IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi, I'm Josh Harris, and welcome to
Remixing Techniques: Time Stretching.
| | 00:08 | Remixing is an art form that focuses on
reimagining an artist's or band's song in a
| | 00:13 | completely new musical or rhythmic setting.
| | 00:15 | In this course, we'll look at four
different time stretching scenarios that
| | 00:18 | remixers often face, and we'll do
it using four different digital audio
| | 00:22 | workstations: Ableton Live,
Reason, Logic, and Pro Tools.
| | 00:29 | I'll start by showing you how to do
basic time stretching of a vocal by using
| | 00:33 | the powerful built-in time
stretching algorithms found within each DAW.
| | 00:37 | Then I'll show you how to identify the
tempo of the original version of the song
| | 00:41 | using both tap tempo techniques
and built-in BPM counters.
| | 00:45 | You'll see how to create composite time
stretch vocals by editing the original
| | 00:49 | vocal and time stretch vocal together.
| | 00:52 | Then we'll explore how to take a
down tempo ballot and transform it into
| | 00:58 | a double time remix.
(music playing)
| | 01:03 | I'll leave and show you how to take a
song that began its life with a 6/8 feel
| | 01:07 | and alter the rhythm, phrasing, and timing
of the vocal to create a 4/4 dance remix.
| | 01:16 | If you're someone who has felt
intimidated by some of the time stretching
| | 01:20 | scenarios that remixers face on a
regular basis, I think this course will
| | 01:23 | inspire you to think about
those challenges in new ways.
| | 01:26 | We'll be covering all of this in
four different DAWs with lots of
| | 01:30 | professional tips and real-world
solutions to common remixing challenges
| | 01:34 | revealed along the way.
| | 01:36 | If you're ready, let's dive deep into
Remixing Techniques: Time Stretching.
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| What you should know before watching this course| 00:00 | Throughout this course, I'm going to
assume you have a solid understanding of at
| | 00:04 | least one digital audio workstation
such as Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Reason,
| | 00:11 | or Ableton Live, and at least a basic
understanding of time stretching audio.
| | 00:17 | If you need a refresher on your DAW
choice, please seek out the Essential
| | 00:21 | Training title for that DAW on the
online training library here at lynda.com.
| | 00:27 | Also, I recommend you watch my
previous course, Remixing a Song in Logic Pro.
| | 00:33 | The course is geared toward Logic Pro
users, but will benefit users of any DAW
| | 00:37 | wishing to gain a better understanding
of the remixing process and provide a
| | 00:41 | glimpse into the craft that goes
into creating a successful remix.
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| Why did we record this course in four different digital audio workstations (DAWs)?| 00:00 | Since the time-stretching portion of
most remixing is done using Ableton Live,
| | 00:04 | Reason, Logic Pro, and Pro Tools, I
felt it was important to bring these
| | 00:09 | applications together under a common theme.
| | 00:12 | Some of you may only work in one of the
above mentioned DAWs and might not have
| | 00:16 | seen how some of the other DAWs function,
especially when it comes to time stretching vocals.
| | 00:22 | More importantly, some of the time-
stretching scenarios covered in this
| | 00:25 | course are the exact scenarios that may have
caused some of you to say, "How do I do that?"
| | 00:30 | DAW differences aside, this course will introduce
advanced techniques and approaches as well as
| | 00:36 | important lessons that I hope will
help you become a better remixer, and it
| | 00:41 | might even help you beat out
the competition on a remixer too.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a Premium Member of the
lynda.com online training library, or if
| | 00:05 | you're watching this tutorial on a DVD-ROM,
you have access to the exercise
| | 00:10 | files used throughout this course.
| | 00:12 | Let me show you what is provided
within the exercise files folder.
| | 00:16 | On our desktop, we have our exercise
files folder, and as I open it up, you'll
| | 00:21 | see that I have organized all of the
audio files by artist and song starting
| | 00:27 | with Iyeoka - Breakdown Mode, we have
the original MP3 and AIFF file, LEAD VOCAL
| | 00:34 | and split, stereo, left/rights
of all the other vocal parts.
| | 00:40 | The next folder is Iyeoka - Simply Falling,
and in this folder, we simply have
| | 00:45 | the Dry_Acappella_112 beats per minute.
| | 00:49 | The next folder is Jodi Nardone -
Waiting in the road, and I've titled it
| | 00:53 | Waiting in the Road Remix because as
you'll see, when you watch the movie, we're
| | 00:57 | actually extracting these parts from
the original Pro Tools multitrack session.
| | 01:02 | Here we have the click track
and Jody's lead vocal.
| | 01:06 | Next is Natalie Brown - Around the World,
and in this folder, we have
| | 01:10 | Natalie's original version and MP3
version of it, along with LEAD and
| | 01:15 | background vocals, both Wet and Dry.
| | 01:18 | Next is another song by Natalie Brown
called I Knew You Were the One, and we
| | 01:22 | also have an MP3 along with a set of
Dry and Wet Vocals, Leads, and Backgrounds.
| | 01:28 | I'd like to take a moment and point
out that although I'll be working within
| | 01:32 | multiple DAWs throughout this course,
that shouldn't discourage you from
| | 01:35 | taking the audio files in the exercise files
folder and following along in your DAW of choice.
| | 01:42 | In other words, if I'm performing a
time stretch in Logic, there is no reason
| | 01:46 | why you can't import the same set of
vocals into Pro Tools or Ableton or
| | 01:51 | Reason, whichever DAW you're using, and follow
my process but just do it in your specific DAW.
| | 01:59 | If you're fairly new to remixing, you
might want to spend a few minutes watching
| | 02:03 | the chapter where I use
your DAW in my demonstration.
| | 02:07 | This will orient you to some of those tools
and carry you through the rest of the course.
| | 02:12 | If you are a monthly member or
annual number of lynda.com, you don't have
| | 02:17 | access to the exercise files, but you can
follow along from scratch with your own assets.
| | 02:22 | Let's get started.
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1. Time-Stretching BasicsWhat is time stretching/expanding?| 00:00 | time stretching is the term frequently used by
remixers when they talk about changing the BPM of a vocal.
| | 00:06 | If you choose to increase the BPM of a vocal,
then you're actually time-compressing
| | 00:11 | the vocal so it will play
faster than its original tempo.
| | 00:15 | If you are slowing the vocal down,
then you are expanding it, resulting in a
| | 00:19 | vocal that will play longer
in duration than the original.
| | 00:22 | time stretching is one of the critical
concepts to understand when it comes to
| | 00:27 | remixing, and there are certain
limitations as to how much you can speed up a
| | 00:32 | vocal or how much you can slow it down.
| | 00:35 | For this course, I'll use the term Time Stretch
to refer to changing our source
| | 00:39 | audio's BPM in either
direction unless I specify otherwise.
| | 00:45 | It's important for me to point out
that the time-stretching algorithms built
| | 00:49 | into today's music software is
significantly more advanced than the software
| | 00:54 | that we used 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago,
thereby allowing us to perform more drastic
| | 01:01 | time stretches in either direction.
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| Exploring different time-stretching scenarios in remixing| 00:00 | Remixers are frequently faced with
different time-stretching scenarios, some of
| | 00:04 | which are easy to handle, and
others which are much more challenging.
| | 00:08 | Common scenarios and challenges faced by
most remixers are: speeding up the vocals.
| | 00:15 | For example, if I have a vocal that has
an original BPM of 120, and I speed it
| | 00:20 | up to 128 beats per minute.
| | 00:24 | Slowing down the vocals, if I have a
vocal that's at 140 beats per minute, and I
| | 00:30 | slow it down to 130 beats per minute.
| | 00:34 | Leaving the vocals at their source or
original tempo, in other words, if I
| | 00:39 | receive a vocal that's at 132 beats
per minute, and I like the way it sounds
| | 00:45 | then I leave it at that tempo, and I
don't need to perform a time stretch on it.
| | 00:49 | Dry vocals versus wet vocals, keep in
mind that the quality of the time stretch
| | 00:54 | will be affected by whether or not
vocals are dry or wet, meaning that dry vocals
| | 01:00 | have no effects on then and wet
vocals might have reverb or delay.
| | 01:05 | Dry vocals generally yield a better
quality time stretch than wet ones, but
| | 01:10 | there is a bit of trial and error here.
| | 01:12 | DAW differences, you'll find as you
work from one DAW to another that the
| | 01:18 | time-stretching algorithms are
different thereby yielding different results.
| | 01:22 | One DAW may do a better job at
slowing down a set of vocals and another DAW
| | 01:28 | may do a better job at speeding them up, one
DAW may handle wet vocals better than another.
| | 01:34 | So as with the dry vocals and wet vocals
scenario, the same applies for the DAW differences.
| | 01:41 | The bottom line when exploring the
sonic differences between time stretching in
| | 01:45 | different DAWs is that it will
take a bit of trial and error.
| | 01:49 | Get to know the tools that you have
at your disposal, and if you have the
| | 01:53 | opportunity, spend some time getting
to know DAWs other than the one that you
| | 01:57 | spend the most time working at.
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2. Tools of the TradeUnderstanding where to get a capella vocal tracks| 00:00 | One of the most frequently asked
questions I'm asked is how to get ahold of
| | 00:04 | vocals to create your own remixes.
| | 00:06 | Well, one way that seems to be growing in
popularity are what are known as remix contests.
| | 00:12 | Over the last few years, I have
noticed that these contests are becoming
| | 00:16 | more and more popular.
| | 00:17 | And some major-label artists are
even going this route in addition to
| | 00:21 | commissioning certain remixers to
remix their tracks. While you'll most
| | 00:25 | likely be competing with many other remixers
for those coveted few spots on the project,
| | 00:30 | it's a great way to force you to create
a finished track. In other words, even
| | 00:34 | if your remix is not chosen for the
final package, you now have something that
| | 00:39 | you can put on your remix reel.
| | 00:41 | Another good way to get ahold of
A capella vocal Stems is to approach local
| | 00:45 | bands or artists in your area.
| | 00:48 | If you know of local artist or bands
that might be open to having their music
| | 00:51 | remixed, this can be a great way to get started.
| | 00:54 | In fact, when I lived in Nashville in the
late 1990s, I began my remixing career this way.
| | 01:00 | I was in several bands, and I had
several artist friends, and I simply asked
| | 01:04 | them for their vocals, and I worked
up my own remixes which then became my
| | 01:08 | remixing reel which I then use when I moved to
New York to network and pick up further work.
| | 01:14 | Cut your teeth on a smaller stage
before stepping onto a bigger stage.
| | 01:19 | Spending those couple of years remixing
at the local level paid big dividends for
| | 01:23 | me when I started to get opportunities
to remix major label artists years later.
| | 01:28 | I cut my teeth on a smaller stage as a
remixer before stepping onto a bigger one.
| | 01:33 | Remember that you only have one
chance to make a first impression.
| | 01:38 | And finally, contact the record label directly
by the artist's or band's A&R or management.
| | 01:42 | Follow the groups or artists that you
are interested in and contact the label
| | 01:46 | directly, although this can be a
tedious process unless you have some prior
| | 01:50 | knowledge of the A&R person who is
assigned to that particular project.
| | 01:54 | But don't be discouraged, there are
wonderful resources like the A&R registry
| | 01:58 | that will provide you with a
current list of record label personnel.
| | 02:02 | Also, if you happen to know an artist or
band's manager, that is a fantastic way in as well.
| | 02:08 | However, you go about finding A capellas,
make sure that you're able to do
| | 02:12 | a good job on the remix.
| | 02:13 | Nobody wins if you are cranking on
mixes that bands or artists just don't like.
| | 02:18 | Everyone needs to start somewhere.
| | 02:19 | So by no means am I attempting to
discourage anyone from dreaming big or being
| | 02:23 | ambitious, but as remixers, we have to maintain
perspective on whether or not we're doing good work.
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| Time stretching in Pro Tools| 00:00 | As one of the most popular DAWs on
the planet, Pro Tools is an excellent
| | 00:04 | platform for time stretching vocals.
| | 00:06 | I've been a Pro Tools user for
over 15 years now, and many of my early
| | 00:11 | remixes were created in it.
| | 00:13 | Let's take a look at the Elastic Audio
feature within Pro Tools, and I'll show
| | 00:16 | you how you can use it to time stretch a vocal.
| | 00:18 | We'll begin with a blank session, and I
will import my vocal, and I'm going to
| | 00:26 | use the Iyeoka Simply Falling Acapella
that I used in remixing a course in
| | 00:30 | Logic Pro, and I'll add this to the audio bin.
| | 00:33 | It'll convert it and place it in the Audio Files
folder that's attached to the Session folder.
| | 00:41 | I'll choose New Track, and here we have
Iyekoa_Simply_Falling_Dry_Acappella_112BPM.
| | 00:50 | The first thing I need to do is make
sure that my session's BPM, or tempo, matches
| | 00:55 | that of the vocal that I just imported.
| | 00:57 | I will go up here and change my
Tempo to 112 beats per minute.
| | 01:05 | So up here we have 112 beats per
minute, and it matches 112 beats per
| | 01:09 | minutes in the vocal.
| | 01:11 | Now just to make sure that everything
is truly locked up against the grid, I
| | 01:15 | will create a mono AUX track, and
on it I will place a click track, and
| | 01:23 | I'll also create a Master Fader.
| | 01:26 | I like to have a Master Fader
present in all of my sessions.
| | 01:30 | We'll mute the vocal and just play the metronome.
(audio playing)
| | 01:37 | And because I like to be very
organized within my sessions, I will label this
| | 01:40 | click track. So to make sure that
everything is actually lined up against the
| | 01:44 | click, I'll play the song
from the very beginning.
| | 01:53 | (music playing)
| | 02:05 | Good, and as you can hear those are in
beat, I'll scan up here a little over a
| | 02:09 | minute, and we'll take a listen to the
vocals at this point in the song and make
| | 02:13 | sure that nothing has drifted.
| | 02:16 | (music playing)
| | 02:33 | Excellent! That's locked up against to click
nicely, and we'll scan up to the bridge
| | 02:37 | section of the song just
past 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
| | 02:41 | (music playing)
| | 03:00 | Excellent! Nothing is drifted, the vocal is
absolutely tight against the click track.
| | 03:04 | Now I'll mute the click track.
| | 03:06 | Because we're only dealing with one
stereo track of vocals, there's no reason why
| | 03:10 | we shouldn't expand the view
of the waveform to be extreme.
| | 03:14 | You'll notice there's a little gray handle
here, and it allows me to turn on Elastic Audio.
| | 03:19 | I'll choose Polyphonic, because
polyphonic will give me the most
| | 03:24 | in-depth waveform analysis.
| | 03:26 | Basically, what elastic audio is doing is
it's examining the transients of the waveform.
| | 03:30 | Polyphonic will give me the best
time stretching results possible.
| | 03:34 | If I were working with a snare drum or
a kick drum, I might choose Monophonic
| | 03:39 | from the pulldown menu here, or Rhythmic you
would use for loops or groove-based audio.
| | 03:44 | But for our purposes, we'll choose
Polyphonic, and you'll notice over here at
| | 03:48 | the left, there is a little blue icon.
| | 03:50 | It allows me to choose
between Samples and Ticks.
| | 03:53 | It's important that you set this to
Ticks for elastic audio so that when I go up
| | 03:58 | here, and I change the BPM of the
session to the desired BPM that I want for my
| | 04:04 | remix, the audio follows suit.
| | 04:08 | Now let's take a listen to the newly
time-stretched audio against the click track
| | 04:13 | to make sure that everything is
indeed locked against the beat.
| | 04:18 | (music playing)
| | 04:34 | So that sounds like it's in beat to me.
| | 04:37 | We'll double check down here to examine
the song, right around the bridge, 2:30--or
| | 04:41 | actually it's 2:13 now because we've
shrunk the amount of time that this vocal
| | 04:45 | will play from start to finish because
we've sped it up 16 beats per minute.
| | 04:52 | (music playing)
| | 05:08 | Excellent! So everything is tight against the click track.
| | 05:11 | Now I will mute the click track, and
let's take a listen to different spots of
| | 05:15 | the audio with nothing playing but the
vocal, because we really need to take a
| | 05:19 | close listen to the time stretch and
make sure that there are no words that are
| | 05:22 | garbled or warbly sounding
as result of the time stretch.
| | 05:27 | I will place my marker up here before chorus2.
| | 05:31 | (music playing)
| | 05:47 | Very little audio degradation. I hear a little bit
on certain words, it's nothing I'm concerned about.
| | 05:53 | When you actually apply reverb and
delay and maybe a little chorus, and this
| | 05:57 | vocal sitting in the mix with drums
and bass and all sorts of instrumentation
| | 06:01 | underneath it, you are not going to
notice any of that audio degradation.
| | 06:05 | It's very, very minor.
| | 06:07 | So as you can your hear, elastic audio
offers great results in time stretching vocals.
| | 06:11 | And if you happen to be a Pro Tools
user who hasn't spent much time
| | 06:15 | using elastic audio, I hope this movie inspires
you to spend some time experimenting with it.
| | 06:20 | By all means, use elastic audio to time stretch
other elements of a mix besides vocals.
| | 06:26 | In fact, you can even use elastic audio
to time stretch the entire finished mix.
| | 06:31 | If at the end of your mixdown, you
feel like you like to have your tracks 2 or
| | 06:35 | 3 beats per minute faster to add a little
more energy, by all means pop into
| | 06:40 | Pro Tools, use Elastic Audio, and experiment.
