Using Vocal Downloads Vocal Mini Packs top
When you open the folders provided by Vocal Downloads you'll notice that all single voices are in mono, and harmonies are mixed as stereo. As a general rule you would keep all vocals with harmonies panned central. Mono vocals can be panned to taste but keep the lead central also.
How to get the vocals in time with your instrument track
Take a vocal line and decide where the first beat would go. For example, if the phrase is "I can take you out", the emphasis may be on the word "Take", or "I" or even "out".
To make this clearer to understand, take a listen to Justin Timberlake's "Signs". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pu9EYv1HBc
The opening like is "I'm not sure of what I see", the word "What" is the first word of the bar.
Once you have found your word that is the first word of the bar, or 'anchor', simply chop everything before it away .. don't panic, you will be able to drag it back out once again to hear the words before the anchor word later!!
Now, what you are left with is a vocal clip with the anchor word right at the start. Do this with all the vocal a capellas you have.
Now find the tempo, which should be in the notepad file you get from Vocal Downloads and set your project to that tempo.
You will want to activate the 'snap' control in Cubase or whatever software you use. This will allow you to drag the vocal parts left and right and snap it into time at pre determined intervals that you can specify.
If you select a bar snap, the vocal part will automatically start at the beginning of the bar. If your anchor word should begin when the snare drum hits, you would want to set the snap to ? note so that you can drag it past the start of the bar and onto the snare.
When the vocal is in place and in time you can drag the beginning of the graphic back to expose the start of the vocal phrase. Now you should have a vocal that is in time and starts exactly where you need it to! "A capella" means singing without instrumental accompaniment.
What if my music is the wrong tempo for the a capellas?
If you can't speed your music up then you have the option to time stretch. I would not recommend time stretching a mix-down of a bounced music file so the only other option is to time stretch the a capellas.
- Find the tempo of your music.
- Insert your a capellas and right click on them and select audio > process > time stretch.
- Next type in the tempo of the a capella (provided by Vocal Downloads) and change the tempo to the tempo of your music.
This should work well with very little unpleasant artefacts as you are only time stretching a single vocal part. Try not to be too dramatic with the tempo changes!
Recording Studio Tips - Mixing Vocals
Our brains are programmed to 'tune in' when we hear another human voice, the message, the tone, expression and emotion are all captured within a single vocal line, and it's this vocal that needs to take lead role in any song production.
It goes without saying that there are no rules and you should feel free to experiment with your vocal mixing, I am simply going to list the main points that any good mix should be aware of with regards to vocal mixing.
Compression
There is heaps of information on the web about compression ratios so I won't go too deep on this subject. The main point is that you need to have control of the vocal in order to make it 'sit' in your mix.
Simply put, the compression will make any overly quiet vocals come up in volume, whilst making any loud vocals a little quieter. This leaves you with a more manageable vocal part to work with. It goes without saying that there are no rules and you should feel free to experiment with your vocal mixing, I am simply going to list the main points that any good mix should be aware of with regards to vocal mixing.
EQ
The most popular question from engineers is, "my vocals sound either too loud or too quiet, how can I make them sit in the mix more?"
EQ my friends!
It's a myth that vocals must always be warm to make a song sound fat. Very often I take an a capella from a famous song and am amazed at how thin the vocals are, yet when put back in the mix they suddenly appear perfect.
The reason is that the vocals are mixed/EQ'ed perfectly for the backing music. Take them out of the mix and they sound weedy. Now, this is something that takes a while to get used to but I would recommend you try it.
Listening to famous vocal a capella will help you break free of any misconceptions you may have on EQing. You can even place the famous a capella into a song you are working on and see how it 'sits', compared to your vocals. There is heaps of information on the web about compression ratios so I won't go too deep on this subject. The main point is that you need to have control of the vocal in order to make it 'sit' in your mix.
Simply put, the compression will make any overly quiet vocals come up in volume, whilst making any loud vocals a little quieter. This leaves you with a more manageable vocal part to work with. It goes without saying that there are no rules and you should feel free to experiment with your vocal mixing, I am simply going to list the main points that any good mix should be aware of with regards to vocal mixing.
EQ Basics
Start by taking off any low frequencies (low shelving EQ) that you won't need, listen as you slowly pull the bass out of the vocals and stop when you start to notice the warmth go.
Play the whole song, including all instruments and get a feel for how much bass you want to pull out. The key is to get rid of dead frequencies (the frequencies that don't add anything to the sound), and also 'conflicting frequencies'.
Conflicting frequencies are simply peaks in two or more instruments/vocals that are the same. For example, you may want to try the following:
Pull up the frequency 2 K (2000 Hz) and notice how the vocals appear brighter, go easy as we don't want a fake sounding vocal. Now check other instruments that peak at 2 K also, this could be guitars, hi-hats, a synth part etc.
Pull down 2 K on the instruments to free up the frequency area for your lead. This will create space and allow your vocals to sit better as they won't need to be so loud in the mix to compete with the backing.
After you are happy that the vocals are free from excessive frequency cramming, you can work on the volume. This is harder than it sounds!
I like to start with the lead loud and bring the fader down until it feels like it's sitting on top of the music. At this point I will very slowly turn the vocals down just to the point that they feel very slightly too quiet.
Now it is usually possible to clear the mix further by making sure instruments that are close to the vocal frequency range are panned either left or right far enough away from the centred lead.
If corrective panning doesn't clear space for the lead I will turn back up just until it feels dominant, but making sure it remains bedded in the backing. This will make it sound a part of the track and not a separate entity stuck out there on its own!
Turn the overall volume of your track down so it's almost too quiet to hear. This is a good way to hear if the lead is too. Try also playing the song loud in your speakers to get a balance at both ends and give yourself breaks so you don't get ear fatigue.
Walking back to a project after a 10 minute break will give you 'fresh ears' on the mix. Repeat this several times until it sounds perfect after several hours away, and at all volumes.
Using Vocal Samples with no BPM top
Where there is no tempo shown you can simply create a snap point and time stretch where needed. To do this you would first have to have recognised the rhythm in the vocal acapella and determine where the 'down beat' is.
If the acapella were "happy birthday to you" for example (a song we all know), and we only had "happy birthday", we would use the scissors tool to cut right at the start of the word "birthday" as this falls on a down beat. It doesn't really matter whether it falls on the first, second, third or fourth beat of the bar, it only matters that it falls on a beat and can be snapped to that position.
Note: in the case of the famous song "Happy Birthday", it is in 6/8 time so you would need to change the time signature of your sequencer to reflect this.
Next you can position the "birthday" where you need it and drag out the words before, in this case "happy".
At this point it is useful to create a dummy blocked area a whole bar before the "happy birthday" acapella would begin. This just makes it much easier to move about and copy and paste to other sections of the song.
Changing the key of a vocal sample to match key of your track
Changing the key of an acapella can be tricky as it's not always a case of pitching up or down. Sometimes a harmony may be in a minor key which won't always transfer to a major key.
If, however you find that the vocals are simply too low, or too high you can use the pitch shift tool in your sequencer. If your sequencer has a formants mode available, make sure this is on and you can pitch up or down about a 5th comfortably without hearing too much distortion!
If certain notes are still out of key, you can cut the bits that need correcting and pitch them up individually.
Recording Studio Tips from Apple Beam Studios
