Stacking Backing Vox

Hi, are you guys using vocalign to tighten up the BGV stacks… or just by hand?

I tend to use a combination of manual, vocalign and melodyne. Often it depends on the material you’re working on - the timbre of the vocal, speed of the line being delivered and how tight you want to make the vocals to each other.

Vocalign can be really helpful in some situations, especially if you need to hear things tightened quickly in the room with an artist.

For the final version, I usually find that timing manually sounds cleaner and tend to go back and tighten manually.

Melodyne is really good if you want to match vocal swoops/movements.

Whichever way you find sounds best in your track, the most important thing is to spend time on all of the vocals vocals - check each backing vocal individually. I can easily spend a day or more on a vocal edit.

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By hand is the best way ! (Though it can get a bit tedious when you’re dealing with a lot of layers). I always get the lead feeling perfect before moving to the BGV. The lead serves as both an audible and visual aid while working BVs. I adjust lengths by slicing on zero up crossings and shortening or lengthening by increments of the wavelength. I’m less precious with consonant sounds though - like a “t” or “s” isn’t as audibly noticeable if it’s edited in random spot. Also on the subject of consonants and vocal editing - always cut in the untuned consonants cause that’s where you really hear artifacts! <3

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I know nobody asked me lol but may be helpful:

As Oli said, if you need to hear things tight fast, it’s great. But I would get them pretty close by hand and then try to Vocalign if you really need to sound super tight and clean like Ciara or something. And then manually check each one for artifacts. If it’s only 6 or 8 layers the artifacts will come through, but if you’re like 30 layers in, you may be able to get away with a few artifacts. And if you vocalign too tightly it can start to sound phase-y, so proceed with caution. Any smaller timing issues in the original guide vocals will become even more magnified with overly tight vocaligning. Also it may be a placebo but I’ve always found Vocalign less artifact-y in Cubase than in ProTools? :woman_shrugging:t2:

Matching the “swoops”, entrances and exits in Melodyne is the most under-rated tool, in my opinion, for shaping layers.

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