Background Vocals

[scottfisher]

Hey everyone. I have a question about doing background vocals with Cool Edit. Here is my situation:

I have a singer, who is really good at singing, but cant sing the opposite harmony, like I want her to, so it kind of sounds almost like two people, but a bit different.

Is there a plugin that can change the harmony on a voice to make it sound like a background vocal?

I took the vocals out of My Last Breath by Evanescence and you can hear exactly what kind of background vocals Im talking about.

Background Vocal Example

If you listen closely you can hear the background vocals.

Could you tell me what tone those are in too? So maybe I could sing them, and raise the pitch...

Thanks.

 

[thajeremy]

not to my knowledge....she just needs to learn to harmonize...

 

[matt_macfarlane]

can she not sing the harmony because it's out of her vocal range, or just because she can't tell what the harmony part should sound like? if it's out of her vocal range, there's a nifty trick with cooledit you can use, but it involves varied tape speeds (done digitally, of course). if used too extremely, you end up with very Zappa or Ween-esque vocals though, so be careful.

make a mixdown of the entire song, with the vocals & drums mixed a bit louder than normal, just for monitoring's sake. save it, close your session, and start a new one. insert the mixdown.

NOW, are you using cooledit 2.0? if so, you need to lower the overall volume of the mixdown so it doesn't clip the cieling ANYWHERE. this is because i am now going to tell you to speed up or slow down the entire mixdown using the Stretch function, and for some reason 2.0 creates noisy artifacts during clipping when this is done. cooledit 1.0 should have no problem. also, make a note of the exact length of the mixdown (2:32.045, or whatever)

select the entire mixdown and go to the Stretch function. set the Stretching Mode to "resample" (preserves neither time nor pitch). go up to transpose, and select how you want to alter it. you may want to do this with the singer and a piano or guitar, so you can tell how many steps she's off. select your transposition (sharp or flat), and how many steps up or down you want to go. anything past 6 steps is gonna sound a little goofy when you're done, but if you have to stretch it that much, then your singer isn't very good anyway. once you enter in your transposition, say, 3#, you'll notice that the length of the entire mixdown is going to change. Preview it so you know it's what you want and that she can sing with it, and hit OK.

now you have an altered mixdown to sing along with. record as many takes as you want over it. hopefully she can do it. once you've got enough takes, close the session but keep the files open. go back to the mixdown and go back to Stretch function. enter in the original length of the mixdown. Stretch only deals in seconds, so convert minutes to seconds (example: 2:32.045 = 152.045). DON'T HIT "OK," but just jot down the RATIO it puts up. that's your conversion.

go to all the recorded vocal takes and apply the Stretch function. enter in the ratio you wrote down, and hit OK. all the vocal takes will now be stretched or compressed, and fit the original mixdown. and if you did it right, they'll all be in tune with each other.