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| Time stretching in Logic Pro| 00:00 | Over the last several years, Logic has
quickly become one of the most popular
| | 00:04 | DAWs for remixing and creating electronic music.
| | 00:07 | Much like Pro Tools, it has an
elastic audio type feature called Flex mode.
| | 00:12 | So I begin with a blank session, and
I'll import our Iyeoka vocal into the audio
| | 00:17 | bin, Simply Falling, 112 beats per
minute, and I will change the tempo of this
| | 00:25 | session to 112, drag the vocal out into
the Arrange window, close the audio bin
| | 00:34 | and expand the size of the vocal a bit
so I can take a look at what is going on.
| | 00:39 | The metronome is engaged, and I'll
play the vocal just to make sure that
| | 00:44 | everything is indeed locked
up against the click track.
| | 00:52 | (music playing)
| | 01:04 | Excellent! Everything sounds to be
locked up against the click track.
| | 01:08 | Let's scan further into the song.
| | 01:13 | (music playing)
| | 01:31 | Excellent, and as we scan further
into the song around the bridge section,
| | 01:34 | we'll take a listen there and make sure
everything sounds tight against the click track.
| | 01:40 | (music playing)
| | 02:04 | Excellent! Everything sounds nice
and tight against the click track.
| | 02:07 | So over here where it says Audio 1,
you'll notice there is a triangle.
| | 02:10 | I'll click that, and you'll see a pulldown menu.
| | 02:13 | Underneath Flex mode, you see it's
set to Off, and much like Pro Tools with
| | 02:19 | elastic audio, I'll choose Polyphonic to
give me the best possible time stretch.
| | 02:25 | Logic is analyzing the waveform, and all
I have to do is double-click on my Tempo
| | 02:31 | change it to 128, go back to the
beginning of the song, and let's take a listen
| | 02:36 | to it with the click track.
| | 02:42 | (music playing)
| | 02:52 | Excellent, I'll move up here further
into the song near the first chorus.
| | 02:58 | (music playing)
| | 03:14 | Excellent! And I'll move further down into
this song just to make sure that everything,
| | 03:18 | again, is locked up against the click.
| | 03:20 | I always like to do this just to make
sure that nothing has drifted during any
| | 03:24 | sort of time-stretching process.
| | 03:28 | (music playing)
| | 03:44 | Excellent! So everything is indeed locked up
against the click, and much like Pro Tools,
| | 03:48 | I'll now mute the click track and take a
listen to the vocals by themselves just
| | 03:53 | to hear if there is any sort of
audio degradation in the time stretch.
| | 03:57 | (music playing)
| | 04:13 | It sounds very good, and much like
Pro Tools, you'll hear slight audio
| | 04:17 | degradation in certain words, but it's
nothing major, nothing that a little bit
| | 04:21 | of chorus, reverb, and delay won't help
massage, and when the vocal is actually
| | 04:25 | placed in a final mix, none of
these idiosyncrasies will jump out.
| | 04:29 | As you can see, flex mode works in a
similar fashion to Elastic Audio, but do
| | 04:35 | keep in mind that every DAW's time-
searching algorithm operates a little bit
| | 04:39 | differently, thereby
yielding slightly different results.
| | 04:42 | I don't think that one DAW's time
searching algorithm is necessarily better than
| | 04:46 | the next, but you will hear
differences from one to the other.
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| Time stretching in Reason| 00:01 | I remember using Reason back in 2001 for
the first time when it was only version 1.5.
| | 00:06 | I always hoped that they would
eventually add audio as a feature to the
| | 00:09 | program, and when Reason 5 came out several years
ago, paired with Record 1.5, my hopes were answered.
| | 00:17 | Now with Reason 6, Record 1.5 is disappeared,
and we're just dealing with Reason on its own.
| | 00:23 | So I have a blank Reason 6 session
opened, and this particular DAW operates
| | 00:28 | a little bit differently than Logic and
Pro Tools when it comes to importing audio.
| | 00:32 | Since I'm using Iyeoka vocal that's at
112 beats per minute, what I'm going to
| | 00:36 | go ahead and do is change the BPM of
this session before I bring the audio in,
| | 00:43 | and I'll import the audio file,
and we choose Iyeoka - Simply Falling,
| | 00:51 | we open it, and there it is.
Reason operates in this fashion.
| | 00:55 | You need to set Reason's BPM to
match the original BPM of the audio file
| | 01:00 | that you're importing.
| | 01:01 | This way the audio file analysis
takes place upon import of the audio file.
| | 01:06 | So, I set the BPM to 112 prior to
importing the audio, and now I'll turn on a
| | 01:11 | click track and just take a listen
to the vocal to make sure it is indeed
| | 01:16 | locked up against the click.
| | 01:20 | (music playing)
| | 01:31 | Excellent, everything sounds nice and
tight, and I will move the playhead up to
| | 01:36 | right around the first chorus.
| | 01:40 | (music playing)
| | 01:58 | Excellent, and we move the
playhead further into the song.
| | 02:04 | (music playing)
| | 02:22 | Excellent, so everything sounds
nice and tight against the click.
| | 02:24 | Now I will return the playhead back
to the start of the song, and much like
| | 02:28 | Logic and Pro Tools, all I need to do is
choose my new BPM, and I'll bump this up
| | 02:34 | to 128, the click track is
still on, and let's take a listen.
| | 02:42 | (music playing)
| | 02:52 | So far so good. I'll move the playhead
up towards the first chorus.
| | 02:57 | (music playing)
| | 03:14 | Okay, that sounds nice
and tight against the click.
| | 03:16 | I'll move this up closer to the end of the song.
| | 03:21 | (music playing)
| | 03:36 | Excellent, I'll return the
playhead to the beginning of the song.
| | 03:39 | So I'm deliberately playing the vocal
in the same spot of the song in each of
| | 03:45 | these different time stretching
instances between the different DAWs on purpose,
| | 03:49 | because I like you to take a listen to
the difference in the quality of the time
| | 03:53 | stretch from one program to another.
| | 03:55 | I went ahead and muted out the click
track, and I'm going to move the playhead
| | 03:59 | up to the first chorus so we can listen to the
vocal by itself with no metronome in the way.
| | 04:06 | (music playing)
| | 04:22 | Very similar to Pro Tools and Logic,
slight audio degradation on the time
| | 04:27 | stretch, we are going 16 beats per
minute faster than the original BPM.
| | 04:31 | But again, nothing that's too major to
be covered up when you actually place
| | 04:35 | this vocal in your final mix, and
you do some treatments to it.
| | 04:38 | So you can see--again, I said it in the
last movie, and I'll say it again in this
| | 04:44 | movie--differences in the time-stretching
algorithms between the programs, not
| | 04:47 | necessarily better or worse, just different.
| | 04:50 | If you happen to work on more than one
DAW, and you actually happen to have more
| | 04:55 | than one installed on your system, I
encourage you to think about actually time
| | 04:59 | stretching the vocals in a couple of
different DAWs and then bringing them into
| | 05:03 | the DAW of your choice, putting them
side by side. You might find that you like
| | 05:08 | one over the other or you might find
that the difference between one and the
| | 05:12 | other is so minimal, it doesn't really matter which
DAW you're using to time stretch your vocals.
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| Time stretching in Ableton Live| 00:00 | Ableton Live is sometimes overlooked
as a vocal time stretching solution.
| | 00:04 | Over the years, I have mostly
used it for drum programming and time
| | 00:08 | stretching loops, which I feel is
one of the best programs for working in
| | 00:12 | those areas of production.
| | 00:14 | As I take you through a basic vocal time
stretch, you'll notice that the process
| | 00:18 | is slightly different than
Logic, Pro Tools and Reason.
| | 00:22 | I begin with a blank session that
defaults to 120 beats per minute.
| | 00:26 | And since I know that the
Iyeoka vocals is 112 BPM.
| | 00:31 | I will change the sessions to tempo to
match that of the vocal, I import it.
| | 00:36 | And you notice that Ableton
predetermines a bunch of these warp markers which
| | 00:42 | we're not going to use.
So I will turn off the warp marker feature.
| | 00:46 | And turn it back on, and you
notice that all of the predetermined warp
| | 00:49 | markers have gone away.
| | 00:51 | I have the metronome on just to make
sure that the vocal is indeed locked
| | 00:55 | up against the grid.
| | 00:56 | And I'll play it from the
beginning, and we can take a listen.
| | 00:59 | (music playing)
| | 01:12 | Excellent. Everything sounds nice and tight.
Let's move up here around the first chorus.
| | 01:17 | (music playing)
| | 01:36 | Excellent. Everything sounds
nice and tight against the grid.
| | 01:40 | I'll move the playhead down later
in this song to the last chorus.
| | 01:44 | (music playing)
| | 02:02 | Excellent. Everything sounds nice
and tight against the click track.
| | 02:05 | Now you will notice down
here there's a pulldown menu.
| | 02:08 | I've option of Beats, Tones, Texture,
Re-pitch, Complex or Complex Pro.
| | 02:12 | I'll choose Complex Pro. This is very
much like choosing polyphonic in the Logic
| | 02:18 | Flex mode and Pro Tools Elastic
Audio time stretching algorithm menu.
| | 02:23 | So this is the most detailed and intricate time
stretching algorithm that Ableton offers.
| | 02:29 | We've chosen Complex Pro, I'll change
the BPM to 128, and we'll take a listen to
| | 02:36 | the 128bpm vocal against the click track.
| | 02:41 | (music playing)
| | 03:07 | I decided to play the verses in this
time stretching scenario since we haven't
| | 03:10 | listened to the verses yet.
| | 03:13 | I'll move the playhead further down
into the song next to the last chorus.
| | 03:17 | (music playing)
| | 03:33 | Excellent everything sounds nice
and tight against the click track.
| | 03:36 | Now I'm going to mute out
the metronome right now.
| | 03:39 | And just to give you an example of
the difference in the time stretching
| | 03:42 | algorithm quality, between Beats and
Complex Pro, I'm going to go ahead and
| | 03:48 | play little of the chorus with the Beats
setting on for the time stretching algorithm.
| | 03:54 | (music playing)
| | 04:03 | So you can hear there is a quite
of bit audio degradation there.
| | 04:07 | I'll switch back to Complex Pro and play the
same section again, and you'll hear a difference.
| | 04:13 | (music playing)
| | 04:29 | I feel that it's important to point
out the difference between the Beats time
| | 04:32 | stretching algorithm and the Complex Pro one.
| | 04:35 | There is a huge difference, and if you
happen to forget to select Complex Pro
| | 04:39 | for your vocal, your vocal time
stretch will actually not sound very good.
| | 04:44 | What separates Ableton Live from the
rest of the DAW's is that it is so heavily
| | 04:48 | used for live performing.
Many DJs use live as their DJ program.
| | 04:54 | Having the ability to drop an
A capella like this one in the middle of the
| | 04:58 | track or in the middle of a beat or
groove that you're putting together on the
| | 05:02 | fly or improvising in the middle
of the DJ set, takes the entire live
| | 05:06 | performance to a new level.
| | 05:08 | And that's really what separates this
from Logic, Pro Tools, Reason, and as
| | 05:13 | you'll see in the next movie, Melodyne.
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| Understanding the roles of multiple DAWs in a time-stretching workflow| 00:00 | Since I own all four of the DAWs
covered in this course I've been able to
| | 00:04 | spend many hours over the years,
finding their strengths and limitations with
| | 00:08 | time stretching audio.
| | 00:10 | When the time stretches just a few
BPM different from the original BPM, I
| | 00:15 | generally use the time stretching
algorithms of the DAW that I am working in for
| | 00:19 | that particular project.
| | 00:21 | If I'm faced with an unusually large
time stretch, I will time stretch the
| | 00:25 | vocals in several different programs
and then pull all of the different time
| | 00:29 | stretches into the DAW that I'm working in
so that I can audition each one side by side.
| | 00:35 | This strategy is very effective and
can sometimes be the difference between
| | 00:39 | creating a usable time
stretch vocal and unusable one.
| | 00:44 | I hope this gives you a better
understanding of how I use these tools to achieve
| | 00:48 | the best quality vocal time stretch possible.
| | 00:51 | I can't stress enough that when it
comes to doing a full vocal mix, your remix
| | 00:56 | really is only as good as the
quality of your time stretched vocals.
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| Dealing with wet vocal stems| 00:00 | In the old days of remixing, I very
rarely ever received Wet vocals, by Wet
| | 00:05 | vocals I mean vocals that have the
effects on them from the final mix.
| | 00:09 | Now I'm absolutely want the vocals to
have the EQ Compression and Automation on
| | 00:13 | them from the final mix, but Reverbs
and Delays can radically alter the quality
| | 00:18 | of the time stretch but in today's
climate sometimes a Wet MP3 of all the vocals
| | 00:23 | mixed together is all you get, and
you have to do your best with what you have.
| | 00:28 | I've learned a few tricks over the
years to help smooth out some of the sonic
| | 00:32 | wrinkles that can result from time
stretching Wet vocals, and I'm going to point
| | 00:35 | out one of them for you in this movie.
| | 00:38 | I have imported the Iyeoka Simply
Falling vocals which are time stretched to 125
| | 00:44 | beats per minute already.
| | 00:45 | And I'm going to time stretch the time
stretch from 125 to 136. Now I'm simply
| | 00:54 | choosing this BPM for
the purposes of this movie.
| | 00:57 | I wouldn't really do this but I need
to point out the audio degradation that
| | 01:03 | occurs when you time stretch a
Wet vocal beyond a certain point.
| | 01:07 | In fact, before we listen to the time
stretch, let's take a listen to the vocals
| | 01:12 | as they sound right now
at 125 beats per minute.
| | 01:16 | (music playing)
| | 01:45 | Excellent. We'll engage Logic's Flex
mode and select Polyphonic so we have the
| | 01:50 | best possible quality of time
stretch, set the song pointer back to
| | 01:56 | measure 1, select 136 beats per minute.
| | 02:00 | And as you'll notice we start to lose
a little bit of quality in the Wet vocal
| | 02:05 | you'll hear a little bit of what I call
this warbly effect on the voice, and
| | 02:09 | you can hear it on the
Delays and Reverbs as well.
| | 02:12 | Let's go ahead and listen to
the song up here at measure 33.
| | 02:17 | (music playing)
| | 02:44 | The best way to describe what I'm
hearing is that the vocal sounds like it
| | 02:47 | almost has too much vibrato going through it.
| | 02:50 | So, one way we can address this problem
is to select a Modulation Plug-In like
| | 02:55 | Logic Chorus Plug-In.
| | 02:58 | And before I play with the Chorus on, I
will bypass it, I will put the plug-in
| | 03:05 | over here, I'll move the head back
right before measure 33, and I'll hit the
| | 03:11 | Bypass Off as the vocal is playing.
| | 03:13 | And you'll be able to hear how the chorus
helps smooth out some of these artifacts.
| | 03:17 | (music playing)
| | 03:46 | This is a trick designed to offer a
small sonic improvement but a small sonic
| | 03:51 | improvement can sometimes be the
difference maker in a SPEC mix being accepted
| | 03:55 | and approved by the artist in their camp.
| | 03:58 | You should always aim your
productions the best that they can be.
