Music Production & Songwriting: Learn to Write Melodies in Any Genre

1. Introduction to Melody: Melodies are the most important part of music. If a song is catchy, it's because of the melodies. Ha Melodies are what keep us coming back to a song over and over, because we need to hear that melody again. If you only hone one skill in music, I urge you to get better at writing melodies, because an amazing melody over a mediocre beat can still be a hit song because melodies are so powerful. That's why in this class, I'm gonna teach you how to write melodies in any genre so that you can write the music of your wildest dreams. I'm Benza Maman. I have a degree in music composition, and I've been working behind the scenes in the music industry since 2010. I've written and produced songs for countless artists, and I've had the privilege to work with the writers and producers of artists like Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney, Luke Combs, and Many More. Recently, I've even got millions of streams, views, and some viral videos of my own, and I can't wait to share this decade of knowledge with you. In this class, you'll learn how to write melodies for singers and leads in any genre. Won't cover how to find your unique vocal sound. Vocal and Melody production, how to be a vocal producer, and how to make the journey of your lead melody captivating all the way through your song. In music, melody is the tide that rises all ates. So if you learn to write great melodies, you've learned how to write great This class is designed to equip you with the tools and knowledge to take your music to the next level. Whether you're just starting out or trying to refine your skills, I'm here to guide you every step of the way. And don't worry. We'll keep it engaging and straightforward with plenty of practical tips that you can apply right away. I use Ableton Live, but the tools and techniques that IPts in this class can be applied to any music production software. The assignment for this class is to write your very own melody, either to a song of yours or to an instrumental online. So if you're ready to supercharge your imagination and unleash your melodies into the world, then let's dive right in and make some music. 2. Melody is King: Welcome to the Melody chapter. We talked about bass. We talked about drums. We talked about harmony, and now it's time to talk about melody. So melody is king. Melody is the most important part of music. If you have a song that has a melody, the melody needs to be the star of the show. The melody is your lead actor. The melody is your focal point. The melody is king. Most songs have a main melody. And that melody is usually a lead vocal or a top line. Sometimes there's an instrumental lead melody that's either part of a song, like in the drop of a dance track or a riff, or maybe it's the whole song. If it's an instrumental jazz tune. A lead is a main melody that is not a voice. So anything that's like a part of a song that has like a guitar part that's the main part or a synth part that's the main part in between the vocal or instead, whatever it is, if it doesn't have a vocal, but it does have a melody, that's called a lead. Leads and top lines, Topline is just vocal melody. Leads and top lines are the most important parts of your song. Everything else is there to support the lead. A good reference point for the rest of your beat is does this support the melody? If you're unsure about your drum part, your bass fill, your drum fill, your harmony part, ask yourself, Does this support the main melody? The vocal gives you chills, acapella, then the right choice for that song is probably to leave it capela. If the melody and the vocal performance is strong enough without a beat, then don't even have a beat. That's the right mentality to have, where you just let the vocals shine because the vocal is the most important part if it's a song that has vocals. Obviously, if you make dance music, this is not totally true because you wouldn't want an capellla song when the purpose of your song is to make people dance. You always need to remember what specifically you are going for in your music. Even if you have the most amazing production you have ever heard and it's just scintillating, but it's taking away or stepping on your lead vocal, then the right choice would be to cut it and let your lead vocal shine through. This is the kind of mentality you should have when you're dealing with songs that have vocals. Melody is king. 3. Writing Melodies Part 1: Now we're going to talk about writing melodies. So let's die right into melodies. When you're writing vocal melodies, you really want to let them come to you. A good vocal melodies should be easy and obvious to sing. So you really don't want to overthink it. Of course, inspiration doesn't always strike. So you can always analyze and play your favorite vocal melodies and start to analyze and understand what notes are they using? Are there any big leaps, like, somewhere over the rainbow, you know, some There over the rainbow. We have an octave leap there, and then it starts walking down. And then it does another leap and keeps walking down and another leap and keeps walking down. It's helpful to know these things just so you can understand what is happening in great melodies. Maybe you listen to rap music, and you're like, Okay, the melodies that you like trend to be faster, rhythmic, and stay totally within a smaller range. The newer style of singing and rapping kind of combined have these quick melodies that don't have huge leaps in them. Lastly, you want to know what are the notes of the chord that they're singing. And I'll just say in general, for a lot of pop music, a lot of pop music ends up singing the third of the chord. That's because the third tends to have the most harmonic value. Of course, this is not at all true for every song. There are no rules in Melo writing. Like I said, singing the third of a chord is usually nice. Hit songs do tend to sit around the second and third of the key, and walking from note to note is generally a good move. With the occasional big leap, especially if it's followed by a walk down like we explored in over the rainbow. If you do a big leap, it's usually good landing on a strong note in