps

--j.s.

Ed Gambill · **Voice Talent** Joined: 04 Jun 2007 Posts: 585

jay

I have taken to using volume reduction. I use Sound Forge and have set a volume level that works and save it with an unique name. In this case I call it Take My Breath Away. One other point that comes into play here is editing to get the time right. After you have lowered the volume between any segments, then if you need to edit take the material away in the middle 2/3 of the pause. 2/3 is recommended by Jay Rose ( a well respected editor), I was doing the same thing before I read his method. But I wasn't getting any respect for doing it. Very Happy

Be caution when you are lowering the breaths, some sound that you might think is just breath noise is actually the trailing sound that completes the previous phrase.

Jay Moore · **Voice Talent** Joined: 29 Sep 2007 Posts: 19

Jay Moore · **Voice Talent** Joined: 29 Sep 2007 Posts: 19

Kirk Greenhill · **Voice Talent** Joined: 06 Nov 2007 Posts: 3

Jay's question was one I've had on my mind for a week and I am right there with you buddy.
Thanks for the info J.S. Gilbert. An awesome answer from a seasoned veteran obviously.
I too have just recently started using the same ProTools program and when I've tried extracting silence it leaves pops and cuts in and out between my vocals. I just never thought of simply reducing the volume in those needed pauses to edit the breath noise.
Thanks, Very Happy

Kirk Greenhill
VO Artist

Kirk Greenhill · **Voice Talent** Joined: 06 Nov 2007 Posts: 3

I really just started using the program about 2 weeks ago and I am a studio novice. I have added my own backing guitars and sound effects I made with my voice but no packaged background plugins.

The new ProTools and mbox came with a few extra discs of free stuff but I haven't really seen any good backing plugins.

Are they buried in the software and I'm just not finding them or is there another resource for finding the kind of backing music and fills such as the ones on many of the demos heard here on voice123?
Any feedback would be helpful.
Thanks,
Kirk Greenhill
VO Artist

Lance Blair · Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007, 14:30 (GMT) Post subject:

One of the most difficult things I've found to do is to sound like I have full energy and presence in the read without actually speaking loudly and/or releasing too much breath through my mouth.

Working on all of your breathing excercises/control can do wonders. A quickie drill is speaking with your finger three inches in front of your mouth so that you don't feel your breath pushing out.

The less breath that you push out, the less breath that you suck in. The other big thing is developing your rhythm and understanding of the read so that you know when to breath naturally and in a manner that isn't distracting.

Trying not to be too breathy on the microphone is like trying not to look fat on camera. Wink