Master Class: Bits and Pieces: Composite Vocal Tracks

May 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Michael Cooper

           
 

CREATING COMPOSITE VOCAL TRACKS USING BUTT SPLICES, FADES, AND CROSSFADES

For example, moving the crossfade's center handle to the right of the splice point makes the material at the end of the leading Soundbite sound more pronounced and softens material at the start of the following Soundbite. Conversely, moving the center handle to the left of the splice point emphasizes the following Soundbite's material while understating the leading Soundbite's content during the transition.

Let's examine a situation in which an asymmetrical crossfade would be useful. Suppose the leading Soundbite ends with a soft consonant most clearly enunciated past the splice point. It's followed by a Soundbite that begins with a hard glottal stop on a vowel. Each Soundbite sounds fine on its own, but when combined, the transition between them sounds unnaturally abrupt. You try moving the splice point later to capture more of the consonant, but that only makes the glottal stop sound harder. Worse, you can't find a later splice point that doesn't cause a loud click.

The solution is to drag the crossfade's center handle to the right of the splice point. This emphasizes the soft consonant by fading it less than the glottal stop at the splice point. It also softens the hard glottal stop by reducing its volume at the splice point more than a symmetrical crossfade would.

X-plosive

A serious blemish at the start or end of an otherwise fantastic Soundbite might prompt you to disqualify it from use in your vocal comp. Don't be so quick to throw it away.

A subwoofer-popping plosive (such as a hard b or p) at the start of a Soundbite can often be tamed by applying a short fade-in there. Make the fade-in long enough to span the high-amplitude transient at the start of the plosive but not so long that the consonant at the start of the lyric becomes so quiet as to be unintelligible. An undesirably hard glottal stop on a vowel sound can also be softened the same way.

The end of a vocal phrase may be contaminated by drum bleed from headphones or the singer tapping their foot to the beat of the music. If a simple edge edit sounds too abrupt — cutting out prominent room tone captured by the omni mic you used, for instance — try applying a short fade-out at the end of the Soundbite to reduce the noise in volume.

Make it a point to supersize your vocal comp by zooming in both vertically and horizontally. You'll be able to see quiet noises such as that caused by an HVAC system, the singer brushing an arm against their shirt, or a neighbor's car door slamming shut in the distance. Trim your Soundbites and fade them in and out as needed to eliminate these distractions. You might not hear them now, buried in a rough mix, but you will after compression and limiting are applied during mixdown and mastering.

I'm Fading Fast

Comping a vocal takes time when many edits are needed. That's partially because the success or failure of any one technique used on a particular edit is hit-and-miss — on a difficult splice, you might have to try a few different things to see what works best. Truth be told, it's not uncommon for me to take several hours comping a single lead-vocal track for a project whose budget allows.

It's the mastery of multiple techniques and the attention to detail, however, that allow you to do a ton of edits on a vocal track and have it sound completely natural. And killer.

Visit EM contributing editor Michael Cooper at myspace.com/michaelcooperrecording. Every lead vocal there is a comp composed of between 70 and 140 edits.