Fixing crappy laptop mic vocals

[MC Minimum]

I know there's not too much that can be done about a bad mic, but anything would help. You can hear how the mic sounds in Mighty Mouse + Pudding Delicious' submission for Empty Wednesday. People have suggested increasing the EQ, but I don't know what that means, exactly, and I don't think I can do it using GarageBand. Does anyone know of a way to do it in GarageBand, or failing that, does anyone know of a program I could download that WOULD be able to do it?

[jb]

Well, first, there's no "increasing the EQ". It stands for "equalization" and means adjusting the volume (actually the "level") of different frequencies so that a sound achieves its purpose. If the sound has too much bass, for example, you "equalize" the sound by lowering the bass. Just like you do on your home stereo, except fancier and more targeted. Your music software can target very specific frequencies (the highs, lows, and mids, etc), and it can target broad swaths of frequencies, and everything in between.

I'll let somebody else school you further, but if you really want help you should provide separated parts from the song you want help with, so that people can take them and work with them then tell you what they did-- just like in the recent thread to help improve Reist's vocals. For that matter, have you read that thread? It's very recent, so if you haven't read it you should. It's in the Help & How To forum, just like this thread.

JB

[Lunkhead]

Why not buy a mic? If you want cheap and simple, and a step above your built-in laptop mic, you could look at getting a USB condenser mic such as this one which is only $80. You could plug it right in to your laptop and have a quick simple direct replacement for your laptop mic that would likely sound much better. Recording with a better mic will make it much easier to work with your vocals in GarageBand.

[MC Minimum]

I'm actually buying a couple mics in a few days, but I'm working on my submission for tomorrow so I was hoping for something I could do right now.

EDIT: I found the equalizer in GarageBand. My problem was that I was searching for EQ instead of "equalizer". Proceeding to other vocal thread to learn things.