Lessons

Lesson Info

Adding Vocal Stems

That actually brings me to the next part I'm going to take this little piece right here, save it for for punctuating with the vocals and start inserting scenes I only needed inspectors drag everything down so when I am when I work on we mix is I like to keep my hand the original files kind of about the top and the night kind of cascade down someone too with everything down all of it and really just start bringing in um bringing in some samples and really this this helps kind of direct the overall arrangement of the song so, um going tio bringing in my one twenty pm stones not all of them maybe just some of the locals take this just some of the locals there are actually straight we'll take that one and driving and that is just the start of the film into nothing cave I'm telling, why don't you say me? Wait so ok in house music, it makes it a little bit easier tio mix the tune if you give it some, you know, thirty seconds to a minute worth of music before like vocals start kicking in typi...

cal house tracks go for about like five and a half, six minutes or something, so, um we got plenty of time to work with you I think I'll probably, um start bringing in the vocals then say around thirty three right around par thirty three so it'll kind of do this for a while the locals will come out and so maybe just to keep it interesting and so it's not just looping through the beginning toy around with bringing in some of these pieces right here right this little solo thing andi um you know stick that it around seventeen right slow just adjusted so it's right on that it's so much wait to me it feels like it jumps from this to this too quickly so maybe I'll just shift it so that there's a little bit of a break between the two maybe just by doing that give it so much that and that is I gave him wait wait I just to me it sounds like these still need to be spaced out a little bit more so I'm going to take this little piece and maybe just kind of save it for later by putting it way over here which is something I tends to do a lot. I used the end of the play list as sort of a sketch pad for the things that a minute that I might do later you know they're not really part of the arrangement but I kind of like use it is a pallet I guess um but uh for the sake of just keeping it interesting you know keeping it from moving too quickly even so much that when I heard it earlier, this sounded like it had too much space in it, like it was not doing anything, so maybe I'll try toe extend this little piece a little bit by maybe repeating a part of the vocal or something so it's true. Wait, wait, e, we could probably actually repeat this it's not doing that right here just stops, but I bet you we could repeat this from here to here. It will keep it interesting and curious to what would be the milestone of changing this one baseline to the next base line. So there's always like something is about to happen all the way through the whole thing, so, like, um, I'll switch it to bar and iowa lt's place out this piece of the oh yeah, you've got a question heard from other producers when they're working either on remixes or original tracks, they write a bit more of thie percussion in before they really start arranging, and I noticed then there are times that you haven't even touch it. And yeah, I was wondering, wearing your process, you bring in that? And when I did this project, sometimes I'll bring in a little bit at first, but I find that it sometimes can be more interesting if you use the percussion. To punctuate what's happening in the music. So if I were till right, too much percussion right now than the music would have to do whatever the percussions doing. But I've got all these musical elements to work with, so I want to get them playing off of each other first, and then once like it once I bring in the percussion and it can add intensity to what's happening in the music. But yeah, if I have too much of had snare and, you know, congo's and all sorts of stuff happening the song, it might make it actually a little bit difficult to bring in some of these elements that are already here, so I don't always do things this way. Um, but in this particular instance, it seemed like it made the most sense because I had so many parts and I want to get I wanted to get the sort of arrangement with teams down first, um and funny thing is with this with this particular piece the only percussions that ended up getting added to the song ours, a high hat that's it I had not to two different heads, but it's cool because, you know, like, I yeah, I've every time I try to start a song and I build it this big huge kit of always percussions and I think it's it's really easy to come up with a drum loop but to write music it's a little bit trickier so I start with the harder part I start with the arrangement I start with the music first get that out of the way and then aiken throw in all the beats and stuff later as you see like I mean for a lot of producers what they'll do is they'll they'll start with like this eight bar loop you know or sixteen bar loop and they're like, ok, this loop sounds really, really good now what do I do with it and those like painted across the whole timeline start like playing in muting things straight through, which is a good way of doing it it's just, um you know you're you're basically basing it off of playing and muting stuff from this one eight bar loop, whereas I think that if you attack this song as a whole than you're gonna end up with something both of maybe just a little bit more of a compelling arrangement I'm so but yeah, I'm gonna, um just copy this uh this vocal piece right here so the the uh the chorus repeats itself and takes us into this part where it actually changes the massive thing wanted to stop here but maybe we could do something like that like maybe we could have it you know the drums stop right here and then bring in another piece of our little solo thing to give it something to do when the media when it stops I think that was the what I had determined was a good idea. Well, I was reading this initially way, way way so you can see that she may