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| Choosing the tempo for different styles or genres| 00:00 | It's important to make sure that the
BPM you choose for your remix falls within
| | 00:04 | the accepted BPM range for the
GENRE that you're remixing in.
| | 00:09 | While this is by no means exhaustive.
| | 00:11 | I've selected a list of what I feel
are some of the most relevant electronic
| | 00:15 | music genres of today and yesterday.
| | 00:18 | First up we have Hip Hop/Rap and Trip-Hop,
whose respective BPM Ranges fall
| | 00:23 | between 60 and 110. Next up is Acid Jazz
which generally falls between 80 and 126
| | 00:31 | beats per minute. Then we have Tribal
House 120-232 beats per minute.
| | 00:39 | After that we have Euro/Disco House and
mainstream house which falls between 120 and 134
| | 00:46 | beats per minute. Trends/Hard House and
Techno are quite a bit faster with BPM
| | 00:52 | Ranges around 130 to 155.
| | 00:55 | And Breakbeat has a wide range of 103
beats per minute to 155 beats per minute.
| | 01:01 | Dubstep has quickly become one of
the more popular genres of electronic
| | 01:05 | music and most Dubstep tracks fall
at 140 beats per minute.
| | 01:11 | And finally, Jungle and Drum-n-bass whose BPMs
are very fast and fall between 160 and
| | 01:15 | 180 beats per minute.
| | 01:18 | While I believe that the musical
categorization can sometimes be overkill.
| | 01:24 | Fans and DJs are picky about mixes
within a particular style being legit.
| | 01:28 | That is not to say that you shouldn't
push the boundaries a bit but do keep in
| | 01:32 | mind who your audience is.
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|
|
3. Technique 1: Speeding Up VocalsImporting vocals and using the 10% time-stretch rule| 00:00 | During this chapter, I'll be using Ableton
Live on the Mac platform for the demonstration.
| | 00:05 | The menu choices and keyboard shortcuts
I'll be using are for that DAW and platform only.
| | 00:10 | If you are using a different DAW or if
you're on a different platform, obviously
| | 00:14 | you'll be using different keyboard
shortcuts and menus but the remixing
| | 00:18 | concepts will be the same.
| | 00:19 | If you need a refresher on your DAW of
choice, please seek out the Essential
| | 00:23 | Training title for that DAW on the
online training library here at lynda.com.
| | 00:29 | Additionally, you can reference the
chapter in this course, where I do you use
| | 00:33 | your DAW for the demonstration.
| | 00:34 | And I'll show you the basic Remixing
Tools and Techniques for that DAW and then
| | 00:38 | return to this movie and go through
this chapter's concepts with the techniques
| | 00:42 | appropriate to your situation in mind.
| | 00:45 | We begin with the blank session in
Ableton Live. I already know the BPM of the
| | 00:49 | song because the engineer was kind enough
to put them in the title of the vocal stems.
| | 00:54 | Let's take a look.
| | 00:57 | We have Lead and Background vocals
WET and DRY 104 beats per minute.
| | 01:03 | So we already know what the BPM of the
song is lets change it here in Ableton, and
| | 01:09 | let's bring the original version in.
| | 01:11 | So we can take a listen to it, I was
given an MP3, and I'll drag it into the
| | 01:16 | Arrange window, but again, turning my volume
down because I don't know how loud this file is.
| | 01:25 | We'll turn off Warping feature in
Ableton so that we're just listening to the
| | 01:29 | MP3, and start our song pointer
at measure 1 and take a listen.
| | 01:36 | (music playing)
| | 02:08 | So you get the idea, now we can
actually clear this out of the Arrange window
| | 02:13 | we wont need it, and I'll turn this to
none. Before we import the vocals, I'll
| | 02:19 | take a moment to bring a
kick drum into the session.
| | 02:23 | And I am able to access the kick drum
I'll show you where this folder lives,
| | 02:30 | inside Lives Library folder, we have a
Samples Folder and a Waveforms folder, a
| | 02:36 | Drums Folder, and a Kick Folder.
| | 02:39 | So here are some kick drum samples that
come with the Ableton live Sound Library.
| | 02:45 | (music playing)
| | 02:50 | I like the way this kick drum sounds.
| | 02:51 | So I'll bring this one in, drop it at
measure 1 and distribute it on each Quarter
| | 02:59 | note of the measure.
| | 03:01 | I can highlight one full measure
and use Command+D and Copy and Paste
| | 03:06 | throughout the song.
| | 03:07 | We'll take it up to about 105 measures, that
should be plenty to put the vocals against it.
| | 03:16 | Let's label this track.
| | 03:21 | And now let's return to Browser number 2,
Ableton has three browsers here. As you can see.
| | 03:27 | We'll return our song to
measure 1, as well as our review.
| | 03:32 | Let's create, and we'll create another
five or six tracks of audio because I'm
| | 03:38 | going to bring in both the Wet and Dry vocals.
| | 03:42 | First we'll bring in the Dry Lead Vocal,
and as I import each audio file, the
| | 03:50 | very first thing I'm going to do is
turn off the Warp feature in Ableton.
| | 03:56 | Ableton likes to calculate the BPM of
the audio files that are being imported, I
| | 04:01 | turn off the Warp feature.
| | 04:03 | I now highlight the track up here in
the Arrange window, and I hit Command+J,
| | 04:09 | creates a consolidation, and now
Ableton creates a new Waveform overview with a
| | 04:14 | warp marker beginning truly
where the audio file begins.
| | 04:19 | And as you can see, our Segment
BPM is at 104 beats per minute.
| | 04:23 | I'll select Complex Pro because I know
that, that will give me the best possible
| | 04:29 | time stretching algorithm option,
when it comes to speeding up the vocals.
| | 04:34 | So we have our Dry Lead, now let's
bring in our Dry Background vocals, and we
| | 04:40 | will do the same thing.
| | 04:43 | Turn off the Warp feature, grab this
handle, slide all the way to the left, go
| | 04:49 | back up to the Arrange window,
hit Command+J and consolidate.
| | 04:53 | For those of you moving from Ableton 7
to Ableton 8, you'll notice that this
| | 04:56 | warping engine is quite different, and
it might take a moment to get used to
| | 05:00 | some of its new features.
| | 05:04 | And I'll label my tracks as I
bring them in to avoid any confusion.
| | 05:07 | So Lead_dry and BG_dry.
| | 05:17 | Just to make sure that both of these
are sitting properly against the Grid, we
| | 05:21 | can see that they are actually the
same size, go up here to the end and both
| | 05:26 | them end and exactly measure 105.
| | 05:30 | Next I'll bring the Wet vocals in,
disengage the Warp feature slide handle all
| | 05:40 | way to the left, highlight the track,
hit Command+J. And while it's calculating
| | 05:45 | it won't let me name the track
while it's consolidating.
| | 05:52 | We will name this Lead wet, and finally
we'll bring in the wet background vocals.
| | 06:11 | Excellent. Let's label this track, BG
Wet, and we can see that all of the audio
| | 06:18 | files are the same length which is the
way they should be because they were all
| | 06:22 | bounced out starting from the
same place from the original session.
| | 06:25 | So the files themselves are all
the same size in terms of megabytes.
| | 06:29 | I'll bring the volume down because
again I don't know how loud these are, and
| | 06:35 | we're going to take a listen to the
Wet vocals first, so I'll mute these out,
| | 06:39 | disengage this tracks.
| | 06:41 | Our kick drum is in, and before we listen
to any audio I want to take a moment to
| | 06:47 | explain what we refer to in
remixing as the 10% Time Stretch rule.
| | 06:51 | It's a rule that surfaced years ago
when time stretching applications and
| | 06:56 | software and even some hardware didn't
have the algorithms that they have today.
| | 07:02 | In other words, we were much more
limited back then in terms of how far we
| | 07:06 | could stretch a vocal.
| | 07:07 | I like to think of the 10% Time Stretch
rule in this fashion, if the Source BPM
| | 07:13 | is 104 beats per minute, take 10% of
that number, which is roughly over 10, so
| | 07:18 | we can start by adding 10 BPM and
taking this up to 114 beats per minute and
| | 07:24 | listening to what that sounds like.
| | 07:29 | You're generally safe with time
stretching in either direction, when you're
| | 07:33 | applying the 10% time stretching rule.
| | 07:35 | Once you get outside of that number,
it's possible that you'll start to hear
| | 07:39 | some degradation in the audio.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Comparing several vocal time stretches at faster BPMs| 00:00 | Let's take a listen to what we
have here, our kick drum is in.
| | 00:04 | (music playing)
| | 00:22 | I'm already noticing a
little bit of degradation.
| | 00:24 | So let me double check and make sure that I
have everything set on Complex Pro, I do not.
| | 00:29 | So we're going to change that right now.
| | 00:35 | Ableton defaults to Beats, so when it
comes to bringing vocals or other audio
| | 00:41 | that's not a drum loop, you always want
to set it to Complex Pro, it'll give you
| | 00:46 | the best quality in terms of time stretch.
Let's start that over and take a listen.
| | 00:49 | (music playing)
| | 01:21 | Sounds good. I'll expand these Track Views a little
bit so we can just have a better handle
| | 01:28 | of where we are in the song.
| | 01:30 | Okay, so those are the wet vocals,
they are not super wet there's a little
| | 01:33 | bit of reverb on them.
| | 01:34 | But there's enough to factor into the
time stretch, so we are at 114, I want to
| | 01:40 | reference the dry vocals and
just hear if there's a difference.
| | 01:48 | (music playing)
| | 02:12 | They sound better, and you also
notice visually that the wet vocals are
| | 02:16 | a little bit louder.
| | 02:17 | I mean, you look at the waveform
amplitude, and you can just see that the wet
| | 02:21 | vocals were bounced a little bit hotter.
| | 02:23 | So that's not going to necessarily
play a role in terms of the time stretch, but
| | 02:27 | it's just something to take notice of
as you're auditioning wet and dry vocals.
| | 02:31 | We're at 114, let's push it up a little
bit further and see where the limit is
| | 02:36 | with our time stretch.
| | 02:38 | I'll take it up to 120,
and play from the same spot.
| | 02:42 | (music playing)
| | 03:09 | The lead vocals still sounds really
good to me, the background vocals are
| | 03:12 | starting to get a little bit warbly
because they're sort of textural, the
| | 03:16 | ooh's are almost have a
Synthesizer Pad type texture to them.
| | 03:20 | So let's push it even a little further.
| | 03:23 | Again, when it comes to doing a Remix,
you may not want to use all of those
| | 03:27 | ooh's, you may take one sample it,
delay it, affect it somehow so, we don't
| | 03:32 | always want to marry ourselves to using
every single bit of the vocal from the
| | 03:36 | original but the lead vocal is
the most important vocal file.
| | 03:40 | I'll push it up to 124, and
let's hear what that sounds like.
| | 03:43 | (music playing)
| | 04:05 | Still sounds good, let's jump over to
the wet vocals, and hear how they sound.
| | 04:11 | (music playing)
| | 04:34 | The lead vocal still sounds good, we
can push it even a little bit further to
| | 04:37 | 126, going back and listening.
| | 04:40 | (music playing)
| | 05:03 | It still sounds good to me.
| | 05:04 | It's important for me to mention at
this stage that even though the quality of
| | 05:08 | the vocal is still there, the phrasing
is starting to get a little bit fast,
| | 05:12 | and we never wanted time stretch
vocals so that the vocal performance itself
| | 05:17 | doesn't feel credible.
| | 05:19 | We're 22 beats per minute faster than
the original, and I would say this is
| | 05:22 | definitely the line, and I would not
time stretch beyond this point because the
| | 05:26 | phrasing and the performance of
the vocals just won't feel credible.
| | 05:30 | So you can see the value here, and
having both the wet and dry vocals side
| | 05:34 | by side lined up against a kick drum,
and it's very important to experiment
| | 05:39 | with different BPMs.
| | 05:41 | I always begin with this part of the
process, a basic kick drum and the vocals,
| | 05:46 | and I spend a few minutes
experimenting with different BPMs.
| | 05:49 | If you don't spend a few minutes at
this stage, you may commit to a tempo too
| | 05:54 | early, and as you begin to listen to
the vocals further into the song, realize
| | 05:59 | that oh, there's a bridge section,
and that doesn't sound very good at this
| | 06:02 | tempo but I want to keep the bridge
section in because I have been hired to do
| | 06:06 | a full vocal remix.
| | 06:07 | So this should give you some ideas of
how to begin the time stretching process
| | 06:13 | and again we chose Ableton for
this movie but you can apply the same
| | 06:17 | philosophies no matter
what DAW you're working in.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Putting the time-stretched vocal in context| 00:00 | Let's take a few minutes and put our vocals
in to bit more context than just a kick drum.
| | 00:05 | I'll add two more audio tracks and
again, you don't have to go about doing it
| | 00:10 | the way I'm doing it.
| | 00:11 | I've just been using Ableton so long,
that I'm accustomed to using audio even if
| | 00:17 | its single shot audio samples as
opposed to using a lot of MIDI.
| | 00:21 | Let's take a listen at some the snare drums.
| | 00:23 | (music playing)
| | 00:26 | I like that 707.
| | 00:28 | I'll drag that in, expand my view and
drop that on beats 2 and 4, and we use our
| | 00:37 | Command+D, expand my view.
| | 00:40 | I'll just duplicate that 1 bar phrase,
from the beginning, all the way to the end.
| | 00:48 | And now lasso a larger
region to speed this process up.
| | 00:52 | Let's name this track snare.
| | 00:57 | And I would like to add a
hi-hat on the and of the beat.
| | 01:01 | Inside our Cymbal folder we have several
different hi-hat options as well as crash symbols.
| | 01:05 | (music playing)
| | 01:09 | That will work, expand my view, and let's
actually bring that in right at the beginning.
| | 01:17 | And it will fall on the and of the beat.
So 1.3, 2.3, 3.3, we will take a listen
| | 01:26 | and make sure that that's accurate.
| | 01:31 | I'll bring our volumes down.
| | 01:32 | (music playing)
| | 01:35 | It's not. Let's take a look.
| | 01:39 | (music playing)
| | 01:40 | This is where we want it.
| | 01:40 | (music playing)
| | 01:44 | And it'll fall on the and of every beat.
| | 01:48 | So I can delete these, and
let's take a listen to this.
| | 01:54 | (music playing)
Good.
| | 01:57 | Good. I'll copy this out so that it's 2 full bars.
Trim that back, so I have an even 2 bar loop.
| | 02:06 | Which I can then duplicate.
We'll call this hat 1.
| | 02:12 | So let's take a listen to the beat.
| | 02:14 | (music playing)
| | 02:41 | Great, and remember these are just
reference drums, they're place holders, we're not
| | 02:45 | committing to a pattern or sounds.
| | 02:47 | This is just something to give us a
little bit more excitement when comes to
| | 02:51 | listening through the
vocal from start to finish.
| | 02:53 | Possibly doing some editing, it
actually will help you with your editing to
| | 02:58 | listen some sort of groove as
opposed to just a kick drum or click track.
| | 03:03 | It's too difficult to determine
whether or not a word needs to be shifted
| | 03:07 | between kick drum patterns when
you don't have hi-hat or snare drum to
| | 03:11 | help anchor the beat.
| | 03:12 | In addition to programming a little drum
pattern here, let's go over to our MIDI
| | 03:17 | track and add a bass line.
| | 03:20 | Underneath Instruments and then the
Analog folder, I have the SynthBass folder.
| | 03:25 | (music playing)
| | 03:27 | That will work for now.
| | 03:29 | I'll move my playhead right to
where the first set of vocals enter.
| | 03:32 | (music playing)
| | 03:53 | Those seem to be the right bass notes.
| | 03:55 | They may not be exactly what the
original is doing but they're working with the
| | 03:58 | vocals at this point.
| | 03:59 | And again I'm not coming in to a
bass line, I'm just putting in an idea to help
| | 04:04 | me determine whether or not my vocals
are sitting in the pocket the way that I'd
| | 04:07 | like them to sit in the pocket.
| | 04:10 | I'll set my playhead at measure 5
and play in this 4 bar bass line.
| | 04:14 | (music playing)
| | 04:28 | Scroll down here and take a look at it.
| | 04:31 | And we'll notice that Ableton has a
Record Quantization setting which I did not
| | 04:35 | turn on prior to playing that beat.
So I will turn this on and replay it.
| | 04:40 | We'll set it to 16th notes. One more time.
| | 04:46 | (music playing)
| | 04:59 | Excellent. Trim up this region here.
| | 05:04 | And as I click and hold here as I
highlight this you can see down here in
| | 05:07 | the lower left-hand corner of the
screen, I can't move my mouse, or I'll
| | 05:11 | actually lose the visual.
| | 05:13 | Down in the lower left corner where it
says 10-Bass Analog Squeeze, you can see
| | 05:18 | the length is 4 bars.
