Fitting house music vocals into a dnb tune

Quotec

Active Member
Joined
Jun 30, 2013
How to do that the right way? I personally use FL and I have a 128BPM vocal to be quantized to 174BPM track. Just detecting the tempo and fitting it with a specific function do not result in good sounding. What else can I do? I am completely stupid when it comes to manually fitting because I got no whatsoever rhythm feel, everytime I make something that sounds good to me other people just complain about vocals being out of tune. I can´t detect and fix it!
 
To find the tuning of a vocal I sometimes just retrace the key of the track that it was in. Might sound dumb of simplistic, but that usually works...
If it's not from a song, what I do to find the key of samples/instruments/vocals is loop the first very small part of the sample en play a note over it (piano or low sine works the best for me). Just go up the notes until you find a match. The other thing you can do is slap a tuner on the master channel/channel where the vocal is. but I'm not sure if that'll work for vocals. You might get a general idea though
 
Divide the bpm's (174/128 = 136) set the mul knob on the sampler window of the vocal to 136%. If that doesn't work switch the numbers around (128/174)
 
It's all about the vocal sample, some of them just won't work and won't have the right feel to them if you're wanting to use a decent section of it and don't want to cut it up. As Crizis said, the key is vital to it sounding right aswell. I'm not sure if you can slice to new midi tracks in FL, but a cool we trick I've found in Ableton to adjust vocals to fit the tempo is to warp the vocals so as all of the plosives are warped to the beats as best as possible, and then slice them to a new midi track at a quantity of your choice (16th, 8th notes etc), then draw in the midi notes representing the samples, and as you warped the plosives you'll beable to control the feel and swing of the vocals with just the one piano roll. It's also a bit easier being able to visualise it in a midi track. Hope this helps!

 
Here's what I do: I open up the sample on Edison, and right-click the blank space left to the name of tha sample. It'll pop up a screen where you can edit some parameters of the sample. On the "tempo" part, put 128, and then save the sample.

Now, change the tempo of the project to 128bpm, and drop the sample (with the BPM edit you did) to the playlist, and on the channel settings, right-click the "time" knob, choose "auto something (i forgot the name)", and then click on "project tempo" button. Now, you'll se a little menu right to the time knob, which is saying "resample". Click it, and choose "speech". Now, you whenever you change the tempo of the project, it'll automatically change the tempo of the sample as well.

I hope I helped.
 
just click on it, "fit to tempo"

put in the bpm. go to channel properties, right click on the pitch and click "put to original key" or something along the lines.
 
It might not work.
If you speed it up, to 174 it might just sound too fast to be natural.
You could slow it down and try it at halftime, 87 bpm, but then it might sound unnaturally slow.
Or you could chop it up and trigger the slices to the beat, for a glitchy effect.
It's never going to sound prefectly natural, so if you want it to sound natural you'll have to use a different sample.
 
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It might not work.
If you speed it up, to 174 it might just sound too fast to be natural.
You could slow it down and try it at halftime, 87 bpm, but then it might sound unnaturally slow.
Or you could chop it up and trigger the slices to the beat, for a glitchy effect.
It's never going to sound prefectly natural, so if you want it to sound natural you'll have to use a different sample.

Depends on the song, IMO. If it's too fast for 174bpm, I don't see why slowing it down to 160, or even 150 bpm.
 
Eh?
I don't think you can put an 160bpm vocal in a 174bpm track. Is that not what you meant?

I may have chosen the wrong words. Taking in consideration what I suggested to the OP to make the sample in 128bpm fit a 174bpm project, this sample will be linked to the project tempo. So, if it sounds unnatural (or too fast) on a 174bpm project, you can slow the project tempo to 160 or 150 bpm, and the sample too will be slowed down to 160 or 150bpm.
 
Thank you all! Dark gave a sound advice - I went the Edison way(searched up some tutorials) and basically it seems that it worked out. Vocal has pretty much okay-ish speed and I think it suits the flow better. Next step would be to try even out some stuff with Newtone.
 
I may have chosen the wrong words. Taking in consideration what I suggested to the OP to make the sample in 128bpm fit a 174bpm project, this sample will be linked to the project tempo. So, if it sounds unnatural (or too fast) on a 174bpm project, you can slow the project tempo to 160 or 150 bpm, and the sample too will be slowed down to 160 or 150bpm.
Gotcha
 
It's all about the vocal sample, some of them just won't work and won't have the right feel to them if you're wanting to use a decent section of it and don't want to cut it up. As Crizis said, the key is vital to it sounding right aswell. I'm not sure if you can slice to new midi tracks in FL, but a cool we trick I've found in Ableton to adjust vocals to fit the tempo is to warp the vocals so as all of the plosives are warped to the beats as best as possible, and then slice them to a new midi track at a quantity of your choice (16th, 8th notes etc), then draw in the midi notes representing the samples, and as you warped the plosives you'll beable to control the feel and swing of the vocals with just the one piano roll. It's also a bit easier being able to visualise it in a midi track. Hope this helps!