the chord, like the first third or fifth. Great melodies tend to be simple if something super complicated is probably going to be hard to remember for the listener, therefore, less catchy. You don't usually want to go crazy with big leap after big leap, and you always want to write from your heart, not your head, you want to feel the melody. If it pulls at your heart strings, that's the right choice. You don't want to get too lost and Oh, it has to be the third and the second and the fifth and whatever. You don't want to go there when you're writing melodies. Again, for vocal melodies, really want to let the melody come to you, and we'll explore what that sounds like. If you two different melodies, at least, then you have a song. If you have a beat playing and you have this one main melody that keeps coming back to you and then you have another melody, two melodies is enough to make a song. If you have three or four, that's even better. But two melodies, and you have a song. So let's write a melody to this beat here. And you know, sometimes you could craft and compose the most perfect melody that has all the thirds and seconds and that's technically perfect. And it just doesn't feel that good to sing. And sometimes, like the thing you want to sing isn't hitting all those key notes. You always want to just choose what feels best to you. And you don't need to worry about recording your melodies all the time in every single moment, because the early days of the Beatles, they didn't have any way to record outside the studio. So John Lennon and Paul McCartney would write melodies together. And if they came to the studio and they couldn't remember them, then it was good enough, because if you're writing commercial music of any kind, you want your melody to be memorable. So if you can't remember it, you can basically guarantee that your listener won't be able to remember it. So if you can't remember it, that's actually totally fine because you just keep searching for a melody that eventually you can remember. There are a lot of different ways to write melodies. Right now, we'll explore the main way that I try to write melodies, which is I have a beat playing. And then I just kind of mumble some gibberish, maybe some words. I'm like, freestyling, but it's not at all about the lyrics. At this point for me. I'm just trying to find a melody. L ever. I don't. So, writing melodies for me sounds a lot like that. I'm kind of humming to myself, trying to figure out something that feels good to sing. And sometimes a melody will just come to you. And then that's how you know it's usually a good choice. If nothing comes to you, you can go the composer route and there's nothing wrong with that. But I always suggest first, trying to get comfortable, just free styling and seeing if something shows up that feels good for you. Another melody, could be like day any day. And I'm look to day T day u. U. And I walk And it's just kind of a freestyling process. It's very personal, very emotional. You want to be in a safe emotional space where nobody's gonna judge you or you're not gonna judge yourself because you just you just need to let all your ideas out, you know? You don't know what's gonna be good. You don't know what you're gonna find. Maybe that first melody that I was singing is a little bit better. Try different things. Things will keep coming back to you. And it's just about spending some time with your beat, freestyling for like 20 minutes. Take a break, do something else, come back. Do you remember any of those melodies? Do you still feel any of those melodies? And if you do, if something has stood out to you, then that's the right choice. You're like, Okay, let's go ahead and keep going down this road with this melody. In this case here, I found a melody, and I did write some words we'll go into recording and writing lyrics in a later lesson. But this is the first melody that I was singing. I did record it, and this is what it sounds like. Mazo Cono We've been so Naso. We've been talking on ny with the tape. Got you. Temi Ms Co. We've been so Naso. We've been talking on ny with the tape. Got you. T. Melodies are very subjective. You can listen to your favorite melodies and try to write music in those styles. But at the end of the day, whatever feels good to you is gonna be what you should go for with your melodies. T. 4. Writing Melodies Part 2: So let's say you don't want to go the route of freestyling or your freestyling your melodies out, and now things really coming. You can go to the piano or to the piano roll if you want to program it, and you can approach this more from a composer mindset. Here we have our basic chores. So we're in the key of C, and we're using mostly F, G C. Muscle that you don't know. David So the melody I sing was So we're mostly playing. And like I said, the second and third of the keys usually really nice, but those would be different notes. In the key of C, the third and second would be D and E. So the third and second, if we want to hang out there would be a different melody. So if I wanted to do a melody that was based off the second and third of the key, like I said, a lot of pop songs do, that would be that melody or a different version of that. That's just one idea. So here, if I was maybe to sing that, we could see, does that feel good to sing? I don't have any lyrics yet. We'll just sort of mumble some lyrics, and that would be like sundae. Never gonna find it. Forgot the end of it, but, like, That's okay. I think it felt better to sing that other melody, but it's good to know that there's other tools available to us. So here we have our melody that we're playing. And one thing I want to call attention to is that most melodies are pentatonic, especially most pop music melodies and commercial melodies. They're usually pentatonic. So if you get used to that scale, and you just jam some of those notes, you're probably gonna get a good melody. There I'm just kind of jamming around in the pentatonic notes. And they all basically sound good. So if you are really stuck, think pentatonic. Pentatonic melodies will basically always sound good. So if you have your pentatonic notes, those can be the notes that you start to write from. And if you want to be very technical, you can