I wanted to make a quick post talking about how to edit choral vocals recorded separately. Specifically I’m going to be talking about some stuff that my students recorded and most of the equipment was just a laptop microphone and minimal amounts of equipment.
Normally a choir you record with a couple microphones and you hear these people singing all together. So you have a stereo image already. In this case you have maybe a whole bunch of stereo tracks, but all of them are panned center, rather than actually having a wider stereo image.
First thing I do is line everything up, cut out the excess noise, all that stuff. Clean it up a little bit. If you hear any places in the recording because it’s been recorded with less than stellar conditions, maybe there’s somebody in the background, you hear some footsteps, or somebody closes a door pretty loudly and you have to edit that out.
Pro Tools Routing
In Pro Tools I’ll route everything to a single bus or a single Aux Input track. And then I’ll create a group so I can adjust all the faders all at once. If you have 15 different tracks of people singing, you only really need 5 for it to sound like a pretty decent choir. Everything else is kind of just more voices to beef it up a little bit. If you have 5 good singers, 5 really strong singers, and then 5 that are decent and then 5 that aren’t great. It’ll still sound pretty good. And it’ll sound like a pretty big group if you edit it properly.
Mixing
I’ll use that to mix it. I’ll make sure that the loudest ones are the ones that are outstanding, the best takes. And then the ones that aren’t too good are a little quieter. So you can still hear them a tiny bit. They’ll add a little bit to the noise and make it a little bigger, but it won’t really take away from the sound the fact that they maybe didn’t put in as much effort as other people in their recordings.
I recently just edited one for Hail Holy Queen, the Sister Act version. It’s a great song. I highly recommend you go check it out. It is so fun. The solos were to one bus. The top line were to one bus. The bottom line were to a different bus and then the claps were to a different bus. So on those busses that’s where I’ll add EQ, compression, and reverb.
Panning
Okay here’s where we get to then make it really sound choral. So I’ll pan everything left, right, center. Another thing I like to think about is trying to keep each different section more than 5 people, or around 3 to 5 people. So if you have let’s say 15 singers, like I did with Hail Holy Queen; each line had 15 different people. So I did hard right, slightly right, middle, slightly left, hard left and each of those things gets 3 singers. So right there it sounds pretty choral and it sounds like a pretty big choir. So you’re kind of dividing it into a like stereo field that you’re trying to imagine. Where would you place them if you had them in a room?
Reverb
I use two reverb sends. One is a convolution reverb to make it sound like it’s in a specific space and the other is an algorithmic reverb to make it sound a little bigger. I’ll use reverbs on aux tracks so that I can send everything to that same reverb. I’ll send the first reverb, the convolution reverb, to the algorithmic reverb. And what that does is, the algorithmic reverb gets everything and it is the biggest.
Compression
I’ll add EQ and compression. I’m not really using anything fancy. I mostly use the compression to control and tame the sounds and bring them together a little bit. I don’t really go much over a ratio of 4:1 or 5:1. I try to keep it even less than that.
Equalization
And then for EQ what I’ve been doing is cutting off the high frequencies with a filter and cutting off the low frequencies. And then I’ll add a de-esser because, oh boy, Macbook and webcam microphones pick up a whole lot of sibilance like none other.
Alright that’s it for this post. I hope you learned something about music. I hope you found it useful. Remember to subscribe to my newsletter and thank you for reading. I’ll see you next time. Peace.
Today I wanted to talk about how we can use filters to go from a loop to a full track. So I do this a lot because if I’m making music, especially if it’s electronic music, I start with some type of 4 or 8 bar loop and I want to use that in a more interesting way than just having it be played over and over and over and over again.
One way we can do that is by using filters. Specifically we’re going to talk about low-pass filters. What that means is you’re letting all of the low frequencies pass. All of the low frequencies are going to go through, but the high frequencies are going to be cut off. As you open it those high frequencies will be opened. So we’re going to automate our low-pass filters to slowly reveal and introduce different aspects of our music.
So we’re going to talk about one of my songs. It’s called Dreaming of Turquoise. It’s a single. It’s on Spotify and it’s also on my album Starshine. That’ll be coming out. Either it’s already out or it’ll come out in about a month or so. One of the things that I did when I made this song was I thought of a little idea and I kept adding multiple and multiple layers. So I added, I think, somewhere around 6 to 7 layers or something like that. 6 to 8 layers of just different pieces that I thought would be interesting being put together and I wanted to be able to take that and actually have it as a full song, but you can’t really do that if you just play the same loop with however many layers it doesn’t really matter. It’ll get boring after you hear it probably about 3 times. So one thing that you can do is just start with just maybe a couple of those layers and you introduce one of the layers with a low-pass filter on it.
You keep that filter really low. You aren’t even hearing any of the track, but you keep that filter on there and you slowly introduce it. So if we listen to the beginning, the very beginning. There are layers there, but you’re not hearing them because their filters are too low. Let’s take a listen to that at the beginning.
Let’s hear the end of it. That’s where all the layers are present. That’s where everything’s open. Everything’s opened up. We can hear all of those layers. Let’s take a listen to what that sounds like.
