vocal takes question

[tonyscarbones]

on average, when you produce and record vocal takes for your artists, how many takes do they normally need to get it pretty much on point to flow to the beat good?

do they walk in and just do it in 1 or 2 times?

and on average, how many times do most of your artists punch-in within a verse?

just curious, becuz i've worked with dude's that punch-in every 4 bars and also artists that do an entire verse in one take

the one-take artist seems like halfway thru the verse his vocals didn't have the energy it did in the beginning, and as far as the 4 bar punch-in guy, i had to tweak his vocals in protools a bit more for punch-in crossfades, but the finished product sounded way better since he had that vocal energy throughout the entire verse

an average, what are your methods????

[Mossberg]

Of course it depends on the artist, but I am an asshole of an engineer, so it takes a lot to satisfy me before we can move on to another section of a song. I think artists are starting to hate me (until they here how perfect the money take sounds when they finally spit it out).

I have only had a handful of one take verses in the last decade.


Oh yeah, I HATE punch-ins and refuse to do them. Unless the part absolutely requires it, we record it natural without punches.

This is why I could never engineer in a commercial facility since I would drive the artists crazy. Most of my engineering gigs are by request from artists that I've worked with and know the end results of my madness, so they put up with me.

With that being said, I prefer to arrange the music instead of the engineering aspect. I do mix my shit though.

[tonyscarbones]

so a good amount of artists do the punch-in's?

i noticed on listening to jay-z kingdom come album he seems to punch-in every 4-6 bars and cover it with adlib's at the punch to kinda hide it

and underground rappers like ill bill it's noticable as hell

so when you do those money-takes, does it wear down the vocalist and take alot of time and breaks to get done?

[feedback711]

Originally Posted by tonyscarbones

so a good amount of artists do the punch-in's?

i noticed on listening to jay-z kingdom come album he seems to punch-in every 4-6 bars and cover it with adlib's at the punch to kinda hide it

and underground rappers like ill bill it's noticable as hell

so when you do those money-takes, does it wear down the vocalist and take alot of time and breaks to get done?

look if you want to get good vocal takes do this

have the artist do one take. if there is a couple of strong parts in that take then keep it,mute it select your next track and do it over. listen for him or her to do a couple of good parts that they may have not hit on the first take. do this about 4 or 5 times. now go back and listen to the takes one by one marking the excelent parts with markers.
cut out the good parts from each take and place them on one track and contruct a good take,
i have some artist that are really good about practicing before they record so it may only take them 3 takes because they did 50 before they came and they know exactly how they want it to sound, its just a matter of not slipping till they get it down, other people i record smoke weed and lose focus or forget to do a part the way it was ment.

this also helps me. before your artist hops in the booth have them stand up and rap or sing there part to you the way they want you to hear it. this will break that innitial anticipation of kicking off a session and serves as a warm up for the artist. i use this to guage how" in the zone" the artist is gona be. the more "in the zone they are" the more productive they are.


hope this helped

[PettyCash]

The best thing to do is to try looking for an opportunity to sit in on a professional studio session (which usually means doing an internship) and see what you can learn and take back from it to your own recording situations.

A lot of pros deal with "comping" and chopp and slice multiple takes in order to put together one absolutely perfect sounding take. This is definitely most true when dealing with singers.

When working with rappers and attempting to put together verses via comping, you have to take care to make sure that the way all the words flow together sounds as natural as possible. This might require doing some crossfading between words to get them to flow into each other.

Trying to hide it poor connections between words/phrases with adlibs usually baits you out.

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by PettyCash

The best thing to do is to try looking for an opportunity to sit in on a professional studio session (which usually means doing an internship) and see what you can learn and take back from it to your own recording situations.

A lot of pros deal with "comping" and chopp and slice multiple takes in order to put together one absolutely perfect sounding take. This is definitely most true when dealing with singers.

When working with rappers and attempting to put together verses via comping, you have to take care to make sure that the way all the words flow together sounds as natural as possible. This might require doing some crossfading between words to get them to flow into each other.

Trying to hide it poor connections between words/phrases with adlibs usually baits you out.

yeah - you shouldn't need to try to hide it! I'd imagine Jay-Z's style is like that on purpose.

to get punch-ins tight, all you need to do is to get the talent to rap along with what he's already done, punch in for the line, punch out again - tape style. That way the flow fits, and there's leeway to move the drop a word or 2 either way for a good edit. (that's using pro-tools and quickpunch btw...I assume you can do the same sort of thing in any software).

And some people can do 1 take brilliantly, then go downhill...some people need a good few takes to warm up and then hit a good one or two...some do good bits and bad bits consistently and need comping/punching. A good engineer (and at this point, vocal producer - there's a lot of coaching the singer involved) should be able to cope with any variant of this.

[Mossberg]

Originally Posted by tonyscarbones

so when you do those money-takes, does it wear down the vocalist and take alot of time and breaks to get done?

It doesn't take too much time if the artist is decent and actually rehearsed the verses before the session. The verses written on the spot are the ones that take the most time to get the money take. But again, if the artist is decent, it shouldn't take too long.

There are good days and bad days though for everyone. I still think it's worth it in the end as the product sounds more natural than when you comp the verse.