say, Okay, well, let's try to write usually around the second and the third of the key. And let's also have all these Other pentatonic notes. Now, another main tool in melody writing is you will do mostly stepwise motion. Mostly this note here, this D will go either to the E or the C. The C will jump down to the A because that's the next note in the pentatonic scale, or it would go to the D. The A would go to the C or the G. The G would go to the A or the F. The F is not actually in the pentatonic scale. So maybe the G would go to the E. But the F is in the key, so it's up to you if you want to use it. If you usually use step is motion, that's pretty easy. What goes up, will come down, I to walking around. And a good melody is usually mostly step is motion with one big leap that then walks back up or down depending on where you went. If this jumps all the way down here, then you'd want to walk back up. Or maybe this ones to jump here. It jumps all the way up here, and then walks back down. So let's try some big leaps and walk down over this cord. So those are different examples of we're leaping here and they're walking down. We're leaping here and walking down. We're jumping down and walking back up. Jumping down. And you want to balance something with, like, hanging out here? And then And then you have a big leap. And then so you're walking in the same area, maybe around the second and the third of the key, and then you do a big leap, and then walk back down. I used to write all my melodies on the keyboard because I wanted things to be in a compositional way perfect. I wanted to compose these mastermind melodies. And there's nothing wrong with that. You can come up with some great melodies on the keyboard or in the piano role in Ableton or whatever works for you. There's no right or wrong way to do melodies, and at the end of the day, there's a lot of ways to go about it to find something that feels emotional and good to you. H. 5. Writing Melodies Part 3: So, we are exploring writing melodies. But you do need more than one melody usually for a song. And like I've said before, if you have two melodies, then you have a song. The most classic structure in music is A B. This even dates back to classical music. You have an A part, you have a B part. And music goes A, B, A B or A B A, or one of those parts does, in fact, repeat. If you have two melodies, you have a song. You can have more than two melodies, and a lot of modern pop music will have a verse, a pre chorus, a chorus, and a post chorus, like, a lot of different sections. But for starters, let's just focus on getting two melodies because that's all you need, and some of the most amazing songs that have ever been written are just two melodies. A very classic structure for melodies is like having a more talky, like, casual sounding verse, and then a more sing along chorus. This is one of the most basic formulas, where you have either it's a rock song, but the vocals kind of more, like, Yeah, like, conversational, or it's a rap song where, like, the rapping in the verse. And then the chorus in both of those is like this more sing along kind of moment. And that's a good contrast. That's usually a good journey for songs to go on. Of course, you might be a folk singer where the whole song is sung, and none of it sounds like that more casual conversational thing. That's totally fine. Or you might be like Billy Ish, who has a very conversational style chorus. That's also fine. There's really no rules, and whatever is not the trend is usually what's about to be the next thing. So it's good to explore and try, like the reverse of what you think you might want. But having two contrasting parts is usually good. If you have a conversational, quick verse, you have a more single slower chorus that maybe has more of a melodic texture to it is just a basic outline of what you can do with having two contrasting melodies. Another thing that's nice to do with multiple melodies is, let's say you have three melodies, a verse melody, a prechors melody, and a chorus melody, and those repeat, maybe throughout the song. It's nice to have each melody start on a different beat rhythmically. So, if we go, listen to our rhythm, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one beat one melody might start on the beat. You know? There we go, da da da da da da da. So that's like you're starting right on the downbeat. Then your next melody might start after the beat. So it's like da da da da, da, da. Da d. Notice it's like da da da da da da. There's a beat, and then your next melody comes in. And then your third melody might come in before the beat. So it's like one, two, three, four, one, two, da da da. Da da da. So Those are the three different places that a beat can start, can start on the beat, I can start after the beat and it can start before. And it's nice when you're coming up with your melodies. But say your verse melody comes in right on the beat, your prechorus melody comes in right after the beat, and then your chorus comes in right before the beat. And for melodies that come in right before the beat, that tends to have a lot of energy. If you listen to, say, Post Malone, a lot of his melodies will come in before the beat. So they have a lot of energy leading into it. Melodies that start before the beat have a lot of excitement to them. And so that drives a lot of energy because you're getting information before the beat even hits, so it's like you're already leaning in, and then the beat hits, and then you're like going down the slide. And you want to combine that with melody starting on different parts of the beat. If you combine having melodies that start on different beats of the song, as well as combined having one melody that maybe is in this tonal range, another melody that's in like another tonal range, and then another melody that's even in a different tonal range. As well as having different speeds. So maybe the verse is, like, more of a rap, and it's like a very small range melodically. And then the pre chorus maybe jumps really, really high. And then it goes down to the chorus, which is a combination of the two, where it does have energy. It's not super high, but it's higher and more sing along than the verse, you have contrasting melodies that are starting on different beats that have different kinds of melodic journeys as far as leaps and everything. Then you have a pretty interesting journey of your song. And at the end of the day, the lead melody is the journey of the song. So making that a compelling journey to go on with different things happening and maybe a little twist and a surprise only makes your music that much better. 