tell you what and so ultimately I'm gonna actually go back to what I actually did I'm gonna pull up the project so you can see um yeah, so I kind of noodles around with us actually for ah long time trying to just fit these stems in just the right way so, um I didn't end up using a lot but they gave me so many vocal stones that, um it took me a while to kind of, uh meal it all down radio wait e wait e o says basically what I ended up coming up with on my am my original version um any questions? Yeah. Yeah, ok with it creative dreams wants to know in this question got one vote uh does the battery plug in sync with the f l studio piano roll or can you only edit through the battery plug in? Oh, you can you can definitely it sinks with the piano roll really quickly I can uh I'll show you I'm going to make a quick drum things taken here what this might sound like with uh with drums so I'm going to create a new um pattern concert called this uh perhaps and stuff and I will pop that down right over here and it's just going to go one bar one bar loop that I'm just gonna painted over this thing off to know um this particular bet instance of batteries just I'm using it for my drums right now there's just a kick drum in there but I'll throw in some hats closed hats um those battery and it's really really well with f l studio I think select a few what I'm doing right now I'm just tapping up and down with the arrow buttons and you can automatically preview it window the second I hear a sound that I like I drag it right into a cell and battery just like that right now um I can go and route this too the next channel so that it's not in the same one is the kick drum turns one in battery uh I love battery just because you know each cell is mapped to different key on the keyboard and it doesn't not but across the keyboard like a sampler instrument like a traditional sampler instrument on dh then each cell has its own set of parameters. You have envelope controls it's basically like you know one hundred twenty eight samplers sitting right next to each other and each sample could be played on its own key totally awesome but so I'm going to go into the piano roll for this and you see it's ah strolling through I have we'll do it this way open this up so as velocity control down button but down below these air in the piano roll at the bottom you have, um velocity ins and some automation control well um I'm going around with the velocity so yeah, you have direct access to it is that what is that? Answer the question ok, I'm not, um like I like now if I wanted tio edit any parameters inside um battery lake using f l studio like automate what you would need to do is you're going to view here and you scroll down to the automation page so there because it's like one hundred twenty eight different samplers all with all these crazy controls you if all the automation cz were available to you nfl studio, it would take up loads of cpo so in order to sort of combat that all the automation is off basically in in battery until you turn it on so you go into this automation page right? And each one of these is sort of like ah parameter that can be automated and all you need to do is like say um for instance, you want to be able to automate the panning of lake like this high hat, right? I want to be able like automated I would go into the animation page and then drag this to the tanning and now this panning is automata ble aiken aiken record it by just hitting record and moving it and now it's doing it as you can see if I wanted to use a controller to control that um, that knob I had just tweak it doesn't move it and then you go up to tools last tweet at it um linked to controller and then just move something and then now I'm I'm handling it with my with my buddy controller um yeah, so that's basically how you do it um any pretty much everything and battery is automated ble um, there are some things that are not but so I think that would pretty much and this particular segment because the next one yeah, I will be running we're going into like, cleaning up and audio moving into making that baseline a lot more interesting. So cool. Yeah, yeah all right, we have do you want to take another question? Sure. Yeah it's awkward questions yeah, d j celeron wants to know that has a question about organization. Organization of assets is my biggest problem nfl what do you recommend to organize a large number of stems do you just put them all in his audio clips into your best or is there some kind of organization that you yeah well, there's what I would do is once things get really, really complex on do you have of lots of stones you can like these like these audio clips right here um are off the vocals for instance you can I've seen some guys do this where you just you select them all and then you can believe you could just group or is it there's a grouping there's a way to group them channels group selected I won't call this vocals and now they're all tied up right here and then um you know then I could look at my just my unsorted which would be the vocal those vocal clips or not part of the unsorted group you know? And then if I want to just look at the vocals I could just go there to move them around those because sometimes when you have a lot of audio or you have a lot of uh assets you know, like you wanted some kind of hierarchy and like maybe you wanted drums at the top and then you want your pads or something to the next you want your baseline at the bottom basically if whatever you have selected, if you hold down ault and then up it moves it up and down in less, so that's, an easy way to sort of create that, hiring any fema's, the arrow down and up. You can change what selected. So I have this selected and I hold on ault. I'm living it up, and I can order things around a little bit easier that way, you know, cool, and that could make it a little bit easier to organize thing. I mean, sometimes when you're the big project, there's, just no way around it being a total mouse, but, um, yeah, that that definitely helps. If you have. I think if you have a bunch of selective, you could move them all together as a group. See, I'll call.