I'll have to give something like this a shot myself. I use Ableton. I have house vocals with the tempo & key included in the sample name... But I still can't get it to sound right. I though there was a way to "tell" ableton the tempo of the sample, and then the tempo you want it to be... Then press enter and it will stretch (or shrink) to the correct tempo. I know in cubase I could do this.

So far I've just been trying to warp the vocals the best I can. Vocals are not my strong point by far. Always been a mystery for me to get the things sounding correct. Only times I've had it happen was when I got lucky or built a song around the vocal.

:: sent from android with tapatalk ::
 
For the record: I recently "discovered" a new way of fitting a sample to the tempo project (In FL Studio) that pretty easy: At the top left corner of the playlist, you'll see the word "stretch" and a little circle right beside it. You click on that, then go to the waveform of the sample you dropped earlier on the playlist, and click+drag to the desired lenght. It'll follow what you have chosen on the sample channel "timestretching" settings (resample, pro transient, speech, etc.)
 
Check out this thread.

Pretty cool info. Most makes since to me and also explains the fact that some vocal samples will just never fit or work correctly in a project. A lot of it was over my head at the moment though.

I'm currntly looking for a way to take a short vocal sample were I already know the tempo and key (the key being the same as my track) and get it to fit into my DnB tune within ableton. I'm not trying to fit a full acappella into my tune so it has vocals throughout, I just need short ones before the drop and the same one repeated here and there in the track and chopped up in some spots (maybe the build) to repeat particular phrases.

That will kinda be my starting point when it comes to my vocal learning and skills. If I cant get that right, there's no point is going an farther or deeper.

Any tips or thoughts on accomplishing just that?

Thanks a million.

:: sent from android with tapatalk ::
 
Pretty cool info. Most makes since to me and also explains the fact that some vocal samples will just never fit or work correctly in a project. A lot of it was over my head at the moment though.

I'm currntly looking for a way to take a short vocal sample were I already know the tempo and key (the key being the same as my track) and get it to fit into my DnB tune within ableton. I'm not trying to fit a full acappella into my tune so it has vocals throughout, I just need short ones before the drop and the same one repeated here and there in the track and chopped up in some spots (maybe the build) to repeat particular phrases.

That will kinda be my starting point when it comes to my vocal learning and skills. If I cant get that right, there's no point is going an farther or deeper.

Any tips or thoughts on accomplishing just that?

Thanks a million.

:: sent from android with tapatalk ::

Glad my thread helped you out a bit.

Since you're working in Ableton and know the tempo of the vocal, that's half the battle. :)

I would probably mess with the different time stretching algorithms to see which one yields the best result–complex and complex pro are probably worth checking out first. If you want the chipmunk vox effect, use a speed setting.

It's much easier to work with small clips versus an entire full vocal stem, so you should be golden.
 
Glad my thread helped you out a bit.

Since you're working in Ableton and know the tempo of the vocal, that's half the battle. :)

I would probably mess with the different time stretching algorithms to see which one yields the best result–complex and complex pro are probably worth checking out first. If you want the chipmunk vox effect, use a speed setting.

It's much easier to work with small clips versus an entire full vocal stem, so you should be golden.

Thanks man. I've been using complex pro mostly. Once I drop the clip in, after I set warp markers at the beginning and end, I'm not sure how far to streach it so that it gets to the tempo of my track. Like, I'm not sure how many bars to pull it too. I guess if I set the original tempo of the sample (since ableton doesn't get it fully right most of the time), then I can just watch the current tempo of the vocal move up to the tempo I want wile stretching it. I think that how it might work.... I'm not in front of ableton right now, so I can't remember that settings and functions are in the warp window ATM.

I usually don't even care about the original tempo or knowing what ableton things of the newer tempo based on how I changed it.... I just go by ear. But going by ear with these vocals is no working out for me. So I need to watch closer and do some math so to say I guess.

I sound like an idiot, I know.... But vocals have always kicked my ass. I have so much more respect for people doing remixes of tunes with full acappellas now. Especially when they take a pella and make a tune with a major tempo difference.

:: sent from android with tapatalk ::
 
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