Mixing hastily recorded voice-over with well-recorded music.
 

I recorded a voice-over at the last minute using my MacBook built-in Mic. It's pretty clear, but understandably thin. It's supposed to be mixed over a piece of music that was recorded pretty well - very full sound, heavy bass. I'm having a difficult time getting the voice-over to compress enough such that I can amplify it without distortion and clipping. I'm using Audacity and Peak. Here's the voice-over with an mp3 of the music for reference.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=X1Q2T1AC

How should I go about doing this?

Don't know what you're using for monitors, but computer speakers can't be trusted for mixing.

You can get very usable results with the right mic and a computer. A Rode VideoMic works.

Regards,

Ty Ford

Ty's great advice notwithstanding, I'm assuming you had one shot at this and this is what you got (if that's not true and you can get a better recording of this, then I definitely recommend that you go for it!).

I think what you're probably going to want to do is to cut a "notch" in the upper midrange frequencies of your music so that the voice recording won't have to compete with them. Here's an old thread on this site that will help you figure out which frequencies are most important to emphasize with both the music and the voiceover.

I wouldn't expect amazing results no matter what you do, but if you EQ smartly, you can likely at least get pretty close to an approximation of intelligibility. :)

the trailer
 

http://www.youtube.com/v/lqn8Ky4tEn8

here's the final result. adding a second track of super compressed dialogue really helped bring out the consonants. it's kind of harsh, but that's what i wanted anyways. thanks!

i'm definitely giving "special thanks" to this forum when this project is finally done.

HI Allen,

The voicetrack doesn't sound like a movie trailer because:

I can hear a LOT of room bounce.

(Sorry) You are not a movie vo guy.

If you really want that sound, you have to use the right ingredisnts in the recipe.

Regards,

Ty Ford