Recording rapping And layering without putting off beat?

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ambi

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Whats the best way i could record hip hop vocals and put it into a song, without moving the track so its off the beat. Cause if you change it even slightly from where you spat it to the beat, it will sound off, and even if its slightly placed off, it will slowly get off the whole time. you can do it by ear, but it would be impossible to get it totaly right. I have a song structured in acid, and as before we were going to record into acid so i directly put it into the song, so we would'nt have to move it or anything, and then we could edit the file, put on effects, and still have it in the same place in the song, so it wouldnt get off beat. I don't know how good of a job acid does for recording, so i was considering using sound forge, or logic audio, or some other program to do it, then save the vocals, then put them in acid, but the problem is it would be impossible to line it up without sqrewin up our flows. Any advice? and how is acid for recording? would it be ok quality to just record into acid? Thanks guys, i apriciate the help in advance.
 
hmm...i read through that twice...and I am just not getting you.

I'll start with this - if you have a finished track - why can't you just do your vocal performance over it...try it a bunch of times, nail it..etc...and edit it a bit if neccessary...and have the perfect track?

You need to get you basic beat/groove going....and be content to stick with it....and then do your vocal tracks.

You could always go back and exchange one bass sound for another after the fact...or add more music on top of it...

I guess I don't see what the problem is. I don't do hip hop/rap...but, if I did....i would talk to the artist about what kind of vibe they wanted...establish a tempo....and then make a rhythm track of drums/bass...and maybe a few little instrumental parts for cues if they needed them. Keep it simple and do the main vocal tracks.

then i would go back, and start working with the exact sounds I wanted for the rhythm tracks/vocals to mesh right. Doing small edits etc. on timing if need be (that will be much easier in something like logic).

After that...I'd go in and add the rest of my backup vocals....and lastly, the extra instrumentation. (i find it easier to sing when there isn't much going on...and easier to get instrumental parts after the fact that don't step on the vocals)

when you get to that point, you can just fine tune little parts...but, esp working with samples/midi or whatever....you should have a fairly straightforward task in terms of getting things to line up. I am not that familiar with Acid....but, given my understanding of it...i would move away from it - if you are getting into a lot of vocal work, and even possibly audio recording (nylon string guitars are quite the hip hop frenzy these days eh?)

Hope this helps some. If that didn't answer your question, please clarify.

-Wes
 
thanjks

thanks for the response, that did help actually. But what i was saying was, we have a finished track, as you stated, we could edit it after the vocals are on, put extra sounds, etc... but for actually recording the vocals. When you record the vocals, would your record them into a program like soundforge, save the vocals, then load them into your sequencing program, like acid, then slide them around and try to match them? Cause when ive tried that they've been waay off beat, so i've found the easiest way is to record them directly into acid, so they don't have to be moved at all, so you know they are exactly on the beat the way the emcee spat em. Are there any techniques for lining the vocals up? Would you record into a seperate program then try to line them up later? or would you do it directly into the sequencer im using (which is acid) I have logic, but its confusing.
 
I would either record your files directly in acid or even better export the song you have created in acid to your multitracking program as a wav or some other kind of file. Then you can record over as many vocal tracks as you want, add effects, etc. I use Sonar which has the advantages of almost all of the looping and song structuring abilities that acid has while being an excellent midi and audio multitrack recording programs as well.
 
the music gods are cursing you. rap does not apease the gods...
 
although i have it i don't use Acid, i use Sonar; however, i record all of my instrumentation and vocals in Sonar so that everything lines up when i'm recording.

if you are trying to layer vocals, you can do it several ways, but they basicly fall into two categories:

1 re-recording and 2 delay.

in sonar, you can clone a track, then slide the track in musical time increments so that the clone has a thickening effect on the vocals. if you want the layering to be obvious, then slide the cloned track even farther, but do it in a musically satisfying position.

go to the following web page, and go to audio

http://www.crosstudio.net

listen to "luci fur" i do some layering on that one.
 
I went thru the same problem

I use soundforge and acid both and i ran across the same problem. The best thing to do is to upgrade your acid to 3.0 ( I'm assuming that you have a lower version because if i remember correctly i couldn't record on acid at the time with a lower version) and record directly to that. Or you can record your beat to tape or burn to cd, and record you vacals to soundforge while listening to either of those. Right now i record my tracks from adat to acid individually and then record my vocals to soundforge listening to the adat's, and then transfer the vocals to acid. And then another thing that will help align your tracks is the zoom tool, it's the magnifying glass you see on the bottom and the side of the track window. Click the larger one on the bottom and it will increase the size of the track, grab the track and slide it till you are on beat, this will make it much easier to align your vocal track to the beat!!! Hope this helps.
 
Why not just export the Acid beats to a stereo WAV file, load it in a Multi-Track sfotware (n-track, Cool Edit, Cubase, Cakewalk, You get the idea...), and then record the vocals onto a seperate track?
Seems painless enough.

Oren
 
I think that Aren is right, this is what I was saying above. Just export the wav file into a program that gives you more multitracking options or burn it to CD and play it directly into your mixer while recording vox.
 
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