Plugin to automate volume tracking?

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A couple times I've tried to sing harmony (not my strong suit, well, vocals, period, but I try) with a lead vocal sent to me and while I might get "close enough" for my ear, the matching of the amplitude and particularly the ends of words is elusive because I'm so focused on simply getting the pitch. I can automate it, but with my tracks, that is a *lot* of work. (It's a lot easier when face-to-face, I've found!)

So, I'm thinking there must be a way to do this, i.e., *follow* the amplitude of another track and mimic it, really kind of an inverse ducking. Is there anything like that? (It just occurred to me I could duck the original track on a sidechain, then then, on the harmony track, duck that aux's output (which would not be sent to the master, anyway), and maybe that would kind of work?

Anyone know of a plugin that does that, or should I try double-ducking?
 
I'm a bit at a loss to understand what your problem is. Harmony might not actually need the endings to be clean like this? Perhaps in three hundred year old choir harmony it's important, but often the last thing you want in the harmonies are absolute clean ends. The Carpenters (one I'm very familiar with) often changed the way the harmonies were sung to remove plosives and other identifiable words - so instead of singing 'far away', which the vocal was doing, they'd sing 'aah-raway' which would leave the lead line as the one you listened to. If you do what you are seeking, you would end up, I feel, like it was a harmoniser, not a real vocal. In Cubase, the critical thing it does well, is aligning the vowels and consonants in time - which again, prevents them leaping out. Harmony vocals need smoothing, compared to the lead line. Sometimes, I'll do fades on the BV tracks to prevent them extending past the lead, so each one fades out before the lead does.
 
Thanks Rob.

In the one I just did, in way too many places I just held the note out (probably subconsciously, i.e., so I could hear what I was actually singing *after* the lead stopped singing). It was a bit much, and, yes, it's not in something that even should be perfect.

I do smooth the automation - just haven't done that yet as I was, after finishing 3 verses, thought, "there must be an easier way." (Which would probably be to go back and re-track, with the realization of what I'd done wrong, and learn how to do it right. Might still happen.)
 
I usually just edit the track that goes long, cutting the clip and adding a fade to the end directly on the clip rather than with an envelope.

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You could try using a gate with the sidechain being fed by the lead vocal track. That way, the backing vocals would automatically stop when the lead vocal stops. If you have more than one backing vocal track then it might be easier to combine all the backing vocal tracks into a folder and put the gate on the folder track (assuming your DAW has folders or a similar way of grouping tracks together).
 
keith.rogers said:
A couple times I've tried to sing harmony (not my strong suit, well, vocals, period, but I try) with a lead vocal sent to me and while I might get "close enough" for my ear, the matching of the amplitude and particularly the ends of words is elusive because I'm so focused on simply getting the pitch. I can automate it, but with my tracks, that is a *lot* of work. (It's a lot easier when face-to-face, I've found!)

So, I'm thinking there must be a way to do this, i.e., *follow* the amplitude of another track and mimic it, really kind of an inverse ducking. Is there anything like that? (It just occurred to me I could duck the original track on a sidechain, then then, on the harmony track, duck that aux's output (which would not be sent to the master, anyway), and maybe that would kind of work?

Anyone know of a plugin that does that, or should I try double-ducking?
Click to expand...

It's kind of like the hard way to do it - why can't you use envelopes on your track? And way if you take the Lead Vocal track and put a sidechain compressor on it to the backing vocal track you can reduce the volume - how you set the compressor would be how much it 'ducks' the Lead Vocal - problem is I don't think it would be as smooth
as you want,
 
Well, I just labored through and did the automation - it was 3 short verses, so not that much time, and then smoothed out everything where I felt it could use it. Really not a big deal, but it sure makes me appreciate background vocalists ability... In the future, I'll learn the words well enough I can focus more on listening to the lead's phrasing and hope to save some time. Or skip the harmony, which was my wife's suggestion ;)
 
keith.rogers said:
In the future, I'll learn the words well enough I can focus more on listening to the lead's phrasing and hope to save some time.
Click to expand...

How are you recording this? Straight through in one long take? The best way to record these background harmony vocals would be to do them in small snippets at a time, on loop... then you can follow the phrasing perfectly and get the best take you can. If you do this all in one huge straight take, you're likely to mess up in the same spots in every take or worse...
 
Yep - that's my take on it if they have to fit perfectly manually - although now I just let the computer do it.
 
Papanate said:
How?
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I can't speak for Rob but in Reaper I'd use stretch markers and just squeeze and stretch the backing vocals to match. However, I'd prefer to have a reasonably well matched vocal to start with so that I only needed to work on the odd syllable here and there.
 
Ujn Hunter said:
How are you recording this? Straight through in one long take? The best way to record these background harmony vocals would be to do them in small snippets at a time, on loop... then you can follow the phrasing perfectly and get the best take you can. If you do this all in one huge straight take, you're likely to mess up in the same spots in every take or worse...
Click to expand...
I did just loop over the verses, but, first, I'm not a "singer" (though I sometimes pretend to be one ;)) but singing along in harmony is hard when it's someone else who sings fairly differently - at least for me. I did do something with this woman before, but that time we were doing a video collab, so I literally watched her video while I sang along to record my part. This was just audio, and, like I said, I tended to just go on long, so every place there was a space between words, I was out there by myself. Lesson learned.

It didn't take a lot of time, in the big scheme of things, and my recordings are very "back porch" so perfection is not even a concern. But, it sounded bad, so I fixed it. Just was hoping for a plugin :)
 
I don't know of a plugin that does this specifically, but there are a few ways to approach the problem. You could try using volume automation to match the amplitude of the two tracks, or you could use a pitch correction plugin to help you stay in tune. Hope that helps!

--
Jason Hook. I enjoy remixing old songs using Audacity together with UnMixIt for vocal removal or isolation
 
keith.rogers said:
I did just loop over the verses, but, first, I'm not a "singer" (though I sometimes pretend to be one ;)) but singing along in harmony is hard when it's someone else who sings fairly differently - at least for me. I did do something with this woman before, but that time we were doing a video collab, so I literally watched her video while I sang along to record my part. This was just audio, and, like I said, I tended to just go on long, so every place there was a space between words, I was out there by myself. Lesson learned.

It didn't take a lot of time, in the big scheme of things, and my recordings are very "back porch" so perfection is not even a concern. But, it sounded bad, so I fixed it. Just was hoping for a plugin :)
Click to expand...
If I am finding issues with background pitch I will record a keyboard track of the notes to be sung and mute the lead track so the keys track can be copied vocally without the lead mess with the singers head. Use a patch that can do the correct note lengths.
 
Or just throw that Lead Vocal in Melodyne, move it to the proper Harmony notes and sing along to that without the original Lead Vocal in your ears.
 
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