So I will duplicate my 4 bar MIDI region.
| | 05:25 | Let's take a listen to the song.
| | 05:26 | There might me a bridge or some section
further down in this song that I haven't
| | 05:30 | listened to yet that has different chord changes
but I'm not concerned with that at the moment.
| | 05:34 | Again this is simply a bass line and a
basic drum beat for me to listen to the
| | 05:38 | timing of the vocals.
| | 05:39 | (music playing)
| | 06:15 | So there's the spot where the chorus
comes or we call that the B section.
| | 06:19 | I'll need to figure out a different set
of bass notes but I'll do that later on.
| | 06:22 | Right now, I've got a nice groove, and
if I need to mute the bass out in some
| | 06:26 | sections that's fine I can tell by
listening to this first section up until
| | 06:30 | where I stopped the song.
| | 06:32 | That the vocals are sitting nicely
against the bass line and the drumbeat.
| | 06:35 | Again some of the timing of vocals is
going to be very subjective and what I
| | 06:39 | prefer is not going to be what you
prefer but ultimately you need to think about
| | 06:45 | the pocket of the vocals,
the timing of the vocals.
| | 06:48 | Things should not sound rushed or
too far behind but as long as the vocal
| | 06:54 | performance feels credible against the
backbeat in the bass line in the track
| | 06:58 | that you begin to build, that's the
ultimate goal of doing a full vocal remix.
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|
|
4. Technique 2: Slowing Down and Double Timing Vocals Setting up your session for double timing a vocal| 00:00 | During this chapter, I'll be using
Propellerheads Reason on the Mac Platform
| | 00:04 | for the demonstration.
| | 00:05 | The menu choices and keyboard shortcuts I'll
be using are for that DAW and platform only.
| | 00:10 | If you're using a different DAW or if
you're on a different platform obviously,
| | 00:15 | you'll be using different keyboard
shortcuts and menus but the remixing
| | 00:19 | concepts will be the same.
| | 00:20 | If you need a refresher on your DAW
choice, please seek out the Essential
| | 00:24 | Training Title for that DAW on the
online training library here at lynda.com.
| | 00:30 | Additionally, you can reference the
chapter in this course where I do your DAW
| | 00:34 | for the demonstration.
| | 00:35 | And I'll show you the basic remixing
tools and techniques for that DAW and then
| | 00:39 | return to this movie and go through
this chapter's concepts with the techniques
| | 00:43 | appropriate to your situation in mind.
| | 00:46 | I'll begin with a blank Reason
session as well as an MP3 opened up in the
| | 00:51 | QuickTime movie player.
| | 00:53 | Most of the time when I'm hired to do a
remix, I'm sent the MP3 along with the
| | 00:58 | vocal stems, sometimes the MP3 comes first.
| | 01:01 | In this case, Reason does not have a BPM
Calculator or BPM Counter like Logic or Pro Tools.
| | 01:09 | So we're going to approach this manually.
| | 01:11 | I've got the MP3 opened up
in the QuickTime movie player.
| | 01:15 | The song is called 'I knew you were
the one' and again the artist is Natalie
| | 01:19 | Brown like our last chapter.
| | 01:21 | I'll bring the QuickTime volume down
just a little bit so that I'm able to
| | 01:26 | listen to the click track in Reason.
So let's play the MP3 in QuickTime.
| | 01:33 | (music playing)
| | 02:15 | So I played about 40 seconds of the MP3,
and as you saw I Tapped in Reason's
| | 02:21 | Tap tempo area here by the Transport, and
it looks like 68 is the BPM of the original.
| | 02:27 | Just to make sure that that's accurate,
I'll engage the click track in reason,
| | 02:31 | and we can take a listen
to metronome just briefly.
| | 02:34 | (music playing)
There it is.
| | 02:38 | I'll go back and play the MP3, and
I'll hit Play in Reason as close to the
| | 02:43 | downbeat as I can of a drumbeat in
Natalie's song and listen to see if the click
| | 02:49 | drifts from the QuickTime movie player.
| | 02:53 | (music playing)
| | 03:05 | I didn't get that super tight on
the downbeat so let's do that again.
| | 03:10 | I'll back Reason up to 1 and move
this back up to about 40 seconds.
| | 03:16 | (music playing)
| | 03:44 | So as you can hear, the click track
didn't drift from the QuickTime movie player.
| | 03:49 | I didn't get the click exactly on the
downbeat but close enough to where I would be
| | 03:53 | able to tell if the BPMs are actually in sync.
| | 03:57 | Had I been off the click track would
have wandered from the MP3 pretty quickly,
| | 04:02 | and you would have be able to
tell that 68 was not the correct BPM.
| | 04:06 | So now that we've established that the
original version is at 68 beats per minute.
| | 04:11 | Let's set up a re-drum in Reason.
And I'll go over here to my Tools window.
| | 04:20 | Since I've been using Reason since
version 1.5, I am very accustomed to pulling
| | 04:24 | down the Create dropdown menu and
finding the modular tool that I need.
| | 04:29 | I'll select the REDRUM Drum Computer.
| | 04:31 | And the first that I'm going to do is
program the Step Sequencer using this kick
| | 04:35 | drum, I'll turn that up a
little bit, there we go.
| | 04:43 | And I know from my experience on the
step sequencer, that if I want to place
| | 04:47 | a kick drum on every Quarter note,
I start with 1, 5, 9 and 13 on the 16
| | 04:54 | Step-Step Sequencer.
Next I'll put a hi-hat in.
| | 05:02 | (music playing)
| | 05:04 | And I'll put those on the and. I
just know these numbers from years of
| | 05:10 | experience in programming Step Sequencer's.
We'll take a listen to the Drum Computer.
| | 05:15 | (music playing)
Excellent!
| | 05:24 | And let's add a snare drum on beats 2 and 4.
(music playing)
| | 05:30 | Yes, that's sounds good.
(music playing)
| | 05:40 | Excellent! Now I'll mute the Redrum and save it
for later, but now we have a Step Sequencer
| | 05:47 | Drum machine that can move with this
as we select different BPMs.
| | 05:52 | Because essentially what we're going to be
doing here is slowing down Natalie's vocals
| | 05:57 | from 68 BPM to 64, and do
what's called double-timing the music.
| | 06:03 | This is a ballad, and we're going to
slow this down 4 beats per minute and then
| | 06:08 | double-time the music so that we're at 128.
| | 06:12 | So don't dismiss this somewhat old-
school approach to BPM Calculations.
| | 06:17 | I actually calculate the BPMs of a
lot of the songs that I remix this exact way.
| | 06:22 | I may not always do it in Reason but
I use the same approach where I have,
| | 06:26 | QuickTime open with an MP3 playing, and
I'll Tap Tempo the rhythm either on my
| | 06:31 | iPad or my phone or in another
DAW that allows for Tap Tempo.
| | 06:37 | At the end of the day, the first thing
you need to check when you begin a remix
| | 06:42 | or when you're even thinking about
whether or not you're going to take on the
| | 06:45 | remix is you need to know
the BPM of the original.
| | 06:48 | Because if something?s at 80 or 85
or 90 beats per minute that's a tough
| | 06:53 | remix, that might be a project that
you take a pass on because that what we
| | 06:57 | call no man's land.
| | 06:58 | You are either slowing things down or
speeding them up and the time stretch is
| | 07:03 | so drastic one way or another, that
might not be a project to take on.
| | 07:08 | But you have to be able to determine the
BPMs quickly and so I'm a big believer
| | 07:12 | in the manual Tap Tempo approach.
| | 07:14 | I actually think but I'm able to
arrive at the source BPMs of the songs I am
| | 07:20 | remixing faster than importing an
MP3 into a DAW and waiting for it to
| | 07:24 | calculate the track's BPM.
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| Double timing the music and then time stretching the vocals to a slower BPM| 00:00 | You may remember from Chapter 2 in the
course, when I provided an example of
| | 00:04 | time stretching a vocal in Reason. That
it's best to set Reason to the BPM of the
| | 00:09 | audio file prior to importing it.
| | 00:12 | We've already established that the
original tempo of the song is 68 Beats Per
| | 00:16 | Minute, and we've also established that we
are ultimately going to double time the music.
| | 00:21 | Before I import the vocals, I
will double time the tempo right now.
| | 00:25 | So 68 times 2 is 136. Underneath
File, I choose Import Audio File.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to choose the dry vocals, I
prefer to use dry vocals whenever possible
| | 00:36 | especially when it comes to time
stretching, that way I'm not adding a layer of
| | 00:41 | treatment to the audio file
that needs to be time stretched.
| | 00:44 | We'll select Open, and boom
there's our Background vocal.
| | 00:48 | Now to avoid importing an audio file on
top of another audio file, I'll select
| | 00:54 | Redrum, choose Import Audio File and
then choose the Lead Vocal Dry.
| | 01:00 | And as you can see, it created a brand new audio
track and named the track the name of the file.
| | 01:04 | So we'll mute out Redrum, and let's
see if by any chance these vocals just
| | 01:10 | happen to line up against the
click as they're freshly imported.
| | 01:14 | Before I play the audio files, I choose
the Mixer, and let's bring these levels down.
| | 01:20 | I don't know how loud these vocals
are going to be, and I always like to
| | 01:24 | practice good housekeeping with this.
F5 takes me back to the Arrange window.
| | 01:30 | Let's move our song pointer
up closer to the first chorus.
| | 01:35 | (music playing)
| | 01:38 | This is a little soft, we can
turn those up, a little bit more.
| | 01:44 | (music playing)
| | 02:00 | As you can clearly hear these vocals
are not locked up against the click track.
| | 02:03 | So let's take a few minutes and line them up.
| | 02:07 | I highlight both tracks, want to trim
up the dead space here, and I will bring
| | 02:13 | my song pointer closer to my start
point, and let's increase the width of the
| | 02:20 | Arrange window here, so we
get into a pretty fine division.
| | 02:24 | You'll notice that Reason has a box for snap.
| | 02:27 | In other words, when you're moving the audio,
it snaps to whatever you tell it to snap to.
| | 02:33 | In this case, we have it snapping to a bar.
| | 02:35 | So I'm going to subdivide this down to
64th notes and you can see these little
| | 02:42 | subdivisions were created
here in the Arrange window.
| | 02:45 | Let's expand our view and what we're going
to do here is slowly just bring these over.
| | 02:53 | I brought it over a half a measure.
Let's see if that happens to work.
| | 02:57 | (music playing)
| | 03:04 | It's a little bit ahead.
| | 03:05 | So, let's go back, and move them
over just a little bit to the right.
| | 03:12 | (music playing)
| | 03:19 | Still feels a little bit ahead.
We're moving in 64th notes.
| | 03:24 | (music playing)
| | 03:38 | That's sound pretty tight so far.
| | 03:41 | Let's zoom out and take a listen
to this song when we're at the verse.
| | 03:46 | I'll unmute my Redrum drum module so
that we have more than just a click track
| | 03:50 | as a rhythmic reference point.
| | 03:53 | (music playing)
| | 04:37 | Excellent. That sounds nice and
tight against that drum programming.
| | 04:40 | We're at 136 right now.
| | 04:42 | We know that's not going to be our
destination BPM, that's our source BPM.
| | 04:47 | Let's experiment with a
couple of different BPMs.
| | 04:49 | Let's go down to 128 and just see what that
sounds like, it might be a little too slow.
| | 04:55 | We'll go right up to the chorus again
and take a listen to how the Background
| | 04:57 | vocal sounds at a new BPM, 8 BPM slower.
| | 05:02 | (music playing)
| | 05:23 | Feels a little sluggish to me.
Let's bump it up two more BPM to 130.
| | 05:29 | Let's take a listen to the song as
we're moving into technically our second
| | 05:32 | chorus after the first verse.
| | 05:34 | (music playing)
| | 05:52 | I like the new BPM of 130.
Let's leave it here for now.
| | 05:56 | I'm still not sold on the
pocket or the feel of the vocals.
| | 06:00 | Keep in mind that this song was recorded at 68.
| | 06:04 | We've double timed the vocals,
and we're slowing it down now.
| | 06:07 | In a ballad, which is what the original
version is, there's a lot of space around
| | 06:12 | the drum beats, so the vocal can move a
little bit but technically still be in
| | 06:16 | time or in the pocket.
| | 06:17 | Now that we're double timing the music,
and we're adding more drums, there are
| | 06:21 | some things that are exposed here and
the pocket just isn't quite tight enough.
| | 06:25 | So let's go back to the beginning of the
song and expand our view and move these
| | 06:33 | vocals ever so slightly to the right.
They feel a little bit on top.
| | 06:38 | So we move two 64th notes to the right.
Let's take a listen to this.
| | 06:43 | (music playing)
| | 07:30 | Now the chorus vocals feel really locked in
the pocket to me but the Verse feels too behind.
| | 07:36 | Let's take a listen to the
vocals slightly nudged to the left.
| | 07:41 | We don't want to do both
tracks, we want to just do one.
| | 07:45 | Actually let's go 2 to the left
because I thought that verse vocals
| | 07:48 | sounded pretty tight.
And we head them starting at that point.
| | 07:53 | (music playing)
| | 08:24 | To me that sounds a little bit better.
| | 08:26 | When it comes to time stretching
vocals in this scenario, I actually like my
| | 08:30 | vocals to be very on top of the beat.
| | 08:32 | A lot of this nudging and finessing is
subjective, it's your personal taste.
| | 08:37 | I happen to like the vocals to sit a
certain way when it comes to slowing them
| | 08:42 | down and double timing a ballad
like we're doing in this situation.
| | 08:45 | In the next movie, I'll spend a few
minutes programming some more drums and
| | 08:49 | putting in a reference bass line so
that we can listen to these vocals in a
| | 08:52 | little bit more context.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Putting the time-stretched vocal in context| 00:00 | Let's spend a few minutes putting these
vocals in a bit more context. I'll create a
| | 00:06 | Dr. Octo Rex Loop Player, and I'll select
under Drums > Electronic Drums > Electro
| | 00:14 | House, and let's take a
listen to what this sounds like.
| | 00:18 | (music playing)
| | 00:20 | We have our kick drum.
| | 00:22 | (music playing)
| | 00:26 | Just a basic kick snare hat.
| | 00:27 | (music playing)
| | 00:29 | I'll go with Slot 2.
So that'll be our beat.
| | 00:33 | We can mute out Redrum.
| | 00:35 | Let's also pull up a piano, and I
don't have to go up here to create.
| | 00:40 | I can also quickly right-click and
create, and I'll just do a basic NN-XT
| | 00:46 | Sampler, I'll select Piano,
we've got a bright piano sound.
| | 00:51 | (music playing)
There we go.
| | 00:56 | I'll choose a basic NN19
Sampler for my piano sound.
| | 00:59 | I'll take a look at to SubTractor's
patch library, go to Bass, and I happen to
| | 01:07 | know this sound and like
this sound, Backlash Bass.
| | 01:10 | (music playing)
| | 01:12 | It's coming a little bit hot, turn this down.
| | 01:16 | (music playing)
| | 01:18 | Excellent. So let's select the NN19 and go back to
our QuickTime Player and take a listen
| | 01:25 | to the song, and get a handle on
what some of the chord changes are.
| | 01:28 | (music playing)
| | 01:29 | I'll move up into where the song kicks in.
| | 01:34 | (music playing)
| | 02:48 | Okay, that gives me a little bit of an
overview of what the chord changes are,
| | 02:52 | and obviously, I'm not
looking to do an R&B remix per se.
| | 02:55 | But for now, I can use some of the same
bass notes that are found in the chords
| | 03:00 | in the original version.
| | 03:02 | Let's move our song pointer all the way
up to where the first chorus starts, and
| | 03:08 | I'll move myself over to the SubTractor Synth.
| | 03:11 | (music playing)
| | 03:17 | Let's turn off the click track.
