Continuing with Vocal Production, Vance cues up his assistant engineer, Mike Fahey, to edit and tune the vocals before moving on to background vocals and additional production.
Watch as Mike Fahey:
Creates the "Super Comp"
Teaches his Melodyne tips, tricks and speed hacks
Melodynes the vocals.
Watch as Vance:
Produces and records the background vocals
Sets up a Vocoder patch and sends the background vocals through to thicken up the choruses.
Processes the vocoder tracks blend in with the track aesthetically.
00:00:23 Now, everybody,
I'd like to get young Mike
to do a little work
on the lead vocal.
00:00:31 Alright everyone. So, I'm going to
go ahead and tune this lead vocal,
I have to put a plug-in,
Melodyne plug-in on the track.
00:00:43 Here we go.
00:00:46 And one thing about this plug-in
is it does take a little bit of time
to load all of the information that
you wanna tune into the plug-in.
00:00:55 We're gonna go ahead and
select here at the bottom.
00:00:59 That first section that I want,
I'm gonna hit transfer on here,
it's kind of like record enable
for a track in the plug-in.
00:01:07 And then you go ahead
and press 'space bar'.
00:01:16 And then we just have to wait
as this plays back in real-time
for it to be loaded into the plug-in
before I can manipulate it.
00:01:28 OK, I'm gonna jump to
this next Verse here,
keep recording the track.
00:01:40 So now we have that whole
track loaded in the plug-in,
we can zoom out and see
all of our information here.
00:01:48 And we go to the top,
I'm gonna zoom in and get my...
00:01:52 everything in order here,
the controls for zooming in,
the shortcut is Opt+Cmd...
00:01:58 and then you can click,
so left and right,
kind of zooms horizontally.
00:02:04 Up and down
makes it so the notes
are a little bit bigger,
or thinner, up and down.
00:02:12 And then diagonally,
if you go up in a way,
that kind of drags the whole screen out
without moving those
horizontal and vertical parameters,
if you down into the right,
that zooms everything in.
00:02:24 It's a little bit tricky,
but once you get used to it,
that's how you zoom in
and out for this plug-in.
00:02:31 If you Ctrl+click that
brings out your tools.
00:02:35 Normally this main tool, you can
do a lot with that as far as
moving the notes up and down,
and what you wanna pay attention to
is this line within the waveform.
00:02:45 This kind of bubble
shape that you see here,
that's the overall waveform,
the sound of it,
but the line is where the pitch center is.
00:02:53 That's what you kind of wanna
pay attention as far as
moving it within the note.
00:02:58 The center of that line
is where you want to be
in the center of the note.
00:03:03 With this, like I said, this main tool,
if you just right-click
you can drag up and down
and kind of center it
where it's supposed to be.
00:03:12 It looks like that
note was a little sharp
so I'm gonna bring it back down.
00:03:16 And then, if you want the overall shape
of the note
there's kind of dips and valleys.
00:03:22 There's a couple other tools on here
that are pretty useful
to help straighten that out.
00:03:26 I don't wanna flat line tune this,
it's not what we're looking for.
00:03:30 I just wanna make it sound natural,
Melodyne is a great plug-in for that.
00:03:33 I think that as far as a lot of the
auto-tune plug-ins,
Melodyne is the most
transparent of them all.
00:03:39 So, Ctrl+click.
00:03:41 So the main tool can be used
to drag the note up and down,
that's kind of
one of its main uses.
00:03:50 And then also if you focus on
the top of the note, if you wanna
do a note separation anywhere,
you'll see if you get to the top
edge of this waveform it starts
to change from an
arrow to that split.
00:04:02 And if you double click,
that separates the note.
00:04:04 So that's the kind of
two main uses for that.
00:04:08 The other tools I use a lot,
you can scroll over here,
Ctrl+click to the pitch tool,
and there's Pitch,
the pitch tool itself just moves
the note up and down.
00:04:17 Pitch modulation,
that one definitely
kind of flat-lines
the note itself and then 'pitch drift'
is what I use a lot.
00:04:26 You're note flat lining the note,
you're just kind of smoothing it out.
00:04:30 So, we'll see what happens
here when I do that...
00:04:33 to the first note here.
00:04:41 So we just see, if I drag down
that tends to
kind of even things out,
if I drag up and go the other
way it actually adds more drift.
00:04:53 That's what we don't want so
I'm gonna undo those moves.
00:04:58 So I'm just gonna go about that and,
about this track,
I'm gonna move this note down a little bit,
it seems a little sharp.
00:05:06 And then I'm going to use pitch
drift tool and kind of even it out.
00:05:11 At the start of this note,
it's a pretty big transient
so I'm just gonna listen
to it in the track
and see how natural
that sounds to me.
