Now that the overdubs are complete and Jacquire and Rich are happy with the vocal comp, Jacquire sits down for one last vocal editing session to make sure the performance is the best it can be can be, before handing it over to Kolton Lee for a final tuning pass.
Watch as Jacquire:
Pockets the lead vocal
Does a final pass of vocal edits to clean transitions, check for clear consonants, breaths, and tuning artifacts
Explains his thoughts on vocal tuning
Discusses copying and pasting vocals from section to section, and pocketing to the band’s performance
Pockets the lead vocal double
Watch Jacquire King produce "Keep The Light On" from Oak & Ash from Start To Finish only on pureMix.net.
00:00:23 So, what I'm gonna do
is go through this
and listen,
clean up my edit points
and if I feel like
something can be
pocketed a little bit better,
I'll do that.
00:00:33 I might decide there's an alternate
performance I wanna look at
and then once I do that,
I'll consolidate the whole file
and then I'm gonna
hand it off to Kolton.
00:00:42 It will be available
to him if there's a
change that can be made
to improve the tuning.
00:01:27 I'm putting a little compression
on the lead vocal,
bringing the effects
back a little bit just so
it shows the timing
and feel of the vocal.
00:01:36 Just making it sound a little more like
how it's gonna get later
in the day with mixing.
00:02:46 I'm actively listening to the timing
but I'm also doing
another task while I do it,
putting the crossfades in,
it kind of helps me not to be
overly focused on just one thing
and kind of just trying to take it all
and together as well.
00:02:59 Obviously, I'm focusing
very much on what
the lead vocal is doing.
00:03:03 I'm sort of doing two things at once,
for the moment,
and then I'll just go back
and kind of listen with my
eyes closed all the way through.
00:03:46 I just wanted to solo that up
and make sure that
the 'T' was really clear on 'note'
and that the breath after
was really natural as well.
00:03:56 The 'T' on the 'note' is a little bit
of a subtle thing
in the performance and I
just wanna make sure that
it's very clear so that the
lyric is understood correctly.
00:04:13 This is the 'k' on
the 'keep',
it's a little bit present so I'm just gonna
get in there and just draw it out.
00:04:35 And I'm finally gonna move some of this,
the time falls behind
just a little bit for me.
00:05:35 We have a Bus 127-128,
we relabeled that as 'Nothing',
sometimes we assign things to 'Nothing'.
00:05:43 But I am gonna quickly...
00:05:46 I'm just curious what
the clean, 'unAuto-Tuned' one sounds
across this note.
00:05:51 Because this maybe
something that I'm gonna ask
Kolton to address.
00:05:58 I'll give it the same treatment of sound.
00:06:04 Obviously, the timing
is a little bit different.
00:06:19 And actually,
sort of a little bit of perspective,
I think that the one that's in
the Auto-Tune track is fine.
00:06:39 I'm gonna turn off
the doubles and the harmonies for now.
00:06:54 Our awesome Clap track is really loud.
00:07:52 Now you may be wondering why
I'm pulling this
ahead of the clean.
00:07:57 You know, sometimes,
his pocket is drifting around a little bit
and I'm correcting it
just based on how it feels.
00:08:04 Another thing that I would say
that I'm not sure that
I mentioned it before
but I definitely wanna be clear about it,
because of the way we were
doing this and Rich was hearing himself,
he was hearing himself
through the Auto-Tune return.
00:08:16 Which he was fine with,
he is accustomed to it,
that he is hearing himself
slightly delayed to the track,
but I think also naturally,
in reality he was singing a little bit
ahead of the track.
00:08:30 Predominantly that's why the clean
it's either just slightly ahead still
or from where we were placing
the Auto-Tune pass that we were hearing
with the pocket of the track
it's in reality sort of slightly ahead
of where we're hearing it,
it has something to do with it but
I believe it's the reality
of him singing to the track
and actually singing slightly ahead
for what he was hearing.
00:09:13 The 'ss' like where this edit is...
00:09:18 are awesome places to make edits.
00:09:27 They can also be difficult
places to make edits.
00:10:13 On the 'know',
I'm looking for an alternate
because it just feels like,
right through here,
this note has to transition
over across a couple of notes.
00:10:22 It rises,
right through here it feels like
it's transitioning a little slow
so this in here is sounding a little
bit under where I want the pitch to be
so I'm just looking for something that
sort of ramps across the interval
a little bit quicker.
00:10:34 So, let's play one more time.
00:10:38 I want the note to be a little bit
higher through here.
00:10:41 So, I'm just kind of seeing
what is available as other takes
before I would go and tune that.
00:10:50 Tuning for me
is sort of a very secondary thing,
you wanna do the work
to get a great performance
and it's really just there to
kind of make the
performance the best it can be.
00:11:02 You can correct pitch,
you can't really correct,
you know,
performance, vibe, energy.
00:11:07 Now, you might be saying:
'Dude, you just recorded
through Auto-Tune."
We recorded through Auto-Tune not
because Rich is not a capable singer.