We'll take a listen to the first chorus.
| | 03:20 | (music playing)
| | 03:37 | I'll turn the vocals down just a
little bit just. They still feel a little bit loud.
| | 03:46 | Since I already know what the chord
changes are in the original, and I know what
| | 03:50 | the bass notes are I'll play in a bass
pattern that mirrors those chord changes.
| | 03:53 | Ultimately, I will choose
a different bass pattern.
| | 03:55 | But again, we're looking to just put
the vocals in some sort of context at this
| | 03:59 | stage to go through the song and then
see if we need to do any further editing.
| | 04:05 | (music playing)
| | 05:22 | Excellent. I'll double-click on my bass
notes here in my MIDI region.
| | 05:27 | I'll right-click up here
and select Quantize Notes.
| | 05:31 | Let's scroll back and see
if they do sound beat now.
| | 05:33 | (music playing)
| | 06:24 | Sounds like they're a little
tighter to me than the way I play them.
| | 06:28 | Arrow back, I'll put some basic
piano chords in over my bass line.
| | 06:32 | Again, these are just placeholders.
This is not going to be a final part.
| | 06:37 | (music playing)
| | 06:42 | I'll give myself a couple of bars pre-roll.
| | 06:46 | (music playing)
| | 07:35 | I made a mistake there.
Let's zoom in and fix that.
| | 07:42 | I can just erase that right there.
| | 07:45 | (music playing)
| | 08:18 | Excellent. So I opted to go with more or less
the same chord changes as the original.
| | 08:23 | But again, these are just placeholders.
| | 08:26 | I'll double-click on my MIDI notes here,
Quantize, and you can see the slight
| | 08:31 | shift in the notes that
the quantization did work.
| | 08:33 | We'll back it up and take a listen.
| | 08:40 | (music playing)
| | 09:57 | Excellent. So now we have our vocal
sitting in a bit more context.
| | 10:01 | And what I would do from here is
simply copy and paste these MIDI regions
| | 10:06 | throughout the song and give myself a
sketch arrangement of sorts to listen to
| | 10:10 | the vocals, go through, see if there's
any tightening up, moving of phrases,
| | 10:15 | anything with the feel of the vocals
that I'd like to change now that we have
| | 10:19 | the vocals on a four-on-the-floor remix context.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Technique 3: Creating a Composite Vocal from Multiple Time StretchesSetting up your session to slow down a vocal track| 00:00 | During this chapter I'll be using Logic Pro
on the Mac platform for the demonstration.
| | 00:05 | The menu choices and keyboard shortcuts
I'll be using are for that DAW and platform only.
| | 00:10 | If you are using a different DAW or are
on a different platform, obviously, you
| | 00:15 | will be using different keyboard shortcuts and
menus, but the remixing concepts will be the same.
| | 00:20 | If you need a refresher on your DAW of
choice, please seek out the Essential
| | 00:24 | Training title for that DAW on the
online training library here at lynda.com.
| | 00:29 | Additionally, you can reference the
chapter in this course where I do use your
| | 00:33 | DAW for the demonstration, and I'll
show you the basic remixing tools and
| | 00:37 | techniques for that DAW and then
return to this movie and go through this
| | 00:41 | chapter's concepts with the techniques
appropriate to your situation in mind.
| | 00:46 | As you can see, I've opened
up blank session in Logic.
| | 00:49 | I'm going to create a few extra audio
tracks in addition to the one audio track
| | 00:53 | that I chose when I opened up my session.
| | 00:56 | And I'll just duplicate here
with the Track Duplicate button.
| | 01:01 | Next, I will create my
own metronome on the EXS24.
| | 01:05 | Now Logic has a built-in metronome,
and we're able to turn it off and on over
| | 01:10 | here in the Transport window.
| | 01:13 | (audio playing)
| | 01:16 | This metronome is a little quiet for me.
| | 01:18 | So I'm going to program the kick drum on
EXS24 that falls on every quarter note.
| | 01:22 | I turn off Logic's metronome, I will
reset this channel strip, and choose
| | 01:29 | EXS24 from the software
instruments pulldown menu.
| | 01:36 | I'll select a drum kit,
and I we'll just use a 909.
| | 01:43 | (music playing)
There is our 909.
| | 01:47 | Actually, I will turn Logic's metronome
back on so that I have something to play to.
| | 01:52 | (music playing)
| | 02:01 | Turn Logic's metronome off, quantize my kick
drums to quarter notes, select my loop region.
| | 02:09 | (music playing)
| | 02:13 | Excellent. And I'll move this over to measure 1,
hit L, and now I have my kick drum
| | 02:20 | pattern looped infinitely.
| | 02:22 | I prefer to spend a few minutes setting up
the session before I actually import the vocals.
| | 02:27 | I believe that the workflow is much
better when the session is set up and
| | 02:30 | tailored to the task or tasks at hand.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Calculating the BPM and tempo of the original track| 00:00 | Now it's time to calculate
the BPM of the original track.
| | 00:03 | Let's import the original version of the
song which is called Breakdown Mode by Iyeoka.
| | 00:08 | I open up the Audio bin by using the
B key and underneath the Audio File
| | 00:14 | pulldown menu I select Iyeoka > Breakdown Mode.
It's the original MP3.
| | 00:21 | Add it to the Audio Bin, click Done,
and Logic will convert the MP3 to an AIFF.
| | 00:26 | As you can see, and it's
creating a waveform overview.
| | 00:33 | Drag the original out onto the Arrange
window, close the Audio Bin, mute out my
| | 00:39 | kick drum and contract the screen a little bit.
| | 00:43 | I'll select the track that has the
original mix on it, a Breakdown Mode and in
| | 00:47 | my Plug-In menu select BPM Counter.
| | 00:51 | So Logic's BPM Counter will now
calculate the BPM of the original.
| | 00:56 | And just to take a closer look at the
waveform I'll increase my waveform view.
| | 01:02 | So let's take a listen to the
original version of Breakdown Mode and watch
| | 01:06 | Logic's BPM Counter do its thing.
| | 01:08 | (music playing)
| | 01:26 | Immediately, it went to 1:48 BMP, and
then it shifted to 147.9. So in my mind I
| | 01:33 | think we can trust that
It's actually at 140 beats per minute.
| | 01:37 | And one way to test that is to close
the BPM Counter, and we will go to the
| | 01:45 | beginning of our wave file here, trim
up the space that's at the beginning.
| | 01:51 | Zoom in even closer to make sure we're
actually at 0 samples right where the
| | 01:58 | waveform begins and then slide
our wave file over to measure 1.
| | 02:05 | Again, always zoom in to make
sure that everything is accurate.
| | 02:11 | I'll shrink the screen, turn this down
a little bit, and I'll actually bypass
| | 02:19 | the BPM Counter for the moment.
| | 02:21 | I do that by holding of the
Option key and clicking on the plug-Ii.
| | 02:25 | Unmute me my kick drum pattern and
just bring the level of the original track
| | 02:31 | down a little bit so that I
can hear the kick drum as well.
| | 02:35 | Let's take a listen.
| | 02:36 | But first we need to change
the BPM in our Logic section.
| | 02:40 | So I type in 148, and now let's take
a listen make sure that everything is
| | 02:45 | indeed tight against the
grid at 148 beats per minute.
| | 02:48 | (music playing)
| | 03:06 | Sounds extremely tight to me.
| | 03:09 | One way to ensure that the audio
hasn't drifted is to scan further into the
| | 03:14 | song maybe 2 & 1/2 minutes or so and
take a listen and see if everything is still tight.
| | 03:20 | (music playing)
| | 03:27 | And indeed it is.
So 148 is the exact BPM of the song.
| | 03:31 | It's so important to make sure that
the BPM Calculations whether they're done
| | 03:35 | manually or by the computer are accurate.
| | 03:38 | I've had situations in the past where a
track's BPM is 128.10, not 128.00, and
| | 03:47 | I thought it was 128 which caused
my vocals to drift slightly every few
| | 03:51 | measures, and it wasn't until I went
back and placed the downbeat of the
| | 03:55 | original version right at the downbeat
of measure 1 of my sequence, which we
| | 03:59 | just did here, and then I scanned a
minute into the song and realized that the
| | 04:04 | BPM have been drifted.
| | 04:05 | So this is an extremely
important part of the process.
| | 04:08 | If you miscalculate the BPM of the
original then you're not going to have the
| | 04:13 | accurate Source BPM of your vocals
when it comes to time stretching.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Time stretching the vocals to a slower BPM| 00:00 | Now that we have the BPM of the
original version, let's import the vocals.
| | 00:05 | I open up the Audio Bin, go to Add
Audio File and select my vocal stems for
| | 00:12 | Breakdown Mode, drag the LEAD VOCAL out
on to the Arrange window, next will be
| | 00:19 | Verse Bvs, next will be Vox Doubles,
and I'll actually drag the Oohs down here,
| | 00:25 | and Logic will create a new
track for me. There we go.
| | 00:29 | Let's take a listen to the
vocals against the kick drum.
| | 00:32 | I'll mute out the original and make
sure that everything is sitting nice and
| | 00:35 | tight against the grid.
| | 00:36 | (music playing)
| | 01:06 | Everything sounds nice and tight so far.
| | 01:08 | Let's scan further up into the song
and just to be safe I'll lasso all these
| | 01:12 | tracks and bring the volume down just
a little bit so that my kick drum isn't
| | 01:16 | fighting the vocals.
| | 01:17 | This is really about making sure that
everything is locked up against 148 BPM kick drum.
| | 01:25 | (music playing)
| | 01:41 | Excellent. Everything sounds nice and
tight against the kick drum.
| | 01:44 | I'll return the playhead to the
start of the song, and now it's time to
| | 01:47 | engage Logic's Flex mode.
| | 01:50 | I'll select Polyphonic, and now that
we have Logic's Flex mode engaged we can
| | 01:56 | experiment with a couple of different
BPMs to see what sounds good. We're at 148.
| | 02:02 | I know that my target BPM is going to
be somewhere around 130 to 135, 136.
| | 02:08 | So let's do a drastic time stretch.
| | 02:10 | Let's go down to 130, 18
BPM slower than the original.
| | 02:16 | I'll scan right to the first
chorus where all the vocals are in.
| | 02:19 | (music playing)
| | 02:36 | It feels a little sluggish to me.
Let's take it up to 134.
| | 02:40 | I have a feeling that will do the
trick, right before the first chorus.
| | 02:45 | (music playing)
| | 03:01 | Nice, that 4 BPM increase really makes a
difference, and we're still within that
| | 03:05 | 10% rule that I mentioned earlier in the course.
| | 03:09 | Let's Solo out each vocal and
export them, because there's no reason to
| | 03:14 | leave Logic in Flex mode.
| | 03:16 | You are asking the computer to
continuously analyze a WAV file, and as you build
| | 03:20 | your track and engage your software
synths, you're just taxing the CPU sources.
| | 03:24 | Just to prove my point, before we
export these vocals, let's take a look at the
| | 03:28 | CPU Meter when all 4 vocal tracks
are playing with Flex mode engaged.
| | 03:34 | (music playing)
| | 03:43 | As you can see, down here in the CPU
Meter it's hitting around 25% or 30%, and
| | 03:47 | we've only got 4 tracks
playing over our kick drum.
| | 03:49 | So I see no need to leave Logic in Flex mode.
| | 03:53 | We'll export our vocals, and then we
can turn Flex mode off, because we'll have
| | 03:56 | freshly new exported vocals at 134.
| | 03:59 | Let's' return these Faders to 0 so
that the Waveform volume of the exported
| | 04:05 | vocals will be just as
loud as the original tracks.
| | 04:10 | I will Solo out LEAD VOCAL, I select
Bounce, select the Audio Files folder
| | 04:17 | because I prefer to export audio files
to the Audio Files folder and leave the
| | 04:21 | Bounces folder for my mixes, and
that's just a personal preference.
| | 04:24 | Let's call this Lead Vocal_134 so
that there's no confusion between this
| | 04:29 | vocal and the original.
| | 04:31 | Now you'll notice that we
here that Normalize is set to On.
| | 04:34 | I'm going to turn this Off.
| | 04:36 | Normalize will boost the level of my audio
file, and I'm not interested in that right now.
| | 04:41 | I prefer to leave this setting Off at all times.
| | 04:43 | I've selected Add to Audio Bin so that
Logic will import the freshly bounced
| | 04:47 | vocal into our session, and I hit Bounce.
| | 04:50 | Logic's offline bouncing will save us
quite a bit time during this process.
| | 04:56 | Next is Verse BVs, select Bounce,
and we'll call this file Verse
| | 05:02 | BVs_134, Normalize is Off.
Next is Vox Doubles and finally Oohs.
| | 05:16 | Now that we have all four of our
vocals exported at the new BPM, we can get
| | 05:20 | rid of the original vocals here and delete
these tracks which will then turn off Flex mode.
| | 05:28 | I'll go up here and create four new
stereo tracks, and I'll turn the Open
| | 05:32 | Library off, I don't need to have that one.
| | 05:35 | Open up the Audio Bin and drag my
new vocals onto the Arrange window.
| | 05:42 | Close the Audio Bin, and let's
take a listen from the first chorus.
| | 05:45 | (music playing)
| | 06:01 | Everything sounds in order.
| | 06:02 | Again, I will turn these
vocals down a little bit.
| | 06:05 | They were little bit loud on top of
the kick drum, and scan further into the
| | 06:09 | song just to double check.
| | 06:10 | (music playing)
| | 06:27 | Excellent! We'll turn the playhead
to the start of the song.
| | 06:30 | You can see how important it is to have
the vocals locked against the grid prior
| | 06:33 | to time stretching them.
| | 06:35 | You can also see how important it is
to use Logic's Flex mode to arrive at
| | 06:39 | your destination BPM then export your vocals
and turn it off, saving the computer's resources.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Comping the time-stretched vocal and the original vocal| 00:00 | Now that we have our time stretched
vocals, let's listen through and see if
| | 00:04 | there are any spots that might
need some finessing or massaging.
| | 00:08 | I'm going to move the Vox
Doubles underneath the lead vocal.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to move right to the chorus
here, got our vocal sitting a few dB below
| | 00:17 | unity, so they're not too loud.
| | 00:19 | I'm going to listen to the first chorus
and be mindful of words that might feel
| | 00:24 | a little bit elongated or slow sounding.
| | 00:26 | I'll expand the chorus, and we will
take a listen right from the beginning.
| | 00:31 | (music playing)
| | 01:02 | The word that jumps out to me is the
last control in the chorus, and I'll zoom
| | 01:07 | in on it, and we'll listen to
the measure leading up to it.
| | 01:11 | (music playing)
| | 01:15 | Let's make an edit point right here on
this word so that we know where it is
| | 01:20 | in both the lead and the doubles using
our scissors tool, and I'll bring the
| | 01:29 | original vocals back in, and I like to
close those arrows so that my Audio Bin
| | 01:34 | looks a little neater.
| | 01:35 | I'm going to bring the LEAD
VOCAL out and the Vox Doubles out.
| | 01:41 | Close the Audio Bin, and I'll color
code these a different color so that
| | 01:46 | visually there's no confusion.
| | 01:49 | I'll place the LEAD VOCAL at the
original BPM side by side with my time stretch,
| | 01:55 | and the Vox Doubles side by side
with the Vox Doubles time stretch.
| | 01:59 | One thing you'll notice we have vocals
at 134 sitting next to vocals at 148,
| | 02:05 | and as I expand the screen obviously these
vocals aren't going to line up with one another.
| | 02:11 | So manually, I need to slide these
over so that I can follow the waveform
| | 02:18 | from one to the other.
| | 02:19 | In other words, I have to find this word,
control, in both the Lead Vocal track
| | 02:26 | and the Vox Doubles track from the original BPM.
| | 02:30 | Let's solo out the lead vocal and one
thing we can do here is take a look at
| | 02:36 | what the waveform looks like.
| | 02:38 | This is simply an elongated image of
this waveform so if we slide this over, and
| | 02:44 | you can see here, this
waveform is similar to this waveform.
| | 02:49 | And if, I'm looking at this correctly,
this word right here should be control.
| | 02:55 | So we go in and make our edit point, and
we're going to deal with just one vocal at a time.
| | 03:01 | In other words, I'm not going to edit
the vox doubles with the lead vocal.
| | 03:05 | This is strictly the lead, and we can
mute out the other vocals right now to
| | 03:09 | avoid any confusion, zoom in here.
| | 03:12 | (music playing)
| | 03:19 | I'll delete control at 134 and in its
place I'll place control from 148 BPM.
| | 03:27 | Now this is a manual placement, there's
nothing automatic about this so you have
| | 03:31 | to use your ear, and just see
how this sounds on the beat.
| | 03:34 | (music playing)
| | 03:38 | Okay, so I'll need to make an edit here.
