Tips for the vocal tracks?

[ccarollo]

Anyone have any tips or utilities they find useful for doing the vocal tracking? I'm working on a song that's pretty growly (think burly southern rock), so doing it all by ear is going to be quite the challenge.

Anyone tried feeding the vocal tracks into something like a FFT to at least get the relative frequencies of each phrase?

[trg007]

Use the ReaSynth effect so you can hear the notes you're charting and find the matching pitch for each syllable. If it's growly as in there is not a definite pitch, then you can use non-pitched (talky) lyrics.

[ccarollo]

Thanks -- I'm totally new to this, so is there a particular way that I'm supposed to use ReaSynth? I went to my vocal track's fx menu, added VSTi: ReaSynth (****os)...and I'm not sure what else to do. I play my track and it sounds exactly the same. I tried adding it to my guitar track too just in case the vocals weren't pitchy enough, but nothing happened there either, so I must be doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what.

Edit: Oh, read through some more of the docs and I was misunderstanding what ReaSynth does. I thought it analyzed the vocal track, but it just makes your midi tracking audible. Not nearly as useful, but it is something.

[Podruvan360]

I'm not sure if I'm doing you any favors by saying this, but Melodyne is a program that does kind of what you're looking for. It's expensive, though, and not as accurate as the ear is. It's mostly for producing music, not analyzing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFCjv4_jqAY

[trg007]

Thanks -- I'm totally new to this, so is there a particular way that I'm supposed to use ReaSynth? I went to my vocal track's fx menu, added VSTi: ReaSynth (****os)...and I'm not sure what else to do. I play my track and it sounds exactly the same. I tried adding it to my guitar track too just in case the vocals weren't pitchy enough, but nothing happened there either, so I must be doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what.

Edit: Oh, read through some more of the docs and I was misunderstanding what ReaSynth does. I thought it analyzed the vocal track, but it just makes your midi tracking audible. Not nearly as useful, but it is something.

If you use the RBNTemplate, the ReaSynth is already added to your instrument tracks with the proper settings. It plays your notes audibly, which you can use as you're charting. You obviously need to be able to hear if two notes are the same or different pitch, so if you're tone deaf, you'll need to enlist the help of someone else who has an ear for pitch to do your vocal authoring.

EDIT ^ I've heard Melodyne can do a pretty good job of transcribing your vocal track into MIDI notes, if you can afford such a program. There is a similar function available in Reaper but the MIDI notes it generates are 99% garbage notes and it's more work to clean it up than it is to place your notes from scratch, so that plugin should be avoided like the Plague.

[ccarollo]

If you use the RBNTemplate, the ReaSynth is already added to your instrument tracks with the proper settings. It plays your notes audibly, which you can use as you're charting. You obviously need to be able to hear if two notes are the same or different pitch, so if you're tone deaf, you'll need to enlist the help of someone else who has an ear for pitch to do your vocal authoring.

Hahaha, thanks. I did just fine with the bass/guitar so I'm not totally tone-deaf, but that's more just "did this go up or down" and "is note X between notes Y and Z or above or below them". The vocal track is going to mean I need to hit the actual notes!

Thanks again for the help.

[ccarollo]

So thinking about this -- in-game, it's clearly taking a solo vocal track (me singing) and turning it into a pitch. It's sort of annoying that they don't make this functionality available to song authors. Additionally, it means that it's quite possible that inputting the master vocal track to a RB song will not successfully hit all notes, which seems "wrong" to me.

Here's hoping they make that functionality available at some point. Even if it's rough, it'd be way easier to clean that up than do each note by ear from scratch.

[DavyinaToga]

Additionally, it means that it's quite possible that inputting the master vocal track to a RB song will not successfully hit all notes

Magma actually prevents that. As the song is being packaged, Magma will compare the dry vocal reference (that extra stem that's never heard in game) to the vocal MIDI, so if the singer is slightly off pitch, the game will ease the ratings and give the player a little more room to fudge the pitch. And if the dryvox reference doesn't line up with the vocal MIDI enough, then Magma will shoot out an error and refuse to finish the song package.