00:05:21 There's a little vibrato at the end,
that's natural to me to
so I'm not really gonna try
and mess with that too much.
00:05:27 I'll go to these
next two words here.
00:05:35 Basically all I'm doing is
centering the note with he main tool
then using the pitch drift tool
to kind of smooth out
the overall pitch line.
00:05:48 Let's listen to that.
00:05:49 And one of the things,
to play you have to
click on the waveform in the edit window.
00:05:56 The only way you can playback
in this window
is with the main tool,
to double click,
but there won't be any other music,
it will just be soloed.
00:06:07 But I find that
listening to the pitch
and seeing how it fits in the song
with the rest of the instrumentation
is the best way to know
how well you're doing
with the tuning.
00:06:19 And so you have to click down here,
it's a little extra step
but I just have the track
at the bottom of this
window so I'm able to
quickly go down here,
click where I'm at
or progress and hit play.
00:06:36 Alright, that sounds good to
me so I'm gonna keep going.
00:06:43 This next note,
it seems to be a little bit...
00:06:46 There's a little bit more than just
normal drift, like this last notes.
00:06:50 So I'm gonna use the
modulation tool and kind of
smooth that out a little
bit more to my liking.
00:06:55 Not too much.
00:06:57 We'll listen to that in the track.
00:07:03 This last note is a little sharp
so I'm gonna pull that down.
00:07:07 Listen again.
00:07:13 This one is sharp as well down here
so I'm gonna split this
because the first part
seems pretty sharp
but the rest of the waveform
is actually
flat so,
if I double click here it splits
this so I can...
00:07:27 kind of straighten this out
on their own.
00:07:29 So I'm gonna move this first one down.
00:07:33 Second half up.
00:07:35 Now, this creates a little bit
of a situation in between the notes
and there's another
function of the pitch tool
that I'll show you here to smooth that
separation of notes out.
00:07:48 When you go to the pitch tool
then you have this little
yellow kind of golden lines
that go in-between,
you can, if you hover over either edge,
it's usually the front half of this,
you can click
and move
up or down and that
smooths the transition
between the waveforms.
00:08:10 So I'm not gonna mess with that one but...
00:08:12 in-between here is what
I want straighten out
because there's a
pretty big dip in there.
00:08:16 So if I click here and go up,
it smooths that right out.
00:08:21 So let's listen to that.
00:08:27 And I'm gonna use the pitch drift tool
to kind of straighten out
this vibrato at the end,
to get that a little bit more centered,
maybe we can move up a little bit.
00:08:41 Great.
00:08:43 Alright, moving on.
00:08:58 Now, I'm going to commit the track
to save all the processing that I've done
on this tuning here.
So we're gonna hide this window,
I'll go to the Edit window,
I'm gonna right-click
the name track plate,
go down to 'commit'.
00:09:15 And I always like to
'consolidate clips',
'selected tracks', that's all fine.
00:09:21 Source tracks I wanna
hide and make inactive,
I don't wanna delete it but
I wanna be able to go back
and have the alternate playlist in it,
so I always do 'hide and make inactive'.
00:09:32 I'm gonna do that and give
it some time to commit.
00:09:37 So there's our lead vocal
tuned.
00:09:47 So Vance also wanted me to
take a look at these doubles,
and I think I can
experiment here, I think I can
do all these at once with Melodyne.
00:10:01 So I'm gonna assign
6 plug-ins
one to each track,
then within the plug-in,
if you go up here to the tracks,
you can see
on this top left,
all of these plug-ins here,
so if I highlight all of them,
enable transfer buttons,
basically like arming the track,
and then I Shift+Click
these waveforms,
Shift+Click all these waveforms,
we should be able
to see all 6 tracks load into the plug-in.
00:10:40 Let's start at the
top of the first Chorus here,
and load them all in.
00:11:14 Great, and now we have
everything loaded in, zoom out.
00:11:18 Go to the top here.
00:11:21 This can get a little messy
with all these tracks.
00:11:25 The trick is to use the main tool
and make sure that every
underneath layer is highlighted.
00:11:35 So I think if I
highlight all of this, use the pitch tool
and you double click,
that will center everything for me,
to kind of find the pitch center,
and then I can go from there
and use the pitch drift tools
to further smooth out
the lines as I see fit.
00:12:44 We have got a background vocal to do
over the top of these big doubles.
00:12:49 Yeah yeah yeah, we're here.
Are you there?
I'm here.
00:12:52 - Alright, here we go.
- Alright baby, alright.
00:13:23 Alright, cool. We need
'trying so hard to escape'.
00:13:27 And the last line.
00:13:53 OK, one more time on the first one.
00:13:56 Straight, didn't go up.
00:14:23 Great, let's do a double.
00:14:24 Alright.
00:14:54 Just those two lines again.
