Subtitles of the Movie

As I mentioned at the beginning of this VTC MasterClass!, the lead vocals of a song take priority to the ordinary listener. It doesn't concern disco dancing girls, how many milliseconds of delay you have put on a tambourine, and the boozing boys eagerly watching the disco dancing girls really don't care if you've used a low power CQ filter on the guitar. No, all they're concerned about is a melody they can sing along to and remember. And so the vocal is obviously the vehicle for this. I've had a little tidy-up of the screen, so if it looks a little bit different that's the reason why. I've created a couple of folders to place together similar tracks. For example, in this folder named B Vox I have the backing vocals recorded earlier, and in this folder I've got the main vocal. Just as a quick refresher, placing tracks in folders is useful to keep your screen clean. And by clicking on the folder and using the callout tab here to the left means I can further click on the track and make any settings required. Very easy. I haven't identified the tracks by color, but if you want to you can by simply selecting a track and choosing the color you like. Note the identifier reflects in these places. I'll just change it back for now. OK, back to recording. I've already recorded some vocal tracks and placed them in this Vocal folder. So far I've done nothing else with them. Let me open the folder so you can see. I've purposely used a couple of tracks to record the vocal with the intention of comping together one long vocal file that will be easier to compress or EQ or add any other effects. As an alternative, what you could do if you don't want to go to this trouble is send both vocal tracks to a group output bus and apply your effects to this bus. This will allow you to keep any changes free to the end of your mixing stage. However, I like to commit myself to certain musical decisions as I go along because it then frees up my mind to concentrate on the performance. Right, I'll just return to where I was. I'll zoom into the start of the first verse and this first vocal event. I've already gone through the vocal takes and deleted what I deemed unsuitable for public consumption, and decided to use these takes that remain. Other than that, I've done nothing to them as yet. Well I say I've done nothing to these raw files. You'll probably notice I've added a gentle fade in and out to each event. I've done this so no pops and clicks occur at the in and out points when I bounce down to one file later. Note the two events here slightly overlap, and the respective fades attempt to make a neater division. I could've redone the vocal takes here, but I quite like the sense of a rushed urgency the resulting track now takes on. Hopefully this is an artistic decision that reflects the lyrics and not just a gimmick. Right, that done, in a moment I'll bounce down the different takes and resulting events to one vocal file for ease of use. First though, I'll just check any tuning inaccuracies that have inevitably occurred in the recording process. It'll take a few minutes, so I'll get to it and pause the screen recording for the moment. So I'll see you in a second. OK, all VariAudio tuned when necessary, so now I'll export the two vocal files and bounce into one new audio track. Of course I could keep the two original tracks, but a new bounce track will be easier to manage. So I'll just make some settings, in particular the bit size. I want to make this 32 bit for maximum quality. Right, OK to Export. Once this is done, I'll disable these original files so as to save CPU power. Right, done. Now I'll drag the newly created composite vocal to the top and then into the Vocal folder. All good? Yes. Right, we'll move on. What I want to do now is even out the fluctuating volume levels of the new Vocal file. So let's double click it to open it in the Sample Editor. Just move off the VariAudio tab to the Definition tab first. Notice how the wave form indicates the really quiet sections. Well if I just highlight these sections one at a time and go to Audio, Process, Gain, I can boost a few of the areas that need it most. You might ask why not just compress the whole file. Well this method makes it seem more natural sounding, and I will only need to apply a gentle compression later on the file afterwards if necessary. This will take some time again, so I'll do this as we draw this tutorial on creating a realistic comped vocal to a close. You have a cup of tea and I'll see you in the next one.