I'll make this a little bit bigger.
| | 03:41 | I'll even loop this small section.
| | 03:43 | (music playing)
| | 03:46 | We might even need to do a Fade.
| | 03:49 | (music playing)
| | 03:51 | Let's go ahead and put a Fade In there.
| | 03:55 | Load Fade Out, and I'll just pick a
number of 250, an arbitrary number, it's
| | 04:00 | probably a little bit too
much, let's dial that back.
| | 04:04 | (music playing)
| | 04:10 | That little hiccup might be on.
(music playing)
| | 04:14 | That's better. So we can do a quick Fade In on
our edit point of the vocal at 148.
| | 04:21 | Let's choose a number 75.
| | 04:22 | (music playing)
| | 04:26 | That cleans it up.
And again, these are dry vocals.
| | 04:29 | There's no reverb or any delays, a lot
of the treatments that you'll put on the
| | 04:33 | vocals will help smooth out some of these spots.
| | 04:36 | Now that we have the edit of the 148
BPM vocal with the 134 vocal sitting
| | 04:40 | properly over the kick drum,
let's address the Vox Doubles.
| | 04:44 | Same process here with the next audio track.
| | 04:47 | I'm moving this over so that visually
I'm looking at waveforms that look very
| | 04:53 | similar, one just happens to be
an expanded version of the other.
| | 04:59 | I'll do an edit here, and we can use
our vocal up here as a reference point
| | 05:00 | This should be control.
| | 05:06 | for where to place it.
| | 05:08 | Now again, so much of this
process depends on your ears.
| | 05:12 | There's not a quantization setting or
anything like that that will do this for
| | 05:16 | you, this is manual.
| | 05:17 | This is using your ears and
paying attention to how things sound.
| | 05:21 | Let's take a listen to the edit point,
I'll back it up just a little but further.
| | 05:25 | (music playing)
| | 05:28 | The timing is right but the
Edit point needs to be cleaned up.
| | 05:31 | So, let's Solo out Vox Doubles.
| | 05:34 | (music playing)
| | 05:38 | Might be able to get away with a Fade,
small Fade, I've used this so much now
| | 05:44 | I just pretty much know that 50, 75, or 100
are small fades, and I just type it in this way.
| | 05:49 | (music playing)
| | 05:53 | That cleans it up.
Let's take listen to everything in context.
| | 05:56 | (music playing)
| | 06:00 | I would probably go a little bit
further on the editing and clean up when I
| | 06:04 | start to put my mix together.
| | 06:05 | Again, the treatments with the
delays and the reverbs really will help.
| | 06:09 | We are listening to things so raw and so dry
right now that every little nuance pokes out.
| | 06:14 | With a built-up track, bass drum, some
textures, you probably won't notice some
| | 06:19 | of these idiosyncrasies.
| | 06:21 | But you have to go through the song
like this and find the words and the spots
| | 06:25 | in the song that feel a little bit
off or maybe a little bit slow, and you
| | 06:30 | replace that word if you're able to
with the word from the original to help
| | 06:35 | smooth out the phrasing.
| | 06:38 | I would go through and find every
instance in this song where the word control
| | 06:43 | sounds like it did before I made the edit,
and I would replace it just the way I
| | 06:47 | did with this one edit point.
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| Putting the time-stretched vocal in context| 00:00 | Let's spend a few minutes putting
our vocal in a little bit of context.
| | 00:05 | We've got a kick drum from the EXS 909 kit.
| | 00:08 | I'll quickly add a hat and a snare just
to give us a little bit more on the drums.
| | 00:12 | I'll use my Track Duplicate Feature.
| | 00:15 | (audio playing)
| | 00:19 | And I'll add the hi-hat next.
| | 00:20 | (music playing)
| | 00:30 | Quickly quantize that.
I only need two bars.
| | 00:37 | (audio playing)
We'll loop this.
| | 00:43 | Use our Track Duplicate Feature
(audio playing)
| | 00:47 | And add a snare drum.
| | 00:51 | (music playing)
| | 00:56 | Quantize to Quarter Notes and Loop.
| | 01:00 | (music playing)
| | 01:06 | Excellent. Now let's take a listen to the original so I
can get a handle on what the chord changes are.
| | 01:13 | I'll create a software instrument track
right below the original, double-click
| | 01:19 | on the EXS, and I'll
choose Piano from the EXS24.
| | 01:26 | (music playing)
| | 01:29 | That was working. So let's Solo out the original, and I
will plunk around the piano till I get a
| | 01:37 | handle on what the chord changes are,
and then I'll drop in a Reference or what
| | 01:41 | I call a mock bass line.
| | 01:43 | (music playing)
| | 02:27 | So the chord changes to me sound like
they are floating between B-flat miner,
| | 02:32 | G-flat major moving down to an F
Major chord and then the chorus sort of
| | 02:36 | reverses that pattern a little bit.
So that gives me enough of a reference point.
| | 02:40 | So I can mute the original, I'll move
my Piano sound down here to the bottom.
| | 02:46 | But I'll actually change it to a bass now,
double-click on the EXS and choose Bass.
| | 02:52 | I'll just is put a Fretless Bass up
just for now, and I've already set a
| | 02:58 | loop point from the first verse to all the
end of the first chorus, so we'll use that.
| | 03:03 | (music playing)
| | 03:20 | That's essentially what the chord
changes at the original are, and I'll use
| | 03:23 | those chord changes for now, because
again remember, the point of putting
| | 03:26 | this in context is to listen to our
time-stretched vocal in a little bit more
| | 03:31 | of a remix setting.
| | 03:32 | I know I'll go through and do
some more editing on the vocal.
| | 03:35 | But it's more exciting to edit to at
least a mock bass line and a drumbeat rather
| | 03:39 | than just a kick drum or a click track.
| | 03:42 | So let's put the bass in, I'll play this
from the first verse to the first chorus.
| | 03:46 | (music playing)
| | 04:35 | I made a little bit of a mistake there
at the end but let's quantize that, and
| | 04:39 | I'll quickly fix my mistake.
| | 04:42 | (music playing)
| | 04:53 | Let's go back to where the chorus starts.
| | 04:55 | (music playing)
| | 04:57 | Right there at merry-go-
round. I'll delete that.
| | 05:01 | Let's loop the chorus and get a
better handle on what the chord should be.
| | 05:04 | (music playing)
| | 05:27 | Okay that should work.
| | 05:30 | Let's expand our loop region
here and record in the chorus bass.
| | 05:35 | (music playing)
| | 06:06 | Okay, let's quantize that.
| | 06:09 | I threw an extra note in the first
eight bars of the chorus, and it's not
| | 06:12 | really bothering me.
| | 06:13 | Again, this is just a mock bass line
to give me some sort of inspiration as
| | 06:17 | I edit these vocals.
Let's take a listen from the first verse.
| | 06:21 | (music playing)
| | 07:07 | I decided that that extra note I threw
in is bothering me a little bit, so I am
| | 07:10 | going to just take the last 8 bars
of my bass line from my chorus, because
| | 07:15 | the first eight had that extra note in
there, that I'm not that crazy about now
| | 07:18 | that I listen back.
So I made my edit point.
| | 07:21 | Let's delete this, Option+Drag over
the back eight bars and our chorus should
| | 07:26 | sound a little bit better now.
We'll play it right from the chorus.
| | 07:30 | (music playing)
| | 07:59 | So that gives us a little bit of a reference.
| | 08:01 | I can still hear my edit point on the
word control, but I'll fix that as I get
| | 08:05 | deeper into the editing process.
| | 08:06 | But this gives you a little bit of an
overview of how I go about negotiating
| | 08:11 | a situation like this where I am
editing between the original vocals and the
| | 08:16 | time-stretched vocals, and then I am
putting things in context which will
| | 08:20 | then help me further edit the original vocals and
the lead vocals in those specific spots.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Technique 4: Transforming a 3/4 or 6/8 Vocal into 4/4Starting from a pre-existing Pro Tools multitrack session | 00:00 | During this chapter, I'll be using Pro Tools
on the Mac platform for the demonstration.
| | 00:05 | The menu choices and keyboard shortcuts I'll
be using are for that DAW and platform only.
| | 00:10 | If you are using a different DAW or
are on a different platform, obviously,
| | 00:15 | you'll be using different
keyboard shortcuts and menus.
| | 00:18 | But the remixing concepts will be the same.
| | 00:20 | If you need a refresher on your DAW of
choice, please seek out the Essential
| | 00:24 | Training title for that DAW on the
online training library here at lynda.com.
| | 00:29 | Additionally, you can reference the
chapter in this course where I do use your
| | 00:33 | DAW for the demonstration, and I'll
show you the basic remixing tools and
| | 00:37 | techniques for that DAW and then
return to this movie and go through this
| | 00:41 | chapter's concepts with the techniques
appropriate to your situation in mind.
| | 00:46 | Every once in a while, I won't have the
luxury of being given vocal stems, and I
| | 00:51 | have to use a multitrack session like in the case
of this song, Waiting in the Road by Jody Nardone.
| | 00:57 | What I have here on the Desktop is
Jody's original multitrack Pro Tools session,
| | 01:01 | and I'll open it up, clicking on the
icon here, and you'll notice that there are
| | 01:06 | quite a few plug-ins that I
don't have on this system.
| | 01:10 | That's okay, this is very common.
| | 01:12 | We don't all have the same plug-ins
from Pro Tools system to Pro Tools system.
| | 01:16 | What I'm interested in, in this
session is getting to the vocal and seeing if
| | 01:21 | there are any other elements
that I might want for the remix.
| | 01:25 | So I click No in the report and
here we have the multitrack session.
| | 01:31 | I'll size everything down to small,
and I'll take a look at the Mixer window,
| | 01:36 | and I notice that there are all sorts
of different I/O routings that are not
| | 01:42 | part of my I/O setup.
| | 01:43 | So the first thing that I like to do is
Option-click on everything and route it
| | 01:51 | to Stereo 1 and 2 so that I at least
have control over all the elements of the
| | 01:56 | mix in terms of being
able to hear what's going on.
| | 01:59 | So I'll start with the Master Fader
low just to make sure that nothing comes
| | 02:03 | through extremely loud and hurts
my ears or blows up my speakers.
| | 02:07 | So let's take a listen to the
song from the very beginning.
| | 02:11 | (music playing)
| | 03:17 | Okay, so everything sounds fairly
well-balanced in the headphones.
| | 03:21 | So let's take a look at the lead vocal,
because that's really what we're after here.
| | 03:26 | I'll size it large and place
everything on a waveform because I don't need to
| | 03:30 | look at the automation.
| | 03:32 | And I see that all we have is
a single solitary lead vocal.
| | 03:35 | This is great, this is very easy to deal with.
| | 03:38 | And since there is a live drummer in
this song, I could hear when the drums
| | 03:42 | kicked in, it was a live drummer.
| | 03:44 | I'm looking around to see if there is
any sort of metronome or loop or some
| | 03:50 | sort of click track reference that the
drummer played to, because when I look
| | 03:54 | at this at 120 beats per minute,
and I listen to this song, the song is
| | 03:59 | actually in 6/8 time.
| | 04:01 | I'll begin this song again and just
count it with you briefly so that you
| | 04:05 | understand where I'm coming
from with the time signature.
| | 04:07 | (music playing)
| | 04:11 | You can hear that this piano pattern
really has a 2-3-4-5-6,
| | 04:18 | 1-2-3-4-5-6,
2-2-3-4-5-6,
| | 04:25 | And when I opened up the session, the
session transport defaulted to minute/seconds,
| | 04:30 | so there was not a bars/beats
grid type of a situation.
| | 04:34 | I notice in the list of tracks there is
a click track, and I'll show it and make
| | 04:39 | it active because I want to hear how
tight against the click track the band was
| | 04:46 | when they recorded this.
| | 04:48 | I'll move my pan to 12 o'clock, unmute
the click, I'll move up further into the
| | 04:53 | song when the drums have kicked in.
| | 04:55 | (music playing)
| | 05:00 | And the first thing I notice is
that there is a section where the click
| | 05:03 | was actually cut out.
| | 05:05 | I'll take a look at the region here,
and I can extend that right over here
| | 05:11 | to the next region.
| | 05:12 | Now let's go back to that same spot where the drums
kick in and take a listen to the click track.
| | 05:17 | (music playing)
| | 05:35 | Okay, so I can hear the click was
really there as a reference, but the drummer
| | 05:38 | is not extremely tight
against it, which is okay.
| | 05:41 | This song does feel great when you
listen to it, but for the purposes of a
| | 05:45 | remix, we always want to have our
vocals tight against some sort of click
| | 05:49 | track, metronome, loop, some sort of
time reference where we know we can set it
| | 05:55 | up against the grid.
| | 05:58 | Let's move further up into the song and take
a listen to the band against the click track.
| | 06:02 | (music playing)
| | 06:03 | And that's very loud, so I'm
going to pull the Master Fader down.
| | 06:10 | (music playing)
| | 06:13 | But I'll go ahead and push the click up.
| | 06:16 | (music playing)
| | 06:29 | So there are some spots where the
drummer and the band are very tight with the
| | 06:33 | click, and there are some
spots where they are not.
| | 06:35 | So the first thing that I'm going to do
is solo out the vocal and start bouncing
| | 06:40 | it out of the session from the
very beginning of the session.
| | 06:43 | I know it doesn't come in for about
25 seconds, but I'm going to bounce it out
| | 06:48 | from 0:00.000 on the time up here, and then I
will move and do the same thing with the click track.
| | 06:55 | Before I bounce the disk, I'll take a
look at the Mixer one more time to make
| | 06:59 | sure that my levels are fairly
healthy as I bounce out of Pro Tools.
| | 07:03 | Now I notice the Master Fader is at -7.4.
Looked like the Master Fader was
| | 07:08 | hitting the red when the band was in, so
let me clear that peak, move the Master
| | 07:14 | Fader up a little bit, let's set it at unity.
| | 07:17 | And just to double-check, because I
like to bounce files out of sessions at a
| | 07:22 | healthy level, I'm going to quickly
take a look at the loudest part of the song
| | 07:28 | vocally up here at the end and see
what this does on the Master Fader.
| | 07:32 | (music playing)
| | 07:42 | I'm hearing a little kick drum in
there somewhere, some sort of other sound.
| | 07:45 | So I notice that there is--ah,
here is the culprit.
| | 07:53 | There is a kick drum that was solo-saved.
So I'm going to unsolo-save it.
| | 07:57 | Now when we listen to that spot,
it should just be the vocals.
| | 08:02 | (music playing)
| | 08:07 | I'm still hearing it.
Well, here's one way to work around that.
| | 08:12 | Go ahead and deactivate the
tracks that you don't need.
| | 08:16 | I'll make them inactive, and
let's take one more listen.
| | 08:21 | (music playing)
| | 08:27 | And I see I have a kick dupe track
here that didn't get deactivated.
| | 08:31 | That's the culprit.
| | 08:32 | So, as you can see, it's important to
take a few minutes to look at the entire
| | 08:36 | session before you bounce your vocals
or any other elements of the original
| | 08:40 | session out for your remix, because
it's very easy to overlook something that
| | 08:45 | someone might have solo-saved or set up
in the Mixer that you didn't notice, a
| | 08:49 | hidden track perhaps, and you're
bouncing your vocal down, and all of a sudden
| | 08:53 | you're hearing parts that you
didn't even know were there in the song.
| | 08:56 | So let's double-check this.
| | 08:59 | (music playing)
| | 09:11 | Wonderful. So I have the Master Fader at unity,
it's just his vocal, and I'll set my cursor
| | 09:18 | back to 0:00.000 up here, put my
Selector tool at the very end of the vocal
| | 09:24 | region, and hold-down Shift,
and let's bounce to disk.
| | 09:30 | Underneath File, I choose Bounce to > Disk.
| | 09:33 | I've got the option of choosing Bit Depth and
Sample Rate and Conversion Quality.
| | 09:38 | This session was created
at 44.1. How do I know that?
| | 09:42 | Well, let's back up here and
take a look at the session setup.
| | 09:48 | Under the Setup menu, you see a
pulldown menu, and I can look at the Session
| | 09:53 | setup, 24 Bit, 44.1. I'll close
that, go back to Bounce to > Disk.
| | 10:02 | Now the Sample Rate is defaulted to 48K,
we're up-sampling to 48K because the
| | 10:08 | audio for the movies that we film
for the courses needs to be at 48K.
| | 10:13 | The Bit Depth stays the same, and
because we're changing the Sample Rate, I
| | 10:17 | have the option of choosing the
Conversion Quality setting here in the
| | 10:20 | Conversion Quality menu.
