Scott offers a few secrets about recording vocals.

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Copyright 2001 by Scott R. Garrigus. Reprinted with permission.

Unless you're recording instrumental music, the vocal tracks are more than likely the most important part of your song. The meaning of the lyrics and the way they're presented, provide the primary emotional connection between your music and the listener. The better your vocals sound, the more a listener will respond to your song.

The easiest way to obtain a great vocal recording is by creating a composite track. Essentially, you record multiple takes, each on its own track. Then you combine the best parts of each take into one composite track. Using multitrack analog tape for this procedure is a hassle. Bouncing takes by muting the bad sections and soloing the good sections can be time-consuming and very inaccurate. Mix automation can help, but there's still the problem of generation loss.

Digital recording, however, has made the process pretty painless. With the ADAT's seamless, automated punch-in and -out, there's no generation loss, and edits are precise. And hard disk recording makes comping even easier because you can visually edit audio waveforms right down to the sample. Even so, comping a vocal with digital audio editing software is not just a matter of cutting and pasting. There are a number of things to consider during recording and editing that can make the difference between a professional and a patchwork track.

RECORDING TIPS
Some of these suggestions may seem like common sense, but they're still worth mentioning. The key here is to make all the takes sound as similar (and as good) as possible, so that any edits you make will sound seamless. First, don't use any time-based effects (such as reverb, chorus, or echo) during recording. Since you'll be cutting and pasting from different sections of various takes, dry tracks will give you the most uniform sound. If you use effects, things like reverb tails and LFO modulation for chorusing won't transition correctly. But, if you add effects after the fact, they can help mask your edits between audio segments.

Depending on how well-versed your singer is with mic technique, you may want to use a bit of compression while recording each take. This will also make things easier during editing by giving each take a similar amplitude range. Something subtle like a fairly high threshold, fast attack, and 2:1 or 3:1 ratio will keep levels in control but won't squash the life out of them. It's a good idea to patch a limiter into the chain as well, to prevent any signal overloading when your singer gets a little too rambunctious with those high notes. If you set it with a fast attack and release, and a threshold of only a couple dB below the loudest peak your soundcard can handle, the limiter will simply block out distortions and not alter the signal at any other time.

If you were recording with tape, your singer would get a respite between takes as the tape was rewound. With hard disk recording, there's no rewinding delays, but your singer might still need a bit of a break to catch his breath and prepare. The more relaxed he is, the better his performance will be. Simply add a bit of pre-roll and post-roll time to your tracks to allow a sufficient delay.

Noise can sometimes be a problem during recording. Even though there are means for eliminating some noises after the fact (which we'll discuss later), prevention is always the best way to handle it. Always use a pop filter to eliminate those sudden bursts of air your singer may emit while speaking plosives. If your mic has a low-cut switch, you may want to activate that too. Since the human voice has very little low-frequency content, you don't need your mic picking up such things as ventilation or room rumble. And you might want to consider using a noise gate. Yes, they can sometimes produce abrupt level changes, but if you set a very low threshold and a decay-time of about 250-400ms, the changes won't be so obvious. When you add reverb to the vocal later, it should smooth out the transitions.

EDITING BASICS
There are three methods available for comping - cutting, copying and pasting, and using amplitude envelopes. Cutting involves destructively removing all of the bad sections from each take. What you're left with is a number of tracks with bits and pieces of audio scattered throughout, which make up the final composite take. Cutting is easy but not very flexible because you can't go back and make changes.

Instead of seeking out the bad sections, copying and pasting involves finding and marking all the good sections in each take. Then you copy the best sections and paste them into a new final composite track. This method is both easy and flexible since you're not destructively altering your source tracks. But using amplitude envelopes is by far the best method because all your edits are fully adjustable at all times. There's no need for cutting or copying and pasting. You simply assign amplitude envelopes to each track, then draw in the volume changes needed to mute the bad sections of each take. Then you mixdown to a new composite track. If you need to make changes, just adjust the envelope points, and mixdown again. Also cool is the fact that everything is automated, so you don't have to do anything during mixdown either. Unfortunately, amplitude envelopes aren't available in all hard disk recording and editing applications, but many programs (like Cakewalk Pro Audio) do have them available.

Whichever method you choose, be sure to always use the "snap to zero crossing" function of your editing software. This will ensure that all your edit points land on the nearest zero-point crossing in the audio waveform, which will minimize any glitches that can occur between segments. To map out the good (or bad) sections of each take, use start and end markers. Then you can easily select the audio between each set of markers for cutting or copying and pasting. With amplitude envelopes you don't really need markers since each section is already visually represented.

WHERE TO CUT
Where you make your edits is just as important as how you make them. Finding the right points on a waveform display can be difficult unless they all occur in the silence between lyrical phrases. Within a phrase, however, many of the words flow into one another. For example, in the phrase "How can I find a place to call my own," the words "find a" and "my own" blend together, so there's really no way to do a clean edit between them. Immediately before a hard consonant is the best place to edit. The quick burst of air used to pronounce hard consonants, separates their associated word from the word before. This means that the edit will work even if there isn't a pause between the words. So in our example, the best edit points would be right before the words "can," "to," or "call." Hard consonants are relatively easy to find on a waveform display because of their sharp peaks.

Another useful but more difficult technique is to place your edit points on fricatives. These are consonants pronounced by forcing breath through a constricted mouth formation, like the letters "f" and "s." Because of the noise they produce, it's easy to hide an edit point within them. This means that you'll be editing within the word itself, so you should really only use this technique when absolutely necessary. It's difficult to match up audio segments this way, especially when the words are being sung.

KILL THE NOISE
Even with the preventative recording measures I mentioned earlier, noise can still make its way into your tracks. But a few clicks and pops shouldn't deter you from using an otherwise great section of audio. These fast transient disruptions can easily be removed, and you don't need any special tools to do it. Most of the pops produced by your singer while performing plosive lyrics should be filtered out if you use a pop filter, although a few may still make it through. Clicks, however, can be introduced into the audio from a variety of sources including saliva snapping in the singer's mouth.

When looking at a waveform zoomed fully out, pops and clicks have a similar "spike" look. It's best to locate them by first listening to the audio segment, and then zooming in on the suspected area. When zoomed in, clicks retain a "spike" type of look, but a pop resembles a distorted waveform. When removing these anomalies, you don't want to simply delete them. This could upset the rhythm of the lyrics. Instead, reduce the volume of the pop or click by about 10 to 15 dB. You may also want to try replacing the anomaly with a tiny bit of the waveform that's immediately before or after it. You'll have to experiment a little to see what sounds best. You also need to be careful when making a selection. Clicks are easy to select, but pops usually come right before the start of a word, so you want to be sure not to cut any part of the first letter being sung.

FINAL CUT
If vocals are a big part of your music, making them sound as good as possible is a high priority. Creating a composite track is one of the best ways to do that. It may take a little time for you to get the knack of making clean hard consonant edits or being able to recognize and remove pops and clicks from your vocal tracks, but it is most definitely worth the effort. There's probably no such thing as the perfect vocal recording. There will always be something that you think could be done just a bit better. But if you take the time to apply the techniques outlined here, your vocal tracks should take on a whole new level of quality.

Scott R. Garrigus is the author of Cakewalk Power! and Sound Forge Power! He is also the publisher of the DigiFreq music technology newsletter. Learn about more cool tips and techniques for your music software and have the chance to win free music products by getting a FREE subscription to DigiFreq... surf to:
http://www.garrigus.com/scott/subscribe.html

 

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