Music Lesson: Vocal and Guitar Work

Introduction

So I got back these vocals and guitar bits. I'm going to work just for ease of use. For now, I'm going to play the vocals, and we'll work through the rest of the material a little later on in the session. I'll cut to different stages of development that I've gone through. But this was the raw material that I got from the vocals.

Context

He sang to a click and the rest of the tracks, which were sent to him in just three stems:

• Drums
• Loops
• Bass

I'll have the metronome on for a second and you'll hear it's very fluid. It's not in time, really. So, I'm going to flex audio and just synchronize the singing a little bit better, tightening it up.

Flexing Audio

I'll go to my flex mode:

• Turn Flex on over here.
• Turn Flex on over here.

Now, what it's done: Logic has already analyzed this piece of audio. It's not monophonic; I would put it to polyphonic. Although it's a mono signal, it's a vocal, so having a polyphonic algorithm works well.

If I pull this in a little bit, we can see what it's doing. It's really not quite in time. So I'm going to start with actually just pulling this out.

Intonation Changes

In terms of intonation, I'm changing the pitch of the track. Let's just pull this in. I'm going to pull the whole lot in.

He's actually starting on the second beat of the bar. Now let's move him into the first beat of the bar. That can be our starting point for now. He's just a little bit late over here. If I place a marker at the very end (the last marker), then everything I work on throughout this is one region. When I pull stuff over, it means I don't need to keep moving stuff over these markers.

Adjustments

So, I'm going to pull this in here. Now that third note hits the beat a little bit better, and I kind of like it. The fourth note of what he's singing, when he goes up to the major third, is coming a little bit early. I like that. I'm going to leave that.

This section needs a little adjustment, so let's delete that one for a second.

Managing Markers

To delete markers, you see these three little lines; to put a marker in, just click; to delete it, double click it or click on the little X. These markers were put in automatically when it scans everything. Let's leave that there because the last tail works well.

Listening Back

Let's hear it from the beginning for a second. Take one of these out and see what happens. The fewer markers you have with everything related to flexing audio, the better. Nowadays, computers are powerful enough, and the algorithms are good enough to quantize audio effectively.

However, the more quantized you make audio, the less it will sound real and organic. So, subtle tweaks are key.

Further Adjustments

Moving on to the next bar here, he's kind of speeding up a little. I'm just going to make a few little changes. I'll bring him in here as he's kind of falling on a beat a little bit.

I'll stretch him out a little, but not too much. That works! He speeds up a little bit here, but I kind of like it. Let's have a quick listen with the rest of these bits.

Working Efficiently

If you work in a linear fashion from left to right, which I by default do, then you have to do a lot more work. If you work from the end backwards, in sections, then you won't need to move the markers too much. I'm not going into the ins and outs of flex and all its functions. This is just how I use it.

It may not always be the most efficient method, but it works for me when I'm in the flow. I tend to listen to things better in a linear fashion like this, even though I've got a little more work to do on it.

Creative Decisions

Just to fast-forward a few steps, I made a creative decision regarding intonation, moving the vocal harmony to start a little further in.

This is a good example of some extreme flex. I've created a syncopated effect here. He didn't sing it like this, but I thought I'd add a bit of a jump to it.

Final Touches

So, it sounds roughly like this with the drums. Let's put the drums back in, along with the bass, just to give it some body. Actually, I'll just play the synth side of things.

It was just a case of moving this section into place. It quantizes to a beat anyway, so I've got flex time set to remember the division value. The nudge value affects your flex, moving it within the divisions that divide the bar and the beat.

So, I moved it quite an extreme amount to give that slightly syncopated sound. I've flexed the rest of the vocals, anything that needed fixing. He sang lots of different takes of a few different parts.

Let's have a listen to it quickly in its raw state.