Basics for editing audio from a cassette tape

Greetings,

Reading your question reminded me that I also have cassettes of my father talking that I would like to do the same thing to. I’ve been using Garageband for a long time to record myself playing instruments and singing. I know it’s capabilities and am happy to tell you that you can do all those things easily, with a quick learning curve.

The newer version of GB (10.3.4) should work essentially the same as the older. Some GUI differences are apparent, but the same processes apply. In this case once you have recorded the cassettes into GB, which, I am assuming you know how to do, you can:

1. Use the volume slider at the left of the track to increase the volume of the voice.

2. On the upper left of the GB window there are four small boxes. These open and close edit windows. The third from left opens the “smart controls” at the bottom of the GB window. There you will see two tabs, “controls” and “EQ”. The EQ window boosts and cuts specific frequencies. Play with it to get the clear sound you want. You can drag down the high frequencies (on the right side of the EQ window) to eliminate the hiss.

3. On the top (center) bar of the GB window there is a “beats and project” window (black) with a BPM number (default = 120 beats per minute) that regulates the “speed” of the track. Click, hold and slide up and down to increase and decrease the speed of the voice. (BTW, it doesn’t change the pitch of the sound unless you make other adjustments)

4.  Use step two to enhance the voice quality.

Once you get the "project" adjusted to your liking you need to export it, probably as an AAC or MP3 to create a file of reasonable size. Low quality (64 kbit/s) may be work for voice. Use the "share" pop down on the menu bar on top of the screen.

There are other options like email and save to iTunes.

You probably don’t want to use any effects, suck as reverb or echo in this situation. 

I hope this gets you started and you are successful in saving and enhancing these recordings.

Hi again,

Glad to be of help. Here's the thing about regions. Eq adjustments apply to all the regions on each track. Volume changes can be made to any part of a track using "automation" points. Other parameters such as reverb and echo can also be changed by using automation. I suggest the following method to do what you want without using "automation".

As I said, if the regions are on the same track, the EQ and volume adjustments will apply to all of the regions. If you want to alter the EQ and volume for, let's say, three different regions (possibly due to how they were initially recorded) you will have to create three tracks and put each region in its own track. This is not hard to do.

Here's how. On the menu bar choose Track and "Create new track with duplicate settings". Do this twice and you'll have three total tracks. Each new track will appear directly below the "active track". Now, you have three separate tracks, simply click and hold on a region (best to click in the regions header bar) and drag it to the new track. You can drag it across another track to the bottom track, just don't let off the mouse until you are over the track you want to drop it on.

Now, you can EQ and change the volume with the slider on the left for each track and region separately. Please note, the slider on the left does NOT adjust the input volume while you are recording, only the output volume for the track when you mix and export it. Recording level is set in the "smart controls" window on the left. You'll see it and in general it should be up pretty high if not full right. The level of the recorded signal can be adjusted elsewhere, such as the output on the cassette deck or, if you're using an external interface, on that.

There is no reason to combine the separate tracks when you export the project. That's the main job of the DAW (GarageBand), to mix down the tracks into a stereo file. For your project I'd suggest leaving everyone panned to the center for a mono final product, but that's up to your desires too.

Ask more if I can be of more help. Happy recording.

Greetings,

I'm not familiar with projects that are two hours in length. Does the volume differ greatly between the regions? There are several different ways to "normalize" output volume but without getting too technical I think the easiest way it by enabling "automation". This creates a thin yellow line through the track that represents the volume level. You "command click" on the line to create points. The points can be dragged up and down, changing the volume at that point. As you play the track you'll see the volume slider change as the track proceeds. When exported those changes will be reflected in the exported file.

Regarding speed, I don't think you have to enable "flex editing" to speed up or slow down the entire track. Just do what you said with the BPM in the "project box" on the top menu bar.

If you do something and regret it, you can always go to edit "undo" on the top menu and undo it. Or just manually undo it. Also, when you're done messing with it for the day or whatever, you have the choice to "save changes" or not. If you choose "don't save" (for a project that has already been saved at least once) it won't save any of the changes made in that editing session. It will revert back to the project's state when you opened it. It's called "non-destructive editing".

Cheers!