6. Writing Melodies Part 4: L et's talk about sequences, motifs, and one note melodies. You might be more of a lyrics first songwriter. And that's totally fine. One technique you might want to try is having a one note melody. So you have your words, and you're just saying your one note melody as a rhythm. John Lennon actually wrote Lucy the sky with Diamonds as one note. So picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. So he wrote it as one note, and throughout working in the studio with the rest of the band and the producers, they coaxed some other notes out of them. But it was written as picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. You could write something just on one note, and then depending on what you want the shape of the words to be, you could start having your melody follow the natural cadence or natural shape for whatever word you might say. Let's say if you're saying something uplifting, You might have your melody go up. If you're saying something sad, you might have your melody go down, and you could approach things that way. So let's talk about sequences and motifs. A sequence is a repeating pattern of notes that is usually going down or going up using that repeating pattern. So what is it that that means? Think of that song unholy by Sam Smith. Had So, what we have there is this melody. This, like, Da Da Da. So, the main part of that melody is this sequence. A. So then. Da That is a sequence. It's basically the same melodic shape. Da. Walking down the scale. And it has it starts here, goes up, and then comes down. Then it goes down to the next side of the scale, goes up and then comes down. So that's what the sequences. And a lot of melodies use sequences. You can think of Barry your friend, Billy Alas. Da da ta. It's a sequence down. It's the same pattern. Tara. Then go down a note. Tara. Down again. Tara. And then at the end of all these sequences, they usually change it up. Tara. Or an unholy. That's like a little bit of a change at the end. So what we see with these sequences is they start kind of higher in the scale. Whatever the pattern is, you do that pattern and then you go down to the next note, you do the same pattern, then you go down to the next note. And you either tie it up with a slightly different thing at the end, or you do the same pattern again and tie it up at the fourth one or whatever you want to do. But it's helpful to think of your melodies as these different parts. And if you can isolate, oh, that's a pattern that's then becoming a sequence. Sequences are really nice when you do maybe, like, a big leap up, and you do like a sequence going down. Over the rainbow kind of has that same feeling. D tara. Da tare. D ta tra. So, you hear that same rara. Are. It's the same melodic shape and pattern starting on different notes. So sequences are good things to have in mind when you're writing. Lastly, I want to talk about motifs. And a motif, to me, is a very short combination of notes that keeps repeating and you keep finding and a lot of music. A lot of music is pentatonic. That means five notes, a five note scale. Obviously, there's gonna be some overlap of all the composers in the world who have ever lived and ever will live, using five notes to write a song. Yes, we are going to hear some of the same notes. So I want to call your attention to some of the main motifs that I hear. One of them is the minor pentatonic Mara, which happens in a lot of different songs. You have that in the song. It's the time of the season to to when love runs high. So listen to that really quick. Here. That baseline, but. You'll notice that's also some of the vocal melody, and those specific notes are heard time and time again. It's the time of the season. And love runs high. In this time. In this time bump, bump, bump. This is also the same notes as this. Courses in a different key. You'll notice the same exact melodic motif in this song. When you say I Da way. Tell me why. Da da. It's the time of the season. Tell me why. It's the same exact notes. And this motif, Dada is in countless countless movie scores, famous songs. It's a very famous motif that is one of the most common ones. Let me draw your attention to another one. Da da. I'm loving it. Last Friday night. It's a Katy Perry song. Da da da, da, da, da. It's also I'm loving it. Da, pa, papa. This old McDonald's Riff. So this and. Those are two very, very common melodic motifs that are used in many, many songs, and you can use those in your songs. So what it is is happening is Dare. It's walking down the third, three, two, one. There is the tonic no That's the main note of the key. So, likewise, with the other one, That's walking up to the tonic of the minor. So when you're walking up to the major or minor or down to the major or minor, pulling towards the tonic is a very powerful feeling. So you can walk up to the pentatonic in a major way, and you can walk down the minor pentatonic 321 as well. I know that's a lot of information. And it's not super important to know, Okay, what are all the songs that use this motif and whatever. But you can start listening to music in a slightly different way because you're starting to listen. Okay, like, do you have some favorite songs that use some of the same melodic motifs? You know? They might be in different keys, so they might sound different. But when it comes down to start analyzing your favorite melodies and understand, Okay, like, are they using sequences? Are they using these same motives, maybe? Are they using any of the motifs I mentioned? There's a lot of other common ones. And you can start understanding, what are the things in melodies that you like? Because if you start becoming more conscious of what you like, you are more likely to write something that you like. 7. Instrumental Leads: Capture the Spotlight: Not all melodies are vocal melodies. So let's