Any tips on keeping large numbers of vocal tracks singing chorus bits under control

Jake_JW said:
Hey man, You can't pretend mixing and arrangement are separate, they're very closely related after all. Pretending otherwise is a little naive.

Unless you've posted the track somewhere and I've missed it (in which case, apologies) I'm not sure how I have less context than anyone else here...I'm not aware that anyone has heard it on this forum. Maybe it's just that I wasn't so positive with my feedback and that didn't go down well - I meant no offence, I assure you.

Still, I wish you well with it all. I'll have to give it a listen if/when you finish it and put it online somewhere!
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Dude - you've been here 2 months - I have no idea who you are. I've been here 15 years and recorded 4 albums. I'm not some dumb noob in need of gratuitous arrangement advice from a stranger for a song they've not actually heard...

The people who are giving me useful tips have all been here for a while, and I know and trust their opinions via our various interactions over the time, and you'll love this, they're answering the question, not telling me "No, don't do that...."

I'm using lots of voices because I want it to sound like there are LOTS OF VOICES... groundbreaking concept, I know. So thanks, but no need for you to comment further, unless you want to answer the question. Cheers mate...
 
Thanks all. Most helpful advice - as I suspected, grouping, compression, EQing and automation. Sort of what I'm already doing, but I need to work at it a bit more.

To make it interesting, my voice is in the Leonard Cohen range, so lots of bass frequencies to deal with - lots of low shelving and HPFing going on. :laughings:

DM60 - I've always loved that 10CC song, so if you have any links... :)
 
I'd definitely go with using group bus's. Send them as smaller groups first, like say 5 per bus, EQ, Comp and Automate there on each bus and then send all of them to a single bus. If you can get a good mix of the Vocal groups solo'd, then you can tweak it on the single bus as needed for the mix.

If that makes any sense. I've had a drink but I know what I mean. :thumbs up:
 
Armistice said:
Thanks all. Most helpful advice - as I suspected, grouping, compression, EQing and automation. Sort of what I'm already doing, but I need to work at it a bit more.

To make it interesting, my voice is in the Leonard Cohen range, so lots of bass frequencies to deal with - lots of low shelving and HPFing going on. :laughings:

DM60 - I've always loved that 10CC song, so if you have any links... :)
Click to expand...

I'll see if I can find a better one, but this looks like a pretty good one:



I think it is pretty cool and talks about, wait for it, LOOPS :)
 
witzendoz said:
If you are in the Leonard Cohen style, have you read this article?

Alan.
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LOL - more range than style, but very interesting article. And I have a Neumann KMS105 which I use for stage, which I've never thought to use for recording, which I'm now going to try on the lead vocal.... :D

Thankee muchly...
 
Mr Clean said:
I'd definitely go with using group bus's. Send them as smaller groups first, like say 5 per bus, EQ, Comp and Automate there on each bus and then send all of them to a single bus. If you can get a good mix of the Vocal groups solo'd, then you can tweak it on the single bus as needed for the mix.

If that makes any sense. I've had a drink but I know what I mean. :thumbs up:
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Indeed I do... pretty much the way I've got it set up now... getting there, but more automation to do later in the song where there are more voices.... cheers!:D
 
I've been playing with 4 and 6 part vocals the past week. I'm not sure if this conforms to convention or not, but what I've noticed is that if I pan the vocals apart from each other very much at all, it stops sounding like a chorus and instead sounds like distinct voices. If I pan them very similarly or the same, then they take on what I consider a true "chorus". At very least I have to pan at least a couple of unison voices in the same spot or else they stop sounding like a chorus and start sounding like multiple versions of me singing from around the stereo field.

One thing I've liked has been recording unison parts, but from different distances from the mic. So in my rudimentary harmonization I'll have a hi-part near, hi-part far, lo-part near, lo-part far, etc. Combine that with keeping the unison voices near each other in the stereo field and I've actually been pleased with the results so far.
 
I didn't see, did you post a link to the tune?

My first thought is the performance - how tight did you sing all of those parts? If its a little on the loose side, what about getting in there with melodyne or some other time editing tool and tightening up some of the timing?

I know that's not exactly "gettin it right at the source" but it's as close as you can prob all get onece the tracks are already recorded. A lot of work for 30 tracks, though, I realize... :-)

Beyond that, I'm a noob myself and others probably have better advice as far as EQ/compression/etc.
 
If it was me, one of the first things I'd try (after at least a ballpark EQing) would be to run the whole mess of vocals into ReaComp. Set attack and release to 0. Set the RMS to something relatively long - 200 or 300 ms or more - and the lookahead (pre-comp) to about half of that. Bring the threshold down to just above where it sits with one or two of the voices playing, then turn up the knee a bit so that it just starts to compress a little. Experiment with the ratio, but it shouldn't have to be as much as 2:1 probably. As long as you've got them all mixed close to where you want them as far as relative volume, this will seat them all together in a way that would be very tedious to do via automation. It'll feel like cheating, but I bet it'll help.

I would end up with about the same thing on the master bus, but if you could experiment with sidechaining with this idea, too. In fact, it will probably work better for ducking purposes in most cases.

Edit - actually, I do almost exactly this on every vocal track always, so I'd probably end up with one on each track, one on the vocal bus, and then another on the master...

