Fades and Basics of Melodyne
Lesson 15 from: Recording Rock VocalsAndrew Wade
Fades and Basics of Melodyne
Lesson 15 from: Recording Rock VocalsAndrew Wade
Lessons
Day 1
1Introduction and A Capella Demo
21:18 2Acoustics and Vocal Frequency
14:52 3Soundproofing
24:20 4DIY Acoustics
12:34 5Signal Chain and Microphones
21:12 6Preamps, Compression & EQ
23:20 7Working with a Vocalist
36:53Arrangement and Tracking a Female Vocalist
20:00 9Tracking a Female Vocalist Part 1
29:40 10Tracking a Female Vocalist Part 2
35:49 11Tracking Screaming Vocals Part 1
19:19 12Tracking Screaming Vocals Part 2
33:59 13Tracking Group Vocals
22:39Day 2
14Editing Overview
34:31 15Fades and Basics of Melodyne
13:53 16Editing Female Vocals Part 1
27:39 17Editing Female Vocals Part 2
09:51 18Editing Vocals with VocALign
17:34 19Advanced Tips for Editing Raspy Vocals
15:58 20Editing Screaming Vocals
28:18 21Vocal Effects Part 1
33:20 22Vocal Effects Part 2
32:18 23Intro to Mixing
18:07 24Mixing Softer Vocals Part 1
32:42 25Mixing Softer Vocals Part 2
14:21 26Mixing Screaming Vocals
32:11Lesson Info
Fades and Basics of Melodyne
Now uh what I like to do um what I'm fading okay, this is where the ault on windows were the old ft command comes in really handy unfortunately that's not on the mac um but I like to use different fades for different reasons so I like to use the linear fayed which is this one that I have on the screen um for the beginnings and endings of of phrases it brings it in pretty naturally sounding and uh and smooth so whenever you hit on this it's uh apple f to bring up the dialogue and it's just called equal gain uh and make these, uh, standard I mean you look on the screen to see the's er placement centered etcetera all this is fine you might wanna just uncheck adjust existing fades because later on that might be on and you might be messing with something by accident that you didn't mean to, uh, length now in my mind one thinking that this function is going to do is put the fades in the beginning and ending of of all of these phrases now it's also if you can see here we have edits between th...
e vocals and I want different fades on those you know I'll explain why um so whenever I do these fades I actually usually make them pretty long one hundred fifty milliseconds so that's a pretty long fade uh typically freddie so a zoom in it's actually covering the vocal little bit actually don't want that that's a little bit too long so let's just try one hundred that looks good so suddenly you've got all your fades in there, which is which is awesome. Um now the fades for the breaths you may or may not want to make longer let's hear this one so it sounds sounds natural that's what you're looking for um okay, so these guys right here on like now you may have to take my word for it because this is kind of case specific, but the fades um, that you use to actually join sounds I usually use it's called equal power um so let's, bring up that dialogue again. Control f it looks a little bit like that. So if you have, if you have just a bunch of ah let's say white noise or silence or or even a vocal there and you you want to join them without hearing it dip out? This is how you do it whenever you have it on equal gain it uh it sometimes you do hear dip out so instead of having to listen to every single cross fade that you do and this is why I'm saying you may just have to take my word for it, but sometimes you have a ton andi this is going to be the best for joining sounds equal power so you're not you're not gonna have I mean this is like good that that will still sound fine there's a little um what I'm hearing here I am being super picky right now and you should also like I can hear it fading from one to the next and I don't like that I usually never like that um so let me show you what I would do uh let's say we have okay, this is actually here we go we'll talk about nudging right here this will make sense so let's say we did have our fade here and we don't want it to sound like she's fading in and out um we have all your stuff in there it sounds good but you don't want to mess with your faith your faith you're fine so I would actually move the party over a little bit and I know it makes this part off beat but don't worry about that on like those so the further you move it over so they're hurt actual breath matched up with the other one uh oops wrong spot the closer to natural on lycos lycos they burn so um that puts I mean, that puts this way off but uh at this point that that actually does not matter sometimes uh I'll do this where the most important thing is that your vocals sound natural when their solo that's what I like like if you can listen to your vocal soloed, they should sound natural they should sound like one take because sometimes your vocals are going to be put on blast like if you're teaching a creative life class later on in life or oh you're like a cappella version of your songs were being released or there's a remix or uh, anything maybe someone making acoustic version out of the vocals are so you you have no idea you always want your stuff to be great so um I like all my edits to sound as natural as I can make it now this is offbeat but well but that's fine we'll get to that when we actually do melody line we'll just nudge that over but the most important thing now is that this edit sounds natural because you can't fix that and melody line or any other way okay let's see here. So if this was, uh uh pc I was hit all ft really fast but not carefully selected and uh or you can actually just change it by hitting all deaf but sometimes you have a ton of cross fades that's why these shortcuts are important so we'll just change that to equal power uh for some reason do we have a lot of faith there um some cool other cool shortcuts with fades like if you did wanna longer fate at the end of the beginning f puts if you have a part highlighted f will make it the length of whatever you have highlighted um and then and then let's say we want a longer fade on the right let g if we want a longer fate on the left we hit uh d and these air really valuable shortcuts so it would be like that are you? I mean, you could be way over