explore some instrumental leads. Instrumental leads can be played on any sound, any instrument or any synth. They're found in every genre from jazz like George Benson to Avici and their vocal chops, which is a more modern form of instrumental hook. So let's take a look at some instrumental leads. So here I have an instrumental lead that I played for this beat. This melody sounds good as a piano on this beat. What's nice about instrumental melodies is sometimes they sound good, but they're not that logical to sing. Like, I don't know that singing this melody would be as cool as hearing it on a piano. You can also listen to that song Kids by N GMT. They have an amazing instrumental melody there. Y. So that's a really great melody, but I don't think it would sound as good if it was sung, so it's perfect to be an instrumental lead. Likewise, you can have this melody, Harry Style song. Come on, hey, we say to you. Right here. B. So. That's pretty catchy, and it sounds really great as a instrumental melody, but it doesn't necessarily lend itself that well to be sung, so it's perfect that it's an instrumental melody, that it's a lead. Cigo is all about leads. I. The whole point of this part is that it is this, like, instrumental vocal chop thing. So this wouldn't even be the same song if this part was sung normally. So Instrumental leads can be really powerful. Let's go ahead and look at a different example. Here we have this Dan. The main melody is these things. Really emotional quality. Which took for granted please call stance. Fun. Like, this wouldn't make sense to be sung at all. So this is the perfect kind of instrumental lead. So, let's explore roughly trying to recreate what I think are the most important characteristics of that Frei sound. So, first of all, what we have here is a very quick rhythmic sod. This mostly just this note. And then it hops on to mostly just that note. So it's a very rhythmic feeling melody, which adds a lot of energy to the piece. And it's sort of the part besides the drum that's really driving the whole song. And what we have here is we have an instrumental lead. I pulled the Sweet lead from Ableton. Obviously, Fred again does sound better. He spent more time on it, probably. And it's a more dialed sound, and I'm not sure that he even went this route to make it, but what's important about that sound is a, the kind of notes he's playing. So he's playing a lot of very quick rhythmic notes, and a lot of these are short, which just adds to the rhythm. So this M Gives a lot of energy, and it's very dancy just on its own. The next thing is that his sound is really morphing and changing. So it almost has a vocalist quality to it sort of because it's not just like the same note hitting every time, even though that's what's being played. We're hearing the sound change and evolve. So what I've done here is I've done a lot of automation. I'm automating this filter cutoff and this filter morph, and this is how I'm automating it. So I did it in a pretty even kind of way just to hear what it sounded like, and this sounded exactly how I was hoping. So we have the filter cutoff, which is automating much quicker, and then we have the filter morph, which is going at half the speed. So what's happening is that basically on every single note, the texture of the sound is moving on every note. So we're getting a sound that's evolving to keep our interest. So this instrumental lead because it's the focal, it has to be very interesting and keep your attention. So in order to do that, and one of the best ways to keep your attention is to change things up. So by automating, you are continually changing things up. Don't you read those two high? Here I wrote with the same kind of automation. I wrote a different melody to different chords just to write my own melody to show you how you can use this technique on something original. So, not all these notes are perfectly in time. I would want to detail and spend much more time with this melody if I was actually serious about this. But I'm just trying to go here to show. Let's quickly quantize it. I'm just trying to show you how you can use the same pattern and the same technique of quick repeating notes. You know, they are like, quick rhythmic notes. You generally centered around one note for a while. Then moving to another one with this automation, just like Fred Again did, but on your own compositions. A lot of jazz music will have instrumental leads as well. You have like a trumpet playing the summertime main melody, for example, or you have George Benson playing his Bresen guitar or whatever it is. You can have different instruments playing the lead in different genres, and that happens all the time. Probably the best way that I find to incorporate instrumental leads is in combination with a lead vocal. For example, if you listen to bad guy by Billy Ilis, it has mostly a lead vocal, and then it goes into the synth part, Do d, d, d d, d, d do do. So that's like a combination of the two. Or if you listen to summer breeze, it has the baa d d, which is on a guitar, I think, and then it goes to a vocal So that keeps things interesting. You're having your lead journey, your main journey, which is the main journey of the melody, is staying interesting with different casts of characters that are coming in to play the part. So you have your lead vocal. Then you have your lead synth, lead guitar or Lee keyboard or some other part that comes in. And that really, to me, enhances and enriches the story that is being told. 8. Vocals: The Producer's Role in Performance Excellence: Now that we've talked about vocals and instrumental leads. We're back to vocals. A little bit more on vocals, because at the end of the day, if there's a vocal in your song, it's the most important thing. So let's dive back into vocals. Most music has a lead vocal. So even songs that have a drop or an instrumental lead for one section usually have a lead vocal for the other sections. Again, once you have at least two melodies, a version a chorus, you have a song. It's good if those melodies are contrasting each other. And if there's a vocal, the producer's job is to make the singer feel comfortable and to help guide them towards the right performance for the song. Maybe you