Warum macht das nicht jeder für seine VOCALS? | Abmischen Tutorial | Recording-Blog 147

Melodina? It's just a tuning plugin to make bad singers look better, right? Incorrect! Because Melodyne can also be an extremely useful tool when it comes to professionally preparing your

vocals

for mixing. It's so useful that the actual vocal mix is ​​much easier to do afterwards and sounds even better. Hi, I'm Jonas from the

recording

blog

and the fact that you're still here shows me that you're willing to think outside the box. Because let's be honest: what was the first thing you thought of when you heard the term Melodyne? Exactly: that's this voice dubber. I don't need it for my music, it's not for me.

I mean, when it comes to the pure field of pitch correction, I don't want to contradict that at all. Because for jazz, rock, rap, even rap with autotune and also for podcasts and spoken content in general, you can of course do without pitch correction. But Melodyne has much more to offer, which can be relevant in jazz, rock, rap and spoken content. Or at least it's extremely useful. Two functions in particular can be a real time saver and, above all, a real quality optimizer for your next voice

recording

s. What's happening? I have made many videos on vocal editing: with equalizer, with compressor, without compressor, etc., etc.

And that is why today we are going to talk about two important, although rather technical, aspects that are nevertheless extremely important for a professional-sounding voice: S-lute and dynamics! The pointed S sounds will blow your mind while listening and the overly dynamic

vocals

just make the song sound "amateur". Suppose you can't understand even half of it. And if you now say: Yes, I have a de-esser and a lot of compressors in the DAW for that, then it's true, but both are just automatic tools that can only represent a compromise for the vocal. In other words, these plugins give you control over most sounds and the loudest or softest parts of your voice, but not all.

So what helps against unreliable plugins? That's right, manual labor. In other words, you set the de-esser and compressor to fix most of the problems and whatever is left. This requires perfect manual work. And exactly how you can work quickly and specifically with Melodyne here is something we'd better discuss in the session. So, let's go. We are already in the session and I suggest that we first listen to the patient, the voice, which is really what it is about. So, let's go. As you can hear, there are already several problem areas here, let me call them that.

It's not so extreme now, but here we have strong S's in individual words. It's definitely marked with a strong "S" and we also have dynamic differences, as you can see here. On the one hand, here we have parts that are a little louder and others that are a little quieter, which here always alternate a little. You can see that the transients are sometimes a little louder, etc. We have a dynamic voice and the voice itself is anyway the most dynamic instrument we can have in the mix. Especially if you then projected everything onto podcasts and audiobook recordings.

There is also a very dynamic speech. This means it's definitely worth reworking or brewing before mixing. And like I said, that's what we want to do now with Melodyne. I'll make a copy of our trail so we can compare right away. So it's definitely worth staying tuned until the end to see what actually came out of the edit. To do this, I simply click on the track here and select Duplicate Track Completely. So with the content, you press it, then we have two tracks and now we can just edit our track here with Melodyne. It's easy in Studio One.

I just press CTRL (when you're on PC) or CMD-M, then Melodyne starts up and immediately analyzes what's there at the beginning. You'll see Melodyne, do the math here first and then lift it up so you can see it a little better. Here. So these are the spots or the notes that Melodien recognized, the notes, the edges are then called spots. If I right click here, I can select the tool here. We'll use the zoom tool, then I'll zoom in here and see what it looks like. We are starting here and you can already see that the notes are divided into different spots, that is, a tonal area and an atonal area.

Atonal areas are s sounds, consonants, etc., that is, everything that cannot be sung. You can't sing it with pitch, but you can sing vowels with pitch, for example. So "A" definitely has tone and "S" never has tone. That's why there is tonal area and atonal area, and the atonal area is indicated here by these hatched lines. In this case it's even an "S" and we'll take a look at it. I'll do a solo on the track. That sounds like it right now! So we pronounce an "S" and now we come to the first tool that Melodyne brings with it in a really fantastic way, that is, the Amplitude Tool series.