But I just remembered you're talking about "Cohen-esque" voices. Low male voices are kind of notoriously asymmetrical, and I'm willing to bet that the old radio trick of phase rotation will help a ton in this situation. You'll get a bit of the effect from any HPFing you do along the way, but that's sometimes not quite extreme enough. I'd slap an all-pass filter on every one of those tracks. Probably at least 2-pole. Frequency somewhere around the fundamental of the part, but it's not exactly crucial. Do this before any compression! You won't hear much, but I think you will feel the difference.
 
Another thing to look out for with this many takes is where words contain s's & t's

If they aren't lined up perfectly you'll get a complete wash of s-s-s-s-s / t-t-t-t-t which can ruin the vibe.

If I know in advance what I want, I'll get the vocalist to omit these when overdubbing, otherwise it's a case of automating them out or destructively editing them out. It's your call which.
 
having different amounts of voices in a group and compressing the whole group will sound awkward unless all of those vocal groups are at about the same overall level before you compress them
 
What I do, if I have too many vocal tracks, is VersionCue in combination with bouncing.

With versioncue I mean; SongXX V1, SongXX V2, etc ;
With this I mean : the project file
Just to be on the safe side, when you need to go back to an older version**.


And then....
Just take a series of tracks where you think, they are a group [say 8 vocals] and meant to be together and bounce them to a stereo track.
[I'd say without reverb so u can add to taste later]

You do the same with other series of tracks that also belong together. Bounce them to 2 tracks.
You don't have to bounce an entire song of vocals, you can even choose to do song-parts. [chorus, bridge]
But even a song-part with several vocals in it [mixed down] is lots easier to handle.

Import all those bounces back to your new version [V3] and delete all the old ones / single vocaltracks.

In my case, this really really helps and makes everything tidy. And editting is a breeze.
And to answer your question... If they are seperate stereotracks you can send those to the right amount of reverb or effects.
So different groups of backing vocals can have different amount of effects. Again you adjust to taste.



If you ever didn't like a few desicions you made during bouncing ???
Just go back to the old version and do a new export and import it back in your latest version**.


____________________
ps; I work in HipHop which means, 7 rappers on 1 track + female backings and every rapper has Hypetracks, double tracks, etc etc. It can become messy very soon. The bounce technique helps out every time.
 
MASTA J. said:
What I do, if I have too many vocal tracks, is VersionCue in combination with bouncing.

With versioncue I mean; SongXX V1, SongXX V2, etc ;
With this I mean : the project file
Just to be on the safe side, when you need to go back to an older version**.


And then....
Just take a series of tracks where you think, they are a group [say 8 vocals] and meant to be together and bounce them to a stereo track.
[I'd say without reverb so u can add to taste later]

You do the same with other series of tracks that also belong together. Bounce them to 2 tracks.
You don't have to bounce an entire song of vocals, you can even choose to do song-parts. [chorus, bridge]
But even a song-part with several vocals in it [mixed down] is lots easier to handle.

Import all those bounces back to your new version [V3] and delete all the old ones / single vocaltracks.

In my case, this really really helps and makes everything tidy. And editting is a breeze.
And to answer your question... If they are seperate stereotracks you can send those to the right amount of reverb or effects.
So different groups of backing vocals can have different amount of effects. Again you adjust to taste.



If you ever didn't like a few desicions you made during bouncing ???
Just go back to the old version and do a new export and import it back in your latest version**.


____________________
ps; I work in HipHop which means, 7 rappers on 1 track + female backings and every rapper has Hypetracks, double tracks, etc etc. It can become messy very soon. The bounce technique helps out every time.
Click to expand...

"Bouncing" is old school - only used these days with peoiple dealing with limited number of tracks (like on a stand-alone recorder or a 'limited' DAW). WIth today's DAWs, you can just put those tracks in a folder or group and handle them that way.
 
Christ, I haven't heard the word "Bounce" in about 20 years. It's completely un-necessary with any DAW.
 
RAMI said:
Christ, I haven't heard the word "Bounce" in about 20 years. It's completely un-necessary with any DAW.
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It's still used for normal audio exporting from a DAW, like when you are finished with a project.
Some DAWs like Logic do have "Bounce in place" function that can help save processing power when you're doing your beatz and you've got like a hundred tracks of sub drops and wub wubs and fifty different synth plugins.
 
RAMI said:
Christ, I haven't heard the word "Bounce" in about 20 years. It's completely un-necessary with any DAW.
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Reason does this, too. I think they just re-used the old nomenclature. When you have 16 takes and you've hacked and fixed it down to where it sounds like you want it, you "bounce" the clips and they become one clip without the 16 takes...of course you lose everything in those takes, so ya gotta KNOW, man!

Also works like Reaper's Render function if you want to put track at a time into .wav files
 
BroKen_H said:
Reason does this, too. I think they just re-used the old nomenclature. When you have 16 takes and you've hacked and fixed it down to where it sounds like you want it, you "bounce" the clips and they become one clip without the 16 takes...of course you lose everything in those takes, so ya gotta KNOW, man!

Also works like Reaper's Render function if you want to put track at a time into .wav files
Click to expand...
Makes no sense to me. Why would you ever want to lose the separate tracks in this day and age, when you don't have to? If it's for saving space, there's GOT to be a better way. Doesn't Logic, or whatever DAW you're talking about, have something along the lines of "Groups" or "Folders"?
 
Reason has no folders option. You can "render" using the bounce function to drop different stuff off at different points into folders you define, which I do. But the other function of the bounce is to optimize and streamline so you don't have dropouts and Max Headroom playback...

Oh, wait, I see what you're asking. No, you just save a version before you bounce. Then if you didn't mean it, you can go back and cut the track out of the copy and paste it back in.
 
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