have an incredible singer who just nails it, or maybe you sing your own songs, and you just nail it. But a lot of the time if you're a producer, if you're sitting behind the laptop and somebody else's recording, your job suddenly becomes a little bit of a psychologist where you're trying to keep them feeling safe and comfortable so that you can get the best performance from them that you can. Because at the end of the day, like your lead melody, if it's sung, is only ever going to be as compelling, as good of a performance as you're able to record. So you can really dive into the performance and make sure that the song is breathy when it needs to be breathy and belting when it needs to be belting, and you can find what's right for your song. You know, you just need to make sure that the singer is intimate when they need to be intimate and powerful when they need to be powerful and casual when they need to come off and be cool. A great song changes from sxction to section. If you have a classic big chorus that's more like singing, and then a more intimate sounding verse, that's the tried and true thing that always works, and that's a good contrast. Remember, it's all about emotion and melody, not showing off an amazing voice. You can usually do both of those things, but you don't want to just do a vocal run on every single line if it doesn't make sense with the emotion of the song. And if you're just ruining your melody just to make sure that you can show off your great singer, absolutely have your show off moments. You don't need a whole lot of show off moments every single part of the song. And in fact, having less can really stand out and make those moments even more impactful. You ultimately save time getting a good performance than you do trying to fix a subpar performance. So even if you are recording for another hour to just get that perfect performance, that is so much more worth it than spending weeks and weeks trying to eQ and tune and comp and move like a not as good tape. So it's really worth spending the time to get that good performance if you can. That being said, you want to try and stay objective because it really is difficult digging through 100 vocal takes when you're trying to piece together like a good take out of all these takes, and you get this Frankenstein take, like You know, you can do that, and some people have done that, for sure. Even a lot of hit songs have been made that way, but it's tough. So, I do recommend record if you get your singer in the mood and then take a little break and then record a little bit again. And you want to try and nail the performance and have them practice the parts so that you ideally don't have to sift through just hundreds of vocal takes if you can get away with it. So, let's go ahead and listen to this Parkside paradise song, and we'll explore how the vocal itself has different qualities to it within the song. So here's this verse section. City don't sleep. Everybody buzzing on some kind of cafe, running late to shift or important meeting. Driving fast so the lights blow softly softly. The city don't sleep. Everybody rallies late to the party, drinking to some their anxiety. Or scroll until their eyes blow softly softly. I'm Who's crazy. So we have a pretty casual sounding verse. It sounds mostly casual, kind of talking, a little singing, but not really. We have this part on crazy. It's more breathy. Like who's crazy. So that's kind of like this part that's standing out a little bit, just performance wise. And then we go to this chorus. Cause for me that under tree. This is where I feel happy. Grass under the feet breathing casually. Oh, this is a pretty subdued song altogether. But the verse is certainly a little bit more breathy, a little bit more casual, and then the chorus has more of a sing along quality to it. Then we go to the second verse. The the only meds I need a quick med then we go to the second half of the second verse, which really seps it up another notch. Cause I had all the phases, and they don't phase me. Party phase, who phase, non stop working. So suck burn out, Chase American trek Nice. The first verse is a lot more breathy. The second verse is a little bit more amp. And then when it gets to the second half of the second verse, it's actually the most energetic part of the song. Is crazy. We do that same thing on crazy, where the one is more singing in a regular way. But I'm the one. Is crazy. And the fact that they're different is interesting, that one is sung in a different way performance wise. And then we go back to this chorus. The am happy. That's like more sing along, and then we go to this part here. That's a lot more breathy, but in a higher octave, so it stays interesting. Once you have a good melody, and you have some good lyrics, and you have a song, and you maybe even have an instrumental lead at some point, you have the melody. It's really important to get that good performance to get the good recording, and to make sure that Okay, let's play with the melody a little bit. Like, how can the performance of the verse be a little bit different than the chorus? You know, What can you do performance wise to enhance the story that's being told? At this point, amazing singers will just do this naturally, but even some really, really fantastic singers do need a little bit of help and need some direction and some vision and some talking through and ideas of how the sexons differ. So it's important to spend the time to really do that so that you can get the best performance of your melody so that your song can be the best that it can be. 9. Recording and Comping: Perfect Your Vocal Takes: So in order to capture your amazing melody, you need to record it. So this lesson is about recording and comping. Does your mic need phantom power? Is your audio interface hooked up correctly in Ableton? Is your metronome loud enough, but not too loud where it's bleeding through your headphones? How far from the mic are you singing or playing? Do you need a pop filter? And let's talk about some recording, workflow, and comping. So the first step when recording is to plug in your audio interface. Here I have my scarlet, which is plugged into my computer via USBC. Now I go to settings, And what I would like to see is audio