That's what I call it, here is the amplitude tool, it's here below! There is the Amplitude tool, the Fade tool, and the Sibilance Balance tool. And with the Sibilance Balance tool you can edit these S sounds individually. I'll click on that. You can also right click on the background here and then select! So with the tool we can continue here. And if we check this "S" here, now we can just make it a little bit quieter by clicking and dragging down. Let's listen again for a moment to the starting point. So now I'm going to click on that and drag it down.

Now you can hear it in the background noise. So, and now it sounds... clearly off and I'll show you how you can exaggerate it. Then you can make the singer lisp, so to speak. Let's leave it here, a little too much. So, in any case, the edge is very sharp. You see, you can intervene in a very specific way. And even with your DeEsser, if you want to work with the De-Esser first, but you realize that two S sounds have escaped, the ones you didn't catch with the automatic, you can simply go in with the Sibilance Balance tool and select Those and make sure Make sure your monkeys are balanced in the mix.

It can also be very exciting, as I said, with voice recordings in j too in any case. I undid everything here, because there is also an exercise for the lazy. Let's put it this way, you can also just select all the blobs with CMD-A or on the PC with CTRL-A and then take an S sound here and bring it down. Then all the atonal parts become a little quieter. But be very careful with that, because then you group all the S sounds together and you can pick up individual sounds, overemphasize others, and perhaps underplay others. That's why it's best to listen to it from start to finish, so you can be sure that with a song that's three minutes long, you've already tuned all the S sounds to some degree.

So the trick is still for the lazy. But let's go to the second part, that is, the dynamics. Dynamics are the distance between the quietest and loudest parts of a song or performance. And the voices are very, very dynamic. And so that your compressor doesn't have to work so hard, you can of course prepare the dynamics with Melodyne, for example. You can also do it manually, but mostly you can do it with Melodyne and now you can use these tone parts here. ..Let's take a look at the front, look, here is a part a little quieter than the next.

Let's take measure 25, so just these spots that we find there, are these. And now you can, with the Sibilance Balance tool you can now... not with the Sibilance Balance tool, with the Amplitude tool you can make these parts the same volume as their other notes. Let's select that, right click and then select the Amplitude tool here. Now, if you click on this tonal part here, you can simply make it louder here or make it quieter, depending on what you intend to do at the time. So, for example, if you have a note that really stands out and is too loud, you can just highlight it and drag it down.

Or if you have a quieter area, you can make it a little louder and balance them all out. And now there is a mega trick for the laziest. So if you are lucky enough to have the Melodyne Editor Edition like I do, which you can see here, it is not included in the small versions, but from the Editor Edition onwards there is a macro and this macro here on the right is called "Macro leveling of grades". And that's really a fantastic tool, especially if you want to edit something over a longer period of time. Just podcast, spoken word, audiobooks or something like that.

But it also works wonderfully with songs, because with this macro you can ensure - as already written above - "Make the low notes louder", that is, make the low notes louder and "Make the high notes quieter", that is, making the high notes quieter. And so you can adjust the loud and quiet parts to each other. And let's do it now. Let's make the low notes 100% louder and the high notes 100% lower. Of course, you will have to check it again later to make sure it was really effective. So always check it. Listen again after such actions, do not take them for granted.

But we'll just do it for demonstration purposes and put it here. Okay and then calculate. .. Ah, I have to select all the notes first, otherwise it won't work of course. So here we just select them all and run the macro again on all the notes that I've marked here. And now Melodyne has taken that into account, but you still can't see it. That's why we just formed our control group. Tough word, and I'll move it to our edited track. Press CMD-B to bounce into place. And right now you will see that the two interpretations are very different, because at the bottom you see the unedited interpretation.

Very dynamic, very wild, very harsh, like the wild nature, and especially the tamed nature of Melodyne, where the dynamics are clearly limited and where you now enter your compressor with a much more balanced signal. Really sensational. This macro is wonderful to work with, especially as I said with podcasts, spoken word and longer content where you can't really listen from start to finish and you want to balance every little dynamic fluctuation. top tip And if you don't want to use Melodyne, or you don't have it, or you prefer to work by hand, then I recommend this video as the next step.

You can take a look here and there. I'll show you exactly how to do it by hand. See you then until then take care and Jassu.