Background Vocals Hard Work........

Quick question for engineers or anyone with experience. In main stream R&B songs by artist such as Usher,Ciara,Omarion,Mario etc, do they stack their background harmonies track by track individually or do they use some sort of harmony machine. Some of these vocals sound to perfect to have recorded individually. If they do record individually how do they get that pure perfect pitch and dynamics. Personally background vocals are the most difficult thing to record in my opinion because of the time consumption of making sure every harmony is perfectly performed and then blended.
Holla Back......

www.soundclick.com/bands/2/ferocious2kmusic.htm

Big commercial studios have more toys than we do. I know of one place that uses a harmony machine and you could never tell the difference. Then there are people who just specialize in singing backrounds, in house backround singers and what not

Doyou know how this machine works. Do you just sing one part and it adds the haromies for you. I'm cnfused on how this works. I thought about purchasing one of these but i wasn't sure if it was what I was looking for.

Holla Back.....

dude your looking over the most important part here. harmonisers, as in vocalists are trained, so beautifully well, when they do three or four takes of the track, they can just about replicate the original. and those background singers dont come cheap.
i would think you dont have that outlay, so i would think your relying on software.
normally, at least let the vocalist do the take aouot 4 to 5 times, at least. if they not really up to scrratch on the singing, and even if they are, it gives you room to pick choose and refuse.

harmonisers do work, but the more expensive ones,
the way i sed to do it was to lay out the tracks, the best takes,
lets say take 1 is perfect, unlikely, but for arguments sake. take 2 is on a shakey strt, ok middle, and awful ending, u would cut and paste take one begining to takes 2 begining, and takes ones end to the takes 2 end,
continue doing this until u have 4 layers of good takes. very time consuming, and your ears have to be up oon par to this, (one key role in becoming a producer)
when the tracks are all laid out, shift the strt time between each track slightly, by ticks, some forward, some backwards, this is what creates the harmonising.
the real thing to do is to do 8 takes then layer them, since each take is going to be sung oh so lsightly different, this is what creates tht sweet "uuuuuu", by shifting the timing of the tracks u are replicating this. also eg sparingly, and u should be in bussiness.
u can check out

http://www.antarestech.com/
for software solutions, and pitch correction

goodluck,
tell us how it goes.

1

In my opinion though.... no harmonizing machine can take the place of pure talent.....

yeah i agree but you cant argue that the pop, rnb, hell most vocal led styles are simply covered in auto-tune...
greg

it is a combination of things. the first being comping of vocals. the second thing is getting down good takes and the third is minor adjustments to a flat note with antares autotune. harmonizers don't fool anyone.

the reason why songs on the radio sound different from the ones u record is that for each vocal u record, whether it is a harmony or not needs to be stacked 2 to three times. this means that the singer resings the part and u mix them together. so if in a chorus u have three harmornies accompanying the main vocal, then u are looking at about 8 tracks.

The singer will hate u for making them sing this much, but when they hear the results , they will understand.

Beat God wrote:it is a combination of things. the first being comping of vocals. the second thing is getting down good takes and the third is minor adjustments to a flat note with antares autotune. harmonizers don't fool anyone.

the reason why songs on the radio sound different from the ones u record is that for each vocal u record, whether it is a harmony or not needs to be stacked 2 to three times. this means that the singer resings the part and u mix them together. so if in a chorus u have three harmornies accompanying the main vocal, then u are looking at about 8 tracks.

The singer will hate u for making them sing this much, but when they hear the results , they will understand.

True Story

is tht any different from what i said, or rather typed,
i was in no way saying tht u can beat natural talent, probaly u cats must have mis interpreted what i have said,
anyway i guess we all get the point
either missed or targeted

Phatz wrote:

Beat God wrote:it is a combination of things. the first being comping of vocals. the second thing is getting down good takes and the third is minor adjustments to a flat note with antares autotune. harmonizers don't fool anyone.

the reason why songs on the radio sound different from the ones u record is that for each vocal u record, whether it is a harmony or not needs to be stacked 2 to three times. this means that the singer resings the part and u mix them together. so if in a chorus u have three harmornies accompanying the main vocal, then u are looking at about 8 tracks.

The singer will hate u for making them sing this much, but when they hear the results , they will understand.

True Story

if thts the case then they shouldnt be involved in an any forms of recording / peroeming arts. and as a peoducerm you should have them develop a trust in your judgement and works, tht such a thing would never cross thier minds, (anger)
if your working with pro singers or harmonisers, compression would be hardly needed, as they would have great voice control, stepping away from the mic, when hitting higher and stronger phrases.

if you aint 100 on compressing, i wouls stay away, u can do it more harm than good

.

i have been in the music making biz for 15 years and i am only 27. the first thing i learned is that performers have egos. doubling and tripling a line to make tight takes of the same part is difficult to do.

it is also very time consuming. the result is magical, but the process isn't fun. it seems that rappers complain the most about recording like this. they all understand after they hear how phat the vocals sound, but in the begining they cant quite grasp the concept.

work in this business for a while and u will see that artists think they know it all, no matter how many platinum plaques u have on the wall.

skalawathose background singers dont come cheap.

What's that line about backing singers being much more talented & experienced than the "artist" ...... but they just don't look as good ..... ?