00:11:15 We recorded purposely
through Auto-Tune because
he's able to sing a slightly different way.
00:11:20 It gives us a sound that we like.
00:11:22 It feels contemporary,
it's more of an artistic choice
as opposed to
something we're doing to
make the vocal sound like,
sung well.
00:11:33 Because it was sung well,
regardless of the tuner.
00:11:40 I think I was liking this
when I heard it.
00:11:47 The problem with that
though it's too short of a 'know'.
00:11:51 So, I need to look
at what maybe a longer option is.
00:12:05 I'm sort of doing
it the awkward way because,
for whatever reason on the lead vocal,
when you have the playlist opened
and you try to solo and switch things,
we get the 'beach ball' a lot.
00:12:13 I'm not really sure why that is.
00:12:38 I feel better about that.
00:13:16 The way the 'know' ends
is preferable
on what we had.
00:13:22 So I'm making that work.
00:13:27 I like the end of that more,
just sort of the
tone and the release
and the sort of the exhale
of the note sounds a little bit
prettier to me and
it just sounds like
it's a more compelling and
exciting performance,
just right there at that particular moment.
00:13:58 You might be asking yourself,
"You copied and pasted
the second Chorus to the first Chorus
and we just observed
you timing the first Chorus.
00:14:08 So, why not just copy what
you've timed in the first Chorus
and make it the second Chorus?"
The band is not copied and pasted there.
00:14:15 There's a little bit of
a nuance in the feel.
00:14:16 So, even though it is the same vocal
I don't copy and paste parts all the time.
00:14:21 Rich and I sort of negotiated
early in the process.
00:14:26 In a way he would probably like to hear
the same Chorus for all the Choruses.
00:14:29 The typical
thing that we got into
doing and negotiating
is that
the first couple Choruses
of the song were the same.
00:14:38 Typically the arrangement and
instrumentation has gotten more...
00:14:40 It's the conclusion of the song,
the band's energy is typically
a bit more up in the last Chorus.
00:14:46 I want a different performance there.
00:14:48 It's also a place that we might decide
we want him to take
a little bit of liberties
with the melody or the phrasing
of the Chorus to kind
of just give it a little bit
of a new flavor.
00:14:59 But I want the copy and paste
in Choruses,
even though it's the same material,
I'm gonna pocket them individually
based on how it sits with the track
because the band's performance
is unique in the Choruses.
00:15:23 So, I'm gonna listen from the top
and just kind of double-check my work.
00:15:28 I made quite a few edits along the way
but I was doing it in small segments
and I wanna listen
from the top and
zoom out to have a bigger picture
and listen to it.
00:15:37 See if the Choruses
feel pocketed the same.
00:15:40 Double-check my work.
00:16:37 I'm just wondering what
my other options are there.
00:16:41 It's not that something
is wrong with it,
but for whatever reason,
it got taken a little bit out.
00:16:48 Who knows?
I just wanna check here.
00:16:51 So, that was 47.
00:16:53 I wanna see what a couple
other things sound like
that are sung very close,
in proximity to that take.
00:17:11 It could be just the timing
that I need to adjust a little bit further
but I'm curious about
the 'I know'.
00:17:22 That won't work.
00:17:36 That was 48.
00:17:39 Let's see 49.
00:17:45 I think it's the 'I'
in 'I know' that I'm not quite
feeling.
00:17:54 I think I'm either gonna leave
it alone or I'm gonna make
this as an optional work.
00:22:44 OK. So, after I've taken
my big second listen,
I moved a couple things.
00:22:49 There was a couple
small timing shifts.
00:22:52 Somethings I revised,
a couple things that I've missed.
00:22:55 And I changed a few edits where I didn't
hear that I had them the way I wanted.
00:22:59 I could hear that there
was and edit there.
00:23:01 So, I'm happy with that,
I feel it's cleaned up.
00:23:04 I'm gonna move on to
just making sure the double
is lined up well.
00:23:09 And then
I'll be ready to consolidate
the lead and double files
and then hand this off to Kolton,
he's gonna double-check
anything and see if
the background vocals,
any of the vocals
need a little bit of a touch-up anywhere.
I haven't really heard
much
of anything on the lead vocal
but he's gonna give it
a more of a microscope listen
with it soloed up
and just make sure.
00:23:36 One of the things
he's gonna be looking for
is making sure that
there's no tuning artifacts
that maybe we could have improved
by doing it a different way.
00:23:46 And then I'm just gonna make sure that
it feels like the notes are transitioning
at the same time,
that it just feels like a nice double,
that the double is not starting
somewhere ahead of the lead
or holding on to stuff too long.
00:23:58 I don't think that's
gonna be the case
but I just
want to go through it
and double-check
that it feels pretty tight with the lead.
00:24:07 Here we go.
00:24:20 So right here
the double is a little
bit ahead of the lead.
00:24:25 And that's OK, it's kind of meant to
give it a little bit of interplay
and thicken it.
