Comping together vocal tracks

W

Waysid

New member
Hi,

I have a real quick, hopefully easy question. I am using Sonar 1.0 and have recorded three separate lead vocal tracks. I have then pieced together a new vocal track built from bits of the other three tracks. Now one thing I have noticed was that my three original tracks were not all exactly the same volume. So my comped track kind of goes up and down a bit in volume. What should I do about this?

Note: I used some compression on the original three tracks when I recorded them.

- should I normalize the whole new track?
- run it through a compression plug in? (if so what parameters would I use?)
- or just visually try and even it out using a volume envelope?

Thanks for any help
Chris
 
I would have kept each part that you was keeping on its own 3 individual tracks.....that way you would have more control.......

now that it is on one track, depending on how chopped up it is, you could draw volume envelopes.......
 
i agree with Gidge.

if you still have the original tracks, then create mute and volume envelopes.

set the volume envelope such that all 3 tracks have relatively the same volume when played.

and use the mutes... well you know what for.

ps. that's why i don't record with compression. once you have the envelopes working properly you can always mix those tracks down to one track.
 
I just went through the same thing from 5 vocal track takes (the singer had a tough time). To me, it would have been too tedious to span across 5 tracks with mute and volume envelopes ...
...plus I would have used up more tracks and CPU power than I would have needed
...plus I needed to pitch shift a couple of spots and didn't want to destroy the original tracks.

So, I comp'ed down to a single track, but I COPIED the clips, rather than cutting them. This way, you keep everything intact. One of the 5 tracks was too far out to fix with compression, so I did both ....compressed and created volume envelopes only where needed.

It depends on a million factors, but this way worked best for me in this case.

BTW, normalizing won't work at all. All of the clips' relative volumes would remain intact. I avoid normalizing unless it's a very last resort.
 
In that situation I drop in a 'clip' envelope, which is pre-everything, then if it's a short punch it might be just a quick drag up or down. Then when if you insert a comp on the track, all the clips hit it equally.
Wayne
 
mixsit said:
In that situation I drop in a 'clip' envelope, which is pre-everything, then if it's a short punch it might be just a quick drag up or down. Then when if you insert a comp on the track, all the clips hit it equally.
Wayne
Click to expand...

In most cases, I'd agree with that 100%. However, this was less than an ideal situation. My problem was that I had to chop it all to bloody hell.

voxcom.jpg


It took be 2 hours to comp it, it would have taken me 4 hours to setup envelopes for the whole track. I had to save time where I could and try to cut corners without completely half-assing it :)
 
Yeah, it sucked. I probably over-did it, but I wanted to make sure I got all the best pieces (..taking the best of 5 not-so-good takes). In all fairness, the singer had an ear infection and couldn't hear when she was off-key. Shit happens.
 
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