Those layers are present in both of them, it’s just that the low-pass filters are really really low and are cutting out almost all of the frequencies of those layers. So once you hear it open up those layers are slowly introduced and slowly added to the song so it sounds like it’s growing. It sounds like it’s changing. There’s something new that you’re listening to, but it’s added so gradually and so slowly that you’re not even hearing it as a change and it’s not made as an abrupt, big change.
So I like it as a composition/production technique because you can introduce your layers gradually and it allows you to write in a different way than just writing linearly. If you want to write linearly go ahead, but if you’re also writing loop music and you like working with loops you can use those loops and use that style of writing to your advantage. So you can have a loop that has maybe 10 different layers, but you don’t hear them right away. You hear maybe the first 3.
I’m a huge fan of this technique because it allows you to turn your loop basically into a song. It’s almost like these things are being added in the music organically. You’re not hearing this very direct, “okay it’s the down beat. Here’s the second part. Here’s the next section.” Right? That’s great and that’s fun to compose with, but you can also do it in a way that’s a little more subtle. So at the end of that song you’re hearing so many different layers, but you don’t really notice them if you listen to the music because everything’s been added so gradually. It’s almost like they’re just sneaking into the music and you never really notice them.
Alright, I hope you found that useful and learned a little bit more about music and music production. If you did make sure you sign up for my newsletter and I’ll see you later. Peace.
Practice as little as possible. Try to use practice time as efficiently as possible. Practice like you’re lazy. Practice like you have a rehearsal tomorrow for a whole musical that you’ve never seen the music for.
Learn how to practice as efficiently as possible. Find out what works for you. Some practice techniques don’t work for everyone. Find the practice techniques that work for you.
Maybe you like looping one bar over and over until you can play it perfectly. Maybe you like playing passages so slowly that everything is perfect. Maybe you like practicing in small bursts. Whatever works for you is what you should do.
Try to ask yourself, “how do I learn this in five minutes?” Then try to actually learn that measure or two in five minutes. If you can actually do that you’ll get much better at practicing. It’ll force you to crunch your practice time and practice method and cut out any of the unnecessary stuff.
While I was at Berklee College of Music one of my composition professors said that phrase to me, “write the garbage.” I wrote a piece for a class and told him that I didn’t think it was very good. So that’s what he said, “write the garbage.”
He then explained what he meant. Write. Keep writing. Write so much that you get good. If all you can write that day is garbage, then write the garbage. Write the garbage until you write well. Just keep writing.
I like that mentality because that mentality doesn’t believe in writers block. It also acknowledges that composing is a skill that you need to develop. Being good at something that you rarely do is difficult, but if you regularly practice then you’ll get better, just like anything else.
Write the garbage. Get it out. Then write the good stuff.
Plan out your music. If you’re making a song, plan the structure of it before you start putting the ideas into place. Plan out the form. Write a quick note of what the form will be. It’ll give you some guidance for how to write the music and you’ll be able to write a more well thought out song.
Just making a simple plan of how long each section will be and where they’ll end up harmonically, where each section lands will help the music feel like it has some direction. You’re thinking ahead while you’re writing and that’ll be reflected in the music.
You’ll plan to make the music end in those places. It won’t sound like transitions were just thrown together afterwards. They’ll sound thought out, because they were.
The plan doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be detailed. It could be as simple as deciding to write a song whose form is AABA. It could be as simple as deciding to write a rondo with the form of ABACABA. That’s all it needs to be.
Having that plan can add a lot to your compositions because you’ll have a better idea of the finished product and have a bigger picture of the song before you start putting ideas together. It’ll be easier to tie things together and make sure that each section is both interesting and related to the previous music.
The simplicity of the drum beat contrasted with so much other syncopation creates this beautiful texture.
The vocal breaks with the loop of “we coming, we coming” all accent up beats. So having this heavy drum beat accent beats 1 and the and of 2 really brings those elements together.
The looseness of the rhythm of the saxophone solo contrasts incredibly well with the heavy and consistent drum beat. There’s something about having that contrast that really works. One element is playing this very predictable thing that is very even and another element is playing this other idea that isn’t predictable and isn’t even. It changes and pushes and pulls the rhythm in new ways. Something about that combination works well.
The vocals are also often accenting the up beats. Again this comes back to this idea of syncopation. The beat heavily accents the down beat as well as beats 2 and 4. So having these different contrasts creates this interesting texture.
The synths in the background are also fairly non-rhythmic. They don’t have much distinct rhythm to them. All of that mixed with the piano, saxophone, vocals, and drum beat give this airy and open texture. There’s a synth bass that pretty much follows the bass drum’s rhythm the entire time helping accent those beats even more.
Take a listen to the song. It’s super interesting.
I tried to make a blog a while ago, but I never posted regularly because I always tried to put too much time and effort into each blog post. Maybe I’ll put lots of effort into blog posts this time around, but that’s not the goal.
The goal: post every day
All I want to do here is post every single day with some thoughts. Often they’ll be about music, music composition, music production. Maybe they’ll be about music theory and music education as well.