here and hit it and it would still make it that long so there's a really cool short cuts more shortcuts you know, the faster you can be, the more you can get done uh less thinking you have to do keeps the workflow in the studio at at a good pace yes. Time up in the upper right corner there's three yellow box you check check that yeah, so you don't have to push command you could just push g or d right? I don't know what exactly is that great. Yeah, these don't work unless you do that at all. You have to have that enabled ok, but that that eliminates the extra command key or apple key or whatever yeah, great. Now I encourage you whatever audio program you are working in uh look for these shortcuts they probably exists um and like I like I say over and over again these concepts are the most important thing to understand okay so uh next step let's refer back to this we did the nudging that might happen a lot more depending on how many cut ins we have uh puncheon's we went through the fades and different types were not going to group the tracks and creating alternate playlist maybe just for this like if we released this session for you guys the mess with I just put those down there so you can have the original takes we may or we don't do that don't take my word for um but sometimes good to say that stuff okay so let's talk about um no how many guys are familiar with milton okay cool uh just curious I think it's something that everyone should know about especially if you're doing audio now this is my favorite thing here uh maledon bridge will connect you to military studio now before I actually do this let's I actually want to talk about okay so we got all that stuff ready for prescription why do we use melody line um melody line sounds absolutely incredible it has automatic um and to me an unparalleled for mint correction which what happens if if you've ever used like older versions of let's take aunt teri's auto tune for instance there's uh there's a bunch of different modes and different ways that you can use that and it does have sort of an automatic former correction built into it but to me it doesn't sound nearly as natural as, uh as as milady you khun b pretty extreme with mel dine and get away with a lot especially if you have a rough vocalist um it's really easy to edit actually let me talk about forming for a second because some people might be like what what is that? Uh the the easiest waken think about it is let's say you raise the pitch of a vocal suddenly it sounds like alvin and the chipmunks it sounds weird and unnatural and uh you sound tiny or you lower it and you throw work slow motion you know uh for mint correction takes care of that it doesn't mess with that well, I mean it does it doesn't mess with it to an extent but it keeps the natural nous they're so it takes away that alvin and the chipmunk sound or the slow motion sound um which is very awesome feature I was really excited when that finally was developed in the digital world um so to me melody line has the best sounding former corrections keeps it sounding really natural um and whenever you're actually moving uh the timing of notes it's a lot easier to use into um to sink things up in there so it's really uh it's really user friendly too so I had lee recommended um so what we're using is melody line bridge and militant studio now there are other versions of melody line they're cheaper however to me this is the absolute best one because you can save in nalla dine studio you can save sessions and that is really awesome so if you're not making these alternate playlists you can actually save your session and you can go back and edit the vocal as many times as you want and it doesn't mess with the quality of it at all so if you did something you didn't like it you don't have to like re pitch correct the same vocal you khun re pitch correct the original vocal again and it saved in the melody in session that you save which is awesome um and it's another way to keep things organized sometimes if you are messing with pitch correction and you have I think melody line uh remember what the melody unplugging is that goes into pro tools but sometimes the information you can store and they're kind of gets lost or messed up or um to me it's just more stable and less buggy uh because vocals obviously really important and that is the last thing you want to get messed up so mel online bridge enables you to actually transfer the audio files and let's do this now okay? So what you'll what you'll do if you have, um melody line, bridge, millet on studio. If not, I encourage you to go buy it, one of the best investments that you'll ever make. Um, you just find find the plug in melody in bridge, put it on whatever channels that you're gonna pitch correct to me the most. That it will handle well at a time is eight channels. It could handle more, but it's something I don't know I've had. I've had strange problems after eight, so I just I just like to keep things from not messing up.
Class Materials
bonus material with purchase
Ratings and Reviews
exoslime
This is a superb course, was full of great informations and it has inspired me a lot. Learned alot of things, thanks to Andrew for this great presentation and sharing his knowledge and experience with us, also thanks to the people in the audience for bringing up good question and to the creative live team for making this happen. I really hope Andrew will come back to Creative Live someday, perhaps with a full course especially about working out and creating vocal harmonies :-)
a Creativelive Student
Absolutely essential information in this course. Very in depth. Even if you went and interned at a studio with a reputable producer, it would probably take months to absorb all the information so cohesively laid out in the course. I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone looking to properly record their own vocals, or for anyone looking to record other bands (whether in a bedroom, or a million dollar studio). Loved watching, learned a TON (learned a lot of great pro tools shortcuts as well). Well worth the money. Thanks for doing it Mr. Wade.
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