I always choose Tweak Head.
| | 10:23 | There is no reason to me to degrade the
sample version quality of your bounce by
| | 10:30 | choosing Best, Better, Good or Low.
| | 10:33 | So we leave it on Tweak Head, it's a Mono vocal,
I don't need it to be Stereo or Multiple mono.
| | 10:38 | I'll leave it on Mono (summed)
and my Output Source is 1-2.
| | 10:46 | You always have to check the Bounce
Source because as you open up someone else's
| | 10:50 | Pro Tools session, their I/O setup will
most likely be different than yours, and
| | 10:54 | so their Bounce Source might be a 7/8,
depending upon their interface.
| | 10:59 | So again, there is a lot of checks and
balances that you need to implement when
| | 11:04 | you're going into an original
multitrack session and digging out the elements
| | 11:08 | that you feel you need for your remix.
| | 11:10 | I hit Bounce, and I'll create a new
folder in our exercise folder called Jody
| | 11:16 | Nardone - Waiting in the Road Remix.
| | 11:22 | I'll select that folder, and I'll
call this file Jody - Lead Vox 1.
| | 11:30 | We hit Save, and we'll sit
through a real-time bounce of the vocal.
| | 11:35 | (music playing)
| | 11:48 | Excellent. Now that we have our lead vocal bounced
out, the next file we'll bounce out is
| | 11:54 | the click track, because I'm going to
use this click track as my metronome or
| | 11:59 | time reference to edit the vocal.
| | 12:04 | So before I bounce it out, I want to
make sure that as I drag this region over,
| | 12:08 | I didn't miss a beat, and
it doesn't look like I did.
| | 12:11 | So just like the vocal, I will return
my cursor to 0:00.000, put my tool at
| | 12:20 | the end here, and just play the click track for
a moment to make sure nothing else is playing.
| | 12:27 | (audio playing)
| | 12:35 | And I'll scan further into the song.
| | 12:37 | (audio playing)
| | 12:41 | Good. So it sounds like the click track is
truly soloed and nothing else is playing.
| | 12:47 | Bounce to > Disk, 24, 48, everything looks
good, and I'll call this Jody - Click Track.
| | 12:58 | I don't want to subject everyone to a
real-time bounce, so we'll jump ahead to
| | 13:02 | where it's completed.
| | 13:07 | Now that we have our lead vocal and our
click track with bounced out of this
| | 13:11 | Pro Tools session, let's close out of it
because our next Pro Tools session will
| | 13:14 | start from a fresh new session.
| | 13:19 | As we take a look at our exercise
files folder and look in Jody Nardone -
| | 13:22 | Waiting in the Road Remix, we can see
our two audio files that we bounced out of
| | 13:27 | the original multitrack session.
| | 13:29 | These will be the two files
that we use in our next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tightening up a vocal that drifts from the click track, part one| 00:00 | I'm going to begin by creating a new
Pro Tools session, and if you're following
| | 00:04 | along in Pro Tools, this will be
the exercise file that you can open.
| | 00:09 | I'll select New Session, select
Stereo Mix, our Sample Rate is at 48K.
| | 00:15 | I will save this session in the
Jody Nardone - Waiting in the Road Remix folder
| | 00:19 | so that all of our files will
live within the same folder.
| | 00:24 | If you're using another DAW, you'll
want to create your own new session and
| | 00:28 | then import the lead vocal and cowbell
tracks that I exported for you in the last movie.
| | 00:34 | I'll go ahead and import those files right
now, and I like to copy the files, not add.
| | 00:42 | I can add these directly to the session,
but I'd rather copy them so that Pro Tools
| | 00:46 | creates a fresh copy of them that
will live in the Audio Files folder
| | 00:50 | that's attached to our session.
| | 00:54 | I select New Track, and boom,
there are my two tracks.
| | 00:59 | I'll also create a new Master Fader as
well as a click track, which we'll come
| | 01:09 | back to in a moment, but I'll
go ahead and set it up right now.
| | 01:15 | Select Click from Instrument dropdown
menu, and there is our click track.
| | 01:20 | We can solo it just to make sure it's there.
(audio playing)
| | 01:26 | Excellent! Most of today's music is recorded
against a click track or against quantized
| | 01:30 | loops so that everything is what
we call tight against the grid.
| | 01:33 | In this particular scenario the band had
a click as a reference to cowbell track
| | 01:37 | that I exported from the last movie.
| | 01:39 | But as you can hear, they drifted from it.
And also, this song is not in 4/4 time,
| | 01:44 | which is the popular time signature of
most of today's music. This song is in 6/8.
| | 01:49 | So the very first thing I will do is
change the time signature, and the way I
| | 01:54 | do that is I select Transport, and I'll
disengage the Conductor Track giving me
| | 02:00 | the ability to change the Meter of the session.
| | 02:04 | So I'll change this to 6/8,
starting at measure 1, click OK, and now,
| | 02:11 | as you can see, we're 6/8 up here
instead of 4/4. The next thing that I will do
| | 02:16 | is group the lead vocal and the
click crack from the previous session--
| | 02:20 | the Cowbell Click Track--together so that
as I edit them, they will move together.
| | 02:25 | I'll just actually leave it Group 1.
| | 02:28 | So now that the tracks are grouped
together, if I make one large the other follows.
| | 02:32 | The first thing I will do is zoom in
here on the clip and actually just get rid
| | 02:38 | of this dead space here.
| | 02:40 | I'll go right up to zero samples,
right where this Cowbell starts.
| | 02:45 | I'll use my Command+E function to
create a slice within the clips.
| | 02:49 | Shrink the screen back, put Pro Tools
in Shuffle mode, and when I delete this
| | 02:55 | dead space, boom, my clips automatically
move over to the very beginning of the session.
| | 03:02 | I take Pro Tools out of Shuffle mode,
and I'm back in Slip mode, and now our
| | 03:06 | Cowbell starts exactly at
the downbeat of the session.
| | 03:09 | So let's take a listen to the Cowbell
against the Pro Tools click, and we'll
| | 03:15 | mute the vocal for now.
| | 03:18 | Actually we don't even need to do that because
the vocal doesn't start for about 25 seconds.
| | 03:22 | So take a listen.
(music playing)
| | 03:28 | As you can clearly hear, the Pro Tools
Click Track at 120 beats per minute
| | 03:33 | in 6/8 time does not line up with the click track
that was from the original multitrack session.
| | 03:39 | The first thing I will do is
mute the Pro Tools Click Track.
| | 03:42 | Now that the Pro Tools Click is muted,
I'm going to use Pro Tools' Manual Tap
| | 03:47 | Tempo feature to determine what the BPM
of the original multitrack session was.
| | 03:53 | And underneath the Window
menu, I'll select Transport.
| | 03:57 | Over here by Tempo, I will highlight
the 120, and as I play the session for
| | 04:04 | measure 1, I will tap T on my keyboard.
| | 04:07 | Let's take a listen to the Cowbell track,
from the original session I will tap
| | 04:11 | T on the keyboard to keep time with it, and
you'll see the Tempo change in the Transport window.
| | 04:16 | (audio playing)
| | 04:26 | It looks like 128 is the Tempo. Just to
double-check that, what I'll do is I will
| | 04:31 | actually hit Enter, change the
session's Tempo to 128, close the Transport
| | 04:37 | window, turn the Pro Tools Click back on,
and now play the Pro Tools Click with
| | 04:43 | the Cowbell at the new Tempo of 128
to hear if everything is locking out.
| | 04:50 | (audio playing)
| | 04:56 | Excellent! It sounds like everything is very tight.
| | 04:58 | The audio file track of the Cowbell and the Pro Tools
Click Track are tightly synchronized with one another.
| | 05:04 | So now I'll mute the Cowbell--and
actually, I need to disengage our mix group
| | 05:10 | so that I can turn the vocal back on.
I'll shrink the Cowbell.
| | 05:15 | In fact, I will deactivate the Cowbell
track, and I need to highlight just the
| | 05:19 | Cowbell track, and underneath the
Track menu, I'll make it inactive, and then
| | 05:25 | I'll right-click and hide it.
| | 05:27 | So now, all we have on the Arrange window is
the lead vocal and the Pro Tools Click Track.
| | 05:33 | The next step will be to program
with Pro Tools' instruments, specifically
| | 05:38 | Xpand, a drum pattern that mirrors on some level
the drumbeat from the original multitrack session.
| | 05:46 | So underneath Track, I'll hit New,
and I will create two instrument tracks,
| | 05:52 | Stereo, hit Create, and there we go.
| | 05:57 | The first one is going to be a hi-hat.
The second one will be a kick and a snare.
| | 06:09 | I select Xpand2 from the Instrument
dropdown menu, and I'll copy by holding
| | 06:15 | Option, clicking the mouse, and set
it up on the kick-snare track as well.
| | 06:22 | Underneath the Drums category, I choose
Hi-Hats menu, and as you can hear, once
| | 06:30 | I record enable the track.
(music playing)
| | 06:36 | Now I'll play a subdivided hi-hat
pattern against the Pro Tools Click Track
| | 06:40 | that's similar to what the
drummer did in the original version.
| | 06:44 | (audio playing)
| | 06:53 | I'll expand the screen, put Pro Tools
back in Grid mode, and change my Grid
| | 06:59 | Division to 1 bar, Quantize,
underneath the Events Operation pulldown menu.
| | 07:07 | And I'll quantize to a 16th note.
| | 07:13 | I'll take a quick listen to the hi-hat
pattern I just programmed, because as I
| | 07:16 | look at the data here on the screen, it
looks like I only picked up the last two
| | 07:20 | notes of 1 measure and maybe the first
two notes of the last measure here in my
| | 07:24 | Regions window, so let's take a listen.
(audio playing)
| | 07:33 | Measures 5 to 7 sound the best
to me, and I'll expand the screen.
| | 07:39 | As I take a look at my mini notes here
in the MIDI region, I notice that they
| | 07:43 | are not quite lined up against
the Pro Tools bars and beats.
| | 07:46 | So underneath the Grid dropdown menu here,
I'll select Bars|Beats.
| | 07:52 | The Grid menu is actually not in
Bars|Beats, it was in Min:Secs.
| | 07:56 | Now that it's back in Bars|Beats, as you can see,
it looks like these notes are actually falling on bar lines now.
| | 08:04 | So let's take a listen.
(music playing)
| | 08:12 | I like the last two measures the best,
so I will highlight those and copy and
| | 08:17 | paste them over here at the
beginning and just take a listen to make sure
| | 08:21 | everything is sounding tight.
(audio playing)
| | 08:30 | Looks like I trimmed off part of the first note.
| | 08:33 | So what I'll do is let's see if I can just
take the first 2 bars here, and just do duplicate.
| | 08:40 | (audio playing)
No, I'm still losing my first beat.
| | 08:43 | Let's undo what I just did and take a
listen to the 4-bar phrase, and let's put
| | 08:49 | Pro Tools in Loop Playback,
underneath the Options dropdown menu.
| | 08:54 | (audio playing)
| | 09:09 | As I listen to this 4-bar loop, I notice that
the first few hi-hat beats sound a little bit off.
| | 09:14 | So underneath the Event dropdown menu,
I'll choose Event Operations > Quantize
| | 09:19 | and apply the 16th-note
quantization to all these MIDI notes.
| | 09:23 | Now the pattern should be tight.
(audio playing)
| | 09:32 | Wonderful! So let's take this 4-bar hi-hat
pattern and actually start it at the very
| | 09:37 | beginning of the song. And what I'll do
is I just hit Command+C and Command+V,
| | 09:44 | and then I will use Command+D
to just duplicate this pattern
| | 09:48 | all the way up until the end of the song.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tightening up a vocal that drifts from the click track, part two| 00:00 | Now it's time to put our kick and
snare in to give us a little bit more of an
| | 00:03 | anchor with the beat.
(music playing)
| | 00:09 | I open up Xpand, and underneath Drums I
will choose the Kicks+Snares+Sides menu,
| | 00:18 | which is a nice sampling of kick
drums, snare drums, and side sticks.
| | 00:23 | There's my kick drum.
(music playing)
| | 00:27 | There is my snare drum.
| | 00:29 | So I'll play these in against the hi-hat
pattern that I've already recorded, and
| | 00:33 | I can close the Xpand window, and here we go.
(music playing)
| | 00:46 | I expand the screen, highlight my MIDI
region, under the Event dropdown menu, I
| | 00:51 | go to Quantize, and I will choose 8th
note as my Quantize grid, close that,
| | 01:02 | highlight these four measures that
I just played, and take a listen.
| | 01:06 | (music playing)
| | 01:16 | I'll cut these MIDI regions out,
return my playhead to the beginning of the
| | 01:22 | track, and paste, Command+V. And just
like I did with the hi-hat pattern, I'll
| | 01:27 | use the Command+D key to just duplicate
this kick-snare pattern all the way
| | 01:33 | through the entire song.
| | 01:36 | Now I'm still hearing a little bit of a
drop-out in one of the hi-hat parts, so
| | 01:40 | let's scope this out very quickly.
This is easy to solve.
| | 01:46 | We have a 4-bar hi-hat pattern, and
beat 1 actually got chopped off.
| | 01:51 | So all we need to do is highlight
the last two bars of the 4-bar phrase,
| | 01:55 | Command+C, hit Return to move the
playhead to the beginning of the session, and
| | 02:00 | hit Command+V, and now we've restored it.
| | 02:03 | Now I will take these two 2-bar phrases and
copy and paste those with the Command+D key.
| | 02:18 | I'll put the hi-hat back to Small View,
hit Return to movie the playhead back to
| | 02:23 | the beginning of the song, and
let's take a listen to our beat.
| | 02:26 | (music playing)
| | 02:33 | Excellent! Now I can turn off the Pro Tools
Click. Now we'll put Pro Tools in Slip
| | 02:38 | mode, expand the size of the vocal
track to Jumbo and start to listen
| | 02:43 | through different parts of the song to see
how tight Judy's vocals are against this beat.
| | 02:49 | I'll start with the first verse and just listen in
for a few measures to see how everything sounds.
| | 02:55 | And I'll make sure to put my playhead on
a downbeat, not in the middle of a measure.
| | 02:59 | (music playing)
| | 03:32 | Excellent! All of that sounds really tight
against our programmed drum pattern.
| | 03:35 | Now I'll move further into this
song here if anything has drifted.
| | 03:40 | (music playing)
| | 03:59 | That somewhere at the end of that
phrase felt a little bit late to me.
| | 04:03 | I'll zoom in on it, make sure that
this is exactly where that word occurs.
| | 04:09 | (music playing)
| | 04:14 | Zoom in even closer, and I'll create
a slice within my clip, and I'll make
| | 04:18 | another slice here at the end of this
section that I'm interested in moving.
| | 04:24 | If you look up here under nudge, and I pull down
this menu, Pro Tools is set to a 10-millisecond nudge.
| | 04:30 | I like to use the Plus and Minus signs to
move my audio around in situations like this.
| | 04:36 | As you can see, I use the Minus sign to move it to
the left and the Plus sign to move it to the right.
| | 04:43 | So I know that it's a little bit late,
so let's start by moving 30 milliseconds
| | 04:47 | to the left, which will be
three clicks of the Minus key.
| | 04:51 | Let's take a listen.
(music playing)
| | 05:01 | I think you could go a little
bit further to the left.
| | 05:03 | Let's try 20 more milliseconds, take a listen.
(music playing)
| | 05:08 | Let's roll that back a little bit.
(music playing)
| | 05:22 | That feels much better to me, listening on.
| | 05:28 | (music playing)
| | 06:12 | All that sounds great against the groove.