00:15:19 Yeah, 'way' is still a little wonky.
00:15:22 Give me some instruction
on what's wrong
because it's hard to hear in the
mix with everything else...
00:15:26 OK, what you want turned off?
It's just you're little flat.
00:15:32 Flat. OK, great.
00:15:48 Alright, let me listen.
00:15:57 One more time on the first one again,
on that line again for the first take.
00:16:01 OK.
00:16:14 Alright cool, next one.
Are you ready?
Yeah.
00:16:48 Alright, cool.
We're gonna do a little work on it.
00:16:51 I think you're done.
00:16:52 Cool.
00:16:53 Come on in.
00:16:54 And let's get the Vocoder.
00:16:56 OK, I'll bring it in.
00:16:58 I'm gonna switch this to mic
so you can sing along.
00:17:03 I'll set the level, sing along.
00:17:04 Are you feeding that
with the vocal chain?
Yeah, we are.
00:17:09 21, 22, straight to...
00:17:12 I think we reset when we unplugged.
00:17:16 It's on vocoder but the patch...
00:17:21 All set here.
00:17:24 Keep going man.
00:17:30 OK, cool, let me get this going first.
00:17:37 OK, play a little bit.
00:18:00 Alright Jeff.
00:18:02 Hold on one second here,
I got get this all together so this works.
00:18:37 OK, cool.
00:18:38 So,
this is gonna be in
the Choruses right?
There comes the first Chorus.
00:18:45 We'll see how that works.
00:19:15 Awesome, now...
00:19:17 Put that an octave up?
Play the same thing, same thing.
00:19:50 Beautiful.
00:19:52 Tight.
00:19:53 We can do the high one
in the next Chorus.
00:19:55 - Are you ready?
- The high one? Same one?
Let's do the high one.
00:20:28 I think that's correct.
00:20:30 Let me just try something here Jeff.
Stick with me here.
00:20:34 Let's see what happens
when you 'roto' the signal.
00:20:40 So,
we're gonna do the high one.
00:20:43 Let's just to the high one here.
00:21:15 Cool, let's do the next one.
00:21:49 Cool, awesome.
00:22:05 Great, it's gonna be awesome.
00:22:12 OK, here,
in Pro Tools right now you kind of
see me make a little subgroup here.
00:22:17 So what I'm gonna do is
I'm building a subgroup
just so I can put a little bit of
shmooth on this.
00:22:28 I'm gonna do a couple little things here.
00:22:35 On my favorite plug-ins here,
I love what it does.
00:22:49 This is a ValhallaFreqEcho.
00:22:52 It's a free plug-in,
it's absolutely free.
00:23:04 And I'm gonna put a little
bit of compression on this.
00:23:10 I'll treat it like a vocal.
00:23:13 Literally.
00:23:46 And then,
group.
00:23:56 And just a little bit of
reverb here.
00:24:57 OK, cool.
00:24:59 There's one little thing
that still needs to be done.
00:25:01 But I'm gonna leave that to the
morning if that's OK to everybody.
00:25:07 And that is,
I'm gonna have Mike touch up these
background vocals,
of Jake's,
if that's cool to everybody.
00:25:29 You're gonna see me do something here,
I'm gonna insert
some
tracks from another session,
this is just kind of a common
vocal processing
chain that I do in-the-box
before it hits the console.
00:25:47 We'll talk a little bit
more about this tomorrow
but it really works well for me.
00:25:53 I'll be happy to show
everybody what it is.
00:25:57 It's really nice, it's just these three...
00:26:01 these 3 plug-ins here.
00:28:05 I got this dumb idea right here,
it might be cool.
00:28:08 You got a dumb idea in the
middle of my drum solo?
Yeah, I'll do that tomorrow.
00:29:18 Alright.
00:29:19 Vance, have you hit
Cmd+S since this morning?
Oh, shit!
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Vance studied electrical engineering in Missouri and started his career in live sound as a front-of-house engineer. In 2002, he moved to Nashville in order to become studio manager and chief engineer at the legendary Black Bird studios in Nashville. In 2006, he co-founded Sputnik studios along with Grammy-winning engineer Mitch Dane, still in Nashville.
Vance Powell has won 6 Grammy awards working with rock artists such as The Raconteurs, Kings of Leon, Jack White, Pearl Jam, The White Stripes, The Dead Weather and more.
Powell's domain of expertise is definitely mixing and producing rock music. As shown in his pureMix videos, Vance likes to experiment and create new fuller and exciting sounds using all kinds of pedals, echos, analog outboards and plug-ins. Vance was used to recording to tape and definitely has an analog approach that makes him commit to fewer good sounding tracks rather than piling up takes in Pro Tools.
His goal is to make something new and warm that fits the band's vision with upfront snare drums and powerful guitars. Rocking.