00:24:31 It's not like it has to have
a consistent relationship,
overall this little section was
a little bit ahead
in this area, specially here,
and that's fine.
00:24:40 But I'm just kind of averaging
this as opposed to...
00:24:44 It was more like that
which is really ahead
and I can really hear that,
this is a little ahead,
this is a little ahead.
00:24:51 Just kind of
slipping the whole thing back
so it's averaging
that a little better
and sounding a little bit tighter that way.
00:25:04 And you can hear right through here
that the phrasing and
pitch are very tight
because you can hear a little bit
of chorusing happening.
00:25:18 I choose to do this by
editing things by hand
as opposed of using something
like Vocal Align,
Melodyne or Auto-Tune.
00:25:26 You can also
compress, stretch
and get things to line up.
00:25:30 You lose a little bit of audio quality
by doing that,
so I just prefer doing it this way.
00:25:35 It maintains the audio quality,
I'm making the decisions,
not letting
an algorithm analyze
one thing and then
do it to the other.
00:25:46 That's maybe
fine for some people
and a time saver and I don't have
anything specifically against it
but it's just not the way I do it.
It's not for me.
00:26:04 I think the thing that matters most
about the double is that it doesn't,
just in terms of timing, is that
it's ahead of what the lead is doing
or is it hanging on to notes longer
than what the lead is doing.
00:26:15 It's fine if it darts
just a little bit later
and finishes things a little bit earlier,
that's OK.
00:26:22 That also kind of gets
that chorusing color
support out of the way
and it really lets
the lead vocal have
all that sort of more important
dynamic
performance things,
where in-between the notes,
not being filled in
or supporting it.
00:26:40 And you can really just primarily hear the
breath and nuance of the lead vocal.
00:27:03 This is a little moment where
the double was hanging on
a little bit too long.
00:27:07 And so, I just used
the end of this region
because it's ending a little bit
earlier actually.
00:27:15 Now, this edit, as a lead vocal,
may not sound as nice,
you might hear that edit.
00:27:20 But where this is serving its function
this will be just fine.
00:27:24 And it's more important that it gets
off of the note before the
lead or at the same time.
00:27:33 So, I'm just gonna consolidate the lead
and the double vocal,
I'll just leave
the cleanup and the background vocals
to Kolton.
00:27:44 Actually, also what I'll do
is, I'm not gonna change
the track title
but I'm gonna put in here...
00:27:50 We kind of use this
little acronym naming thing.
00:27:55 The first T means 'timed'
and then typically we'll put in
an 'n' and then 'tuned',
that means it's been timed and tuned.
00:28:04 So, we're gonna do that.
00:28:07 So, I'm just renaming the audio files
so that visually it's like,
'Oh yeah, it's been timed'
This is just kind of an
organizational thing, a visual thing.
00:28:16 It also gives whoever
has this next, the confidence
a certain level of work has been performed.
00:28:23 We've got all these vocals timed
and consolidated
and marked them.
00:28:29 I just showed everybody
where I put the 't' in the file,
which means it's timed.
00:28:33 I feel really good
about all this stuff.
00:28:35 I think it's just a matter of
going through a little bit of a
microscope and just making sure that,
cause I didn't solo up
everything everywhere...
00:28:42 Sure.
00:28:42 Make sure there's no tuning artifacts,
I didn't screw up an edit.
00:28:45 There's nothing standing out to me
but there might be some moments
you feel like you
could improve a little bit.
00:28:50 And we'll just kind
of take it from there.
00:28:53 Great, that sounds awesome.
00:28:54 Awesome man, thank you.
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Award-winning Producer, Engineer, and Mixer, Jacquire King, has worked with some of the world’s most influential artists in every role you can imagine in a recording studio. From being an acclaimed recordist to mixing and producing multi-platinum records (9X in the case of Kings Of Leon) by superstars like Kaleo, Modest Mouse, Kings of Leon, Tom Waits, Norah Jones, Buddy Guy, Cold War Kids, MuteMath, Melissa Etheridge, and James Bay.
To date, Jacquire has received several awards for his meticulous attention to detail and unique approach to creating records that withstand the test of time.
His discography is well-known for the variety of music encompassed from the past 20 years. When you see Jacquire’s tutorials on pureMix, you will have the chance to sit next to a true master at work, who strives to enhance the artist's vision and serve the songs he helps deliver to the masses.
Excellent, as all sessions were recorded. Thanks much for doing this. Great band, great song, great mixer/engineer.
a2c
2021 Feb 06
Great series! Thanks so much!
To tighten the double vocals, would you not recommend using the VocAlign type of software? If not, why would you prefer to tighten manually?
Thanks!
A2C
ben641
2021 Feb 06
Thank you for the Vocal Editing Masterclass! I learned a lot.
Danbouch
2021 Feb 06
Just got Vocalign Ultra to take care of those pesky BGV problems :)
John Francis
2021 Feb 05
Jacquire is a true Pro, Cant wait to maybe get these Trax in a Competition, Please!!!...