Listening further into the song.
| | 06:19 | Again, putting our playhead on a down beat.
| | 06:22 | (music playing)
| | 07:08 | Excellent! All that sounds great against the MIDI Groove.
| | 07:10 | So this is exactly the type of scenario
that causes most remixers to walk away
| | 07:15 | and not take part of the project. So I
hope that this gives you some hope when it
| | 07:19 | comes to dealing with the
remixing situation like this.
| | 07:23 | Keep in mind, most remixers don't know
what to do with a vocal that's not in 4/4
| | 07:28 | time, which is exactly why I give
projects like this a chance.
| | 07:32 | The less competition, the better my chances
are for my mix to be accepted.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Subdividing 6/8 time and changing the time signature to 4/4| 00:00 | In addition to working with a vocal
that has to be edited to sit tightly
| | 00:04 | against the grid, there is also the challenge
of adapting it to a different time signature.
| | 00:08 | The original time signature of the song is in 6/8,
or at least that's how I'm perceiving it.
| | 00:14 | The case could be made that it's in 12/8,
but there are some gray areas when it
| | 00:18 | comes to time signatures,
and some of it is subjective.
| | 00:22 | But at the end of the day, we know
that we want our remix to be in 4/4 time.
| | 00:26 | So how do we get there from
either a 6/8 or a 12/8 time signature?
| | 00:30 | One way is to listen to the
track and find the slow to count.
| | 00:35 | I'll play the track from
the beginning and count in 6.
| | 00:39 | (music playing)
1-2-3-4-5-6
| | 00:44 | 1-2-3-4-5-6
1-2-3-4-5-6
| | 00:50 | Or if I was to make the for case
that this was 12/8, I'll count in 12.
| | 00:55 | (music playing)
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12
| | 00:58 | 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12
| | 01:02 | So again, it's subdivisions
and more subdivisions.
| | 01:06 | As we listen to the hi-hat pattern,
listen to where the accents are falling,
| | 01:10 | that's giving us our slow to count.
| | 01:12 | (music playing)
1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2.
| | 01:23 | Let's go ahead and put a ride cymbal in.
| | 01:28 | I'll create an instrument track, and I'm
going to play the slow to on the ride cymbal.
| | 01:37 | We'll Option+Drag over Xpand, go into
our Drum menu and select Rides.
| | 01:48 | (music playing)
Excellent!
| | 01:51 | So now I'll record a ride cymbal
and play in slow to count.
| | 01:56 | (music playing)
| | 02:12 | That will work for now. I'll
highlight the MIDI region and quantize it.
| | 02:15 | Quantize it to corner note, put Pro Tools in
Grid mode, and take a listen to our 8-bar pattern.
| | 02:27 | (music playing)
| | 02:37 | So the ride cymbal is in there.
Let's change our time signature to 4/4.
| | 02:42 | Underneath Window I'll choose
Transport, and we'll go from 6/8 to 4/4, close
| | 02:51 | our Transport, zoom in our Ride Cymbal
track, cut it, Command+X, paste it at
| | 03:00 | the beginning of the song, and you'll
notice that the ride cymbal is falling
| | 03:04 | every third quarter note.
| | 03:06 | (music playing)
| | 03:16 | And as you can see, our Loop Range was only
5 bars and 2 beats. That's why it sounded
| | 03:21 | funny when it cycled back around.
| | 03:24 | Now I'll zoom in on the hi-hat track
and take the first two hi-hat notes and
| | 03:28 | copy and paste them so that the accent
is been played every quarter note of our
| | 03:33 | new 4/4 time signature.
We'll solo out the hi-hat track.
| | 03:37 | (music playing)
| | 03:50 | You can hear the accent is
falling on every quarter note now.
| | 03:53 | So let's put in a kick drum that lands
on every quarter note. I'll just play
| | 03:58 | this in, and before I do that I'll
copy and paste my new hi-hat pattern
| | 04:07 | throughout the entire song.
| | 04:13 | I'll mute out the ride cymbal for the
moment, and I'll delete this kick drum
| | 04:18 | from the 6/8 time signature.
| | 04:20 | (music playing)
Recording in our new kick drum.
| | 04:26 | (music playing)
| | 04:35 | Highlight the MIDI region, quantize it
to quarter note, zoom in on the kick drum
| | 04:44 | and cut it, move it so it starts at measure 1.
| | 04:49 | Let's also copy and paste this
all the way through the song.
| | 04:55 | So now our drum pattern is a kick and a
hi-hat pattern in the new 4/4 time signature.
| | 05:00 | (music playing)
| | 05:04 | I want to go one step further and add a snare drum
so I can accentuate beats 2 and 4 in each measure.
| | 05:09 | Create a new instrument track, copy
over Xpand, and I'll re-title this kick
| | 05:17 | because it's just the kick drum now.
| | 05:19 | New track will be snare, and we're
already set up in the Snare menu.
| | 05:28 | (music playing)
I'll now record the snare drum.
| | 05:33 | (music playing)
| | 05:45 | Highlight the MIDI region, quantize
it to quarter note, let's expand it,
| | 05:53 | roll back to measure 2.
(music playing)
| | 06:01 | I'll just take the first bar. There
are some velocity issues in the second
| | 06:05 | measure, paste this, paste it for
the entire song now, shrink it down.
| | 06:14 | Now we have a better groove, kick,
snare, and hat from the beginning.
| | 06:19 | (music playing)
| | 06:25 | So before I even unmute the vocal,
let's quickly recap what we did here.
| | 06:30 | We had a song that was in 6/8 time,
or some could argue 12/8 time.
| | 06:34 | We took a moment to feel where the
accents were in the 12/8 or 6/8 time.
| | 06:39 | Then we adapted that slow to count and
thought about it in terms of 4/4, and
| | 06:44 | that's how we arrived in this time signature.
| | 06:47 | Remember, we haven't changed the Tempo.
The BPM is still 128, we started at 128
| | 06:53 | in 6/8 time, and we're still
at 128 but we're in 4/4 time.
| | 06:57 | In the next movie we'll listen to the
vocal, and you'll notice that there are
| | 07:00 | phrasing issues that we'll need to
deal with, because now we are in 4/4 time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing vocal phrasing to work with 4/4 time| 00:00 | Now it's time to dive in and edit
our vocal in our new time signature of 4/4.
| | 00:05 | Before we play the vocal, I will
mute the snare drum, but I will unmute it
| | 00:08 | later on once you've done more vocal editing.
| | 00:10 | I'll unmute the vocal track and take
a listen to where the first note of
| | 00:15 | the first verse starts.
(music playing)
| | 00:27 | Right off the bat I can hear that the 6/8 phrasing
doesn't just work against the 4/4 time signature.
| | 00:33 | So what we're going to need to do is
go in and cut up each phrase and shove
| | 00:38 | it over a little bit later, because we've essentially
added a quarter note to our time signature.
| | 00:44 | So before I even make my first edit
point, I'm going to mute the vocal and sing
| | 00:48 | where I feel the vocal should start.
| | 00:53 | (music playing)
| | 01:05 | Sorry to subject you all to my singing.
| | 01:08 | But it's more for a reference
point of where the beat should fall.
| | 01:12 | Let's play the vocal muted, and I'll
keep my start point in my head of where I
| | 01:16 | believe the vocal should land.
(music playing)
| | 01:21 | Right on 16/3. I zoom in on my clip and
use my Command+E to make a slice, expand
| | 01:29 | out, I want to make sure that I don't shift
regions without grabbing all the regions.
| | 01:35 | In other words, if I bring this over
to the right, I need to make sure
| | 01:39 | that I'm preserving my clip
edits from pervious movies.
| | 01:43 | I'll Command+Z to restore
everything back to normal.
| | 01:45 | I'm highlighting everything from the
start of the vocal to the end of the song.
| | 01:50 | And I prefer to use this
technique to move vocals around.
| | 01:53 | Option+H brings up the Shift menu, and
we know that we're going to move things
| | 01:58 | for the most part 1 measure later.
| | 02:01 | We'll start with a 1-bar denomination,
and I just moved everything by 1 bar.
| | 02:07 | So let's go back to 15, unmute the vocal,
and take a listen.
| | 02:13 | (music playing)
It still feels a little bit late.
| | 02:20 | I'll highlight all of my clips, go up
to Earlier and move it by 1 quarter note,
| | 02:27 | go back to 15 and play it and take a listen.
(music playing)
| | 02:41 | So every phrase will most likely need to
be shifted over at least 1 full measure.
| | 02:45 | But we're not going to
just do that and not listen.
| | 02:47 | Because some phrases may
need two beats, three beats.
| | 02:51 | We have to just figure out some sort
of framework and then begin to shift the
| | 02:56 | vocals over and then go in and
fine-tune them if they're not accurate.
| | 03:00 | I'll start by moving this over
1 measure, go back to 15.
| | 03:05 | (music playing)
| | 03:22 | I'll zoom in on my clip,
we're at 22/4, zoom out.
| | 03:27 | So as you can see, there is a lot of
zooming in and zooming out, grabbing all of
| | 03:31 | your clips, moving things over by 1
measure, and starting there as a reference
| | 03:36 | point, going back to 15.
| | 03:41 | (music playing)
| | 03:58 | Now this is an arbitrary decision. Just
like the first line of the first verse, I
| | 04:03 | could shift this over to the left,
so it comes earlier by 1 quarter note.
| | 04:07 | Go back to measure 15
and see how this feels.
| | 04:10 | (music playing)
| | 04:29 | That feels a little too early to me.
| | 04:31 | Let's go back to the way we had it,
Command+Z, go back to 15.
| | 04:36 | (music playing)
| | 04:57 | We'll go with that.
| | 04:59 | Moving on to the next phrase,
highlighting all of my clips, shifting over 1 full
| | 05:06 | measure later, and we don't have to go back to
15, we'll start at measure 19.
| | 05:12 | (music playing)
| | 05:37 | Moving on to the next phrase. The
reason that I'm bringing the playhead back
| | 05:41 | several measures is that when you're
doing something like this, you have to
| | 05:45 | pre-roll the section far enough in advance
so that you have an anchor of where you are.
| | 05:51 | If I just start the playhead 1 bar
before my edit point, I'm not really going to
| | 05:55 | feel where I am in the phrase.
We think of these as 4-bar phrases.
| | 06:00 | And if I don't give myself at least 4
to 8 bars of pre-roll to listen to the
| | 06:05 | edit point that I just made, I might
feel a little bit confused and actually not
| | 06:09 | properly place the vocals.
Now we made that edit.
| | 06:14 | Now I'll start at measure 29.
| | 06:17 | (music playing)
| | 06:32 | That particular phrase could go either
way. It could probably be shifted by a
| | 06:35 | quarter note one way or the other.
| | 06:37 | But again, these are decisions that you
might make further on down the road when
| | 06:40 | you've actually got more of a track together.
| | 06:42 | The goal with this movie is to simply
show you how to go about editing a vocal
| | 06:48 | that wasn't 6/8 time in 4/4 time and where
you need to insert space into the phrase.
| | 06:54 | Some of the final decisions of vocal placement won't
occur until the track is substantially further along.
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| Time stretching the vocals to a faster BPM| 00:00 | As you can see, I made quite a few
edit points to my audio clip, and while I
| | 00:04 | might be sitting in beat against my MIDI drums,
I'm not 100% sure that my phrasing is accurate.
| | 00:10 | So I need to give myself a little bit more of a
musical context, and I'm going to create a bass line.
| | 00:15 | So I'll create a Stereo instrument
track using Xpand, and I'll just select
| | 00:24 | any kind of bass. We'll do a Fretless Bass,
that's fine. We'll record enable the track.
| | 00:30 | (music playing)
| | 00:33 | Excellent! I'll give myself 1-bar pre-roll,
and I already that this song is in G-Major, so
| | 00:41 | I pretty much know in my head a
bass line that will probably work against the
| | 00:45 | vocals, if not all the way
through the song for most of it.
| | 00:48 | But I'm interested in coming up
with an 8-bar pattern that I will paste
| | 00:52 | throughout this entire sketch
arrangement, and then I'll go through and listen
| | 00:55 | to the vocals against the 8-bar
arrangement to make sure that the phrasing will
| | 00:58 | work in a remix context.
| | 01:02 | (music playing)
| | 01:22 | Quantize my bass line to 16th notes,
put Pro Tools in Grid mode, and trim off
| | 01:32 | the unnecessary space here in the region on
either side, giving me a perfectly edited 8-bar loop.
| | 01:40 | I'll use Command+D to
duplicate all the way through the song.
| | 01:46 | So let's take a listen to the first
verse, in the first bit of the chorus, and
| | 01:51 | then I'll move to further in the song
towards the end, because it's the ending
| | 01:54 | that I'm very uncertain about the phrasing.
| | 01:58 | (music playing)
| | 02:15 | I heard a MIDI note that didn't sound
quite accurate there, let's take a listen
| | 02:19 | to that very quickly.
(music playing)
| | 02:27 | Quickly edit that, double-click on the
region, pulls up our notes, and we can
| | 02:37 | see that this last note, let's take a listen.
(music playing)
| | 02:48 | That fixes it, we'll quickly repaste,
Command+D, and that should fix it.
| | 03:00 | (music playing)
| | 03:16 | Excellent! Everything is in time, so let's move ahead.
We'll actually bring that back up to big again.
| | 03:24 | Let's move to the back part of the
song, especially this end part where the
| | 03:29 | phrasing, it may work, it may not
work, I am actually not very sure.
| | 03:34 | I'll play right before the loudest
part of the vocal at the end of the song.
| | 03:38 | (music playing)
| | 04:44 | Excellent! That seems to work really nicely.
| | 04:47 | Now we're already at 128 beats per
minute, but let's say that you'd like to do
| | 04:51 | a remix at maybe 134.
| | 04:53 | Well, let's go ahead and use a great
command in Pro Tools, Opt+Shift+3, which
| | 05:00 | creates a brand-new clip, and it
consolidates all of our edit points into one
| | 05:04 | continuous audio file. It actually
writes a new file on the disk.
| | 05:09 | Now we click on the last to go audio,
and this is a monophonic vocal, so I'm
| | 05:15 | going to select Monophonic and just see
what kind of a time stretch that gives
| | 05:19 | us, and put this on Ticks.
| | 05:23 | I can manually select my Tempo by going
to Window > Transport, I'll choose 134
| | 05:32 | as a destination BPM.
| | 05:36 | I'll play to track from
right before the first verse.
| | 05:39 | (music playing)
| | 06:03 | I can already hear some audio degradation
right there on the word I'm supposed to know.
| | 06:07 | Let's solo that out and take a closer listen.
(music playing)
| | 06:15 | Okay, so before we change our Elastic
Audio setting, let's change our BPM back
| | 06:21 | to 128, which is where we started,
close the Transport, and we'll select
| | 06:30 | Polyphonic for our Elastic Audio
Property, reselect the Transport, type in 134
| | 06:38 | again as our destination BPM, and
let's just listen. We don't even need to
| | 06:43 | listen against the drums, we know it's in beat.
| | 06:45 | (music playing)
Cleaned it right up.
| | 06:51 | So even with a dry Mono vocal,
selecting Polyphonic in the Elastic Audio
| | 06:56 | Properties menu will yield
the best time-stretch results.
| | 07:01 | Let's scan further into the song and take a listen
and make sure that there is no audio degradation.
| | 07:06 | (music playing)
| | 07:32 | Let's put this in with the drums.
| | 07:34 | (music playing)
| | 08:06 | against a click, but the
band drifted from the click.
| | 08:09 | We weren't sure of the BPM of the
original version, we bounced out the vocal, we
| | 08:12 | Excellent! So it was a long road to get to
this point. We took a song that was cut
| | 08:14 | bounced out the click track from the
original multitrack session, and with
| | 08:19 | Pro Tools' Tap Tempo, figured out what
the BPM was at the original session,
| | 08:23 | then went ahead and programmed a MIDI
drum pattern that emulated the pattern
| | 08:27 | that the drummer was playing, then we
were able to lock the vocal up against
| | 08:33 | that drum pattern which gave us a
vocal that was against the Grid but in the
| | 08:36 | time signature of the original version.
| | 08:39 | Then we had to negotiate a 6/8 time
signature to a 4/4 time signature, and then
| | 08:46 | we edited the vocal to fit
into a 4/4 time signature.
| | 08:50 | So all of our efforts from the
last several movies have yielded this
| | 08:53 | well-edited vocal against a kick drum
and a hi-hat pattern, and now we're ready
| | 08:58 | to begin building a remix.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Congratulations on finishing Remixing Techniques:
Time Stretching, and thanks a lot for watching.
| | 00:06 | When it comes to creating vocal-driven
remixes, the finished product is only
| | 00:10 | going to be as good as the
quality of your vocal time stretch.
| | 00:13 | Let me put it this way, I've never had an
artist ask me to make their vocals sound worse.
| | 00:18 | If you happen to be a Logic user, or
even if you just want more insight into
| | 00:23 | my remixing process, check out my
course Remixing a Song in Logic Pro, where I
| | 00:27 | show you how to take a song all the way from
a dry vocal stem to a fully-fleshed out remix.
| | 00:33 | Thanks again for watching this course, and
best of luck to you on your future remixes.
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