input from Scarlet. You would probably also want audio output to be same as your audio interface because I'm teaching a course and I need to screen capture my screen while I'm doing everything else, at the same time, I've created a multi output device. But you would probably select the Scarlet as the output if your scarlet is the input as well. So you have your audio interface is selected as your input because you're singing into a mic that is plugged into your interface. So the input is the most important thing. You probably want to lower your buffer size so that you don't have any latency. Now, remember, if you lower it too low, you risk the audio quality. So I always try 256, and if that doesn't work, then I'll jump down to 128, but I don't like to record lower than 128. So what happens if you're still getting latency this low at 1:28 is I will export out the song in whatever form it's in, as it is, and open up a new Ableton session where I can record at 2:56, where it's just one track, which is the whole song that I'm singing against, and then the new audio tracks that I'm recording. So that's my workflow if this doesn't work within the session itself. Next, we have Phantom Power. Does your mic require phantom power? This mic does. So when I have my audio interface over here, I have to click the 48 V bolt button. So the 48 V button, 48 volt is the same thing as phantom power. You need to turn it on if your mic needs it, and then you will be able to record. A condenser mic, which is a nice vocal mic style. If they do not have phantom power or they don't have 48 volt, they often won't work. So you'll plug in your mic and you'll be like, I don't hear anything. It's because you need to turn on the phantom power. Next, we have our headphones, because you want to record in silence so that the only thing the mic is picking up is the recording. You don't want the music also playing and recording into the mic ideally. So, I like to record usually with the record off. A lot of people like to have this on. That's just your preference. Do you want to hear yourself on the headphones or not? A lot of the times, I actually don't like to hear myself on the headphones, but a lot of singers do. So that's just a subjective choice. You want to make sure you're on in monitoring, choose this to be on or off and have the record enable on. And this is my general workflow. I will go ahead and loop the section I'm trying to record over and sing. There's nothing in my soul that you don't know. We were living so high no solo. We've been talking on night with the day go. You tell me why. There's nothing in my soul that I don't know. We were living so high no solo. We've been talking on night with the day go. You tell me why. Oh. Nothing so that I don't. We were living so high that so. We've been talking all night with the dig Oh. So now we are going to go ahead and create some new audio tracks, Commander Windows T below the track that we just recorded. So my workflow is is just pull this straight down into the next available audio track. Now, you can click here, copy and click to the right of the loop below and hit paste. That way, when you drag it to the left, you have your exact loop in the exact place it belongs, and I repeat that again. And here we go. I cut the excess, and we have our three different takes here. I was singing this better the other day. So let's go ahead and listen to this recording that I already made, and we'll dive into what comping really is. So we have our different vocal takes. And let's say we have a main vocal take that we sounds the best. So what you'll do is you'll listen to every single take, starting with this one. Nothing Ms, C chiton. We were living so high nosolo. So that's what that one sounds like. Let's listen to this one. Nothing in Mas Chono. We've been living so high nosolo. Maybe that sounds the best. We'll listen to this one. Then meso the Jono. And so once you've listened to all of your different takes, you might have one that stands out. One take you think sounds the best. Obviously, with your own song, I encourage you to take more time, listen to more of the parts. For the purpose of this example, we're just going to say that this take here sounds the best. Ms Co. So I would call this lead. This is our lead vocal take because this sounds the best. You have other takes to choose from, and what comping is is pulling different takes together. So let's say you really like this lead except for this part. Dono Don't know. And maybe you want to find a different don't know. Don't know. Let's say you like that one better. What you would do is you can click here, Command E or Windows E, the start and finish, and you can pull this into your lead track. You could also call this a comp track. Maybe we can even change the color here, so it's more visually obvious that this is a different take, and this is something to pay attention to. Here we can have our comp, which is a combination of these different takes. Oh, the Co. We've been no solo. Let's say you didn't like this solo, and you're like, Do we have a better solo? Solo. And let's say you like that one better again. Select the space, copy, and move this up. So what we're doing here is we're creating a master take that is the best of every single performance that we did. And we sang this part four times. So we have four different things to choose from to sort of patch together a perfect vocal. Nothing Co. We've been loo. We've been talking on n with the Dago Won't you to My one. And as that don't know. So what's happening here is we're creating a perfect take that's strung together by different takes. Obviously, I was choosing to cut this line over here. And if you zoom in, you're like, Okay, like, you usually want these to be on clean marks. So you don't want a little bit of that take bleeding into that take. And if you can get away with doing something more like this, that usually sounds better. Notice I can't drag this too far to the right because then this take starts to go to the next part before this take does, so you'll hear like a glitch. So so so So you want to get rid of this and make sure this drags there. So low. And then you don't have that weird little glitz sound. Sometimes you find takes that you like, you can't drag them into each other. They just don't sync well, just doesn't work. Like if you're trying to replace this word here, Live Live in. That might be tough because it's sort of strung together with these other words. So it might be hard to get this in here without that sounding like a glitch and a glitch versus this word was on its own. There was a space, and we could easily pull another word because it's coming from silence versus this, which is in the middle of a line. We've been living so hit. This didn't sound terrible. Sometimes you can get away with it. Sometimes you can't. But that's just something to keep in mind is that some comps can't really happen. And if you find yourself just tweaking and tweaking forever, and you just can't fix the one word. It's probably worth just re recording. So, now you're going to have your perfect comp. It's like a whole lead vocal that has the ending of this take, it has the middle of that take, it has the ending of that take, and together, it's all the best moments combined to make a super strong lead vocal take. You can also have a double, which is doubling the lead vocal the entire time. So you have our awesome lead vocal take, and now we're also going to have a secondary take that's just doubling the whole lead. I've worked with singers who are opposed to comping. They think, no, they want to sing the whole thing perfectly live, and they don't want to, like, cut anything together. And that's totally fine. But honestly, in recording music, like, recording is a separate art form than performing. And it's totally okay to comp your parts. Some of the most iconic hit songs are super duper comp together. And there's nothing wrong with that. You're creating a performance that is supposed to span a long time. Your record could live forever or for indefinitely. You know? So you're trying to greet a performance that's just better than one moment. You wanted to stand the test of time and be good for a variety of moments over a long time period ideally. So, I suggest that you take some time to comp your vocal. Even if you get a really solid lead vocal that sounds good, but you did a couple of different takes. Try to see if you can make it that much better because I highly doubt you'll ever regret making your song better. 10. Mic Suggestions: Finding the Right Match: Here are some mic suggestions in case you do want to get a microphone to record some vocals or some other instruments. The most versatile mic that I've come across is the AK G C 214. It's affordable, and it sounds great on really everything. I use it to record guitar, I use it to record vocals. I use it to record percussion.'s a really all around, well rounded, good sounding microphone. The Sur SM seven B is my favorite vocal mice. It's especially good for more of a breathy vocal sound, but to me, it sounds great on all vocals, and it's using my go to when it comes to singers. The Sur Beta SM 57 is a really great versatile mice as well, that sounds good on voice. And sounds good on drums and many other things. It's cheaper and more affordable than the first two mics. So if budget is an issue for you, you can still get a great sound using the Sur Beta SM 57. And then lastly, I recommend the Sur SM 57 regular, which is the classic mic, you'll see that most venues. It's a really good mic. It sounds good on vocals. It sounds good on a lot of things. It's perfect for performing and it's very durable. So if price is an issue, but you want a mic, I would suggest getting the SM 57 because some hit artists record using an SM 57. Even though they could record with a $10,000 mic, they do choose to use this mic. So it's really subjective, and it has a lot to do with what your voice or whatever singer you're working with sounds like. So my top recommendation for vocals is the sure SM seven B. My top recommendation for everything else is the AK G C 214. And then if budget is an issue, I would recommend going for one of the SM 57. At the end of the day, a good performance cuts through any kind of mic. So it's better to get a good performance than really figure out what is the best mic for your voice? And you don't want to spend too long worrying about that. And I've been in studios where they have $10,000 microphones, super expensive gear, all this stuff. And those are not always the mic that I would go for. Like, obviously, yeah, if you have the option to sing on, like, a super expensive mic, it's fun to try. I found for my voice personally, they are not always the best choice. 11. Discover Your Unique Vocal Sound: One of the most important parts of making music is finding your sound. And if your song is a song that has a melody and a vocal, you want to find your vocal sound. You want to not only have a unique voice, but figure out what is the best production that supports your voice? Like, how can you really tell the story you're trying to tell in the best way possible? So, finding your sound, do you want a dry and intimate lead vocal? Do you want something like Billy Alas whispering in your ear? Maybe that's the right sound for you. And maybe you don't sound good belting or shouting like the Beatles. Maybe you want to be a more intimate kind of sound. Maybe you're the kind of singer who needs to double your vocal. So you have two of your vocals singing together, which gives it a more powerful sound when maybe alone sounds good, or maybe doesn't even sound good, but together actually has the quality that you want. You can double as many times as you want. You could have eight or ten or 20 takes of the same thing. I don't recommend that, but you could, depending on what sound you're going for. And you'll notice how the more doubles you have really changes the sound. You can also experiment with doubling in different ways. So one you sing it normal, maybe you could double with a whisper tape. So you're adding, like, a very different texture to your lead take. Maybe you do a double that's singing it like stronger, but then you turn it down. There's all sorts of things you can do and experiment with layering different kinds of doubles together. You can also experiment with the processing, like, how much reverb do you want on your voice? A lot of older recordings have a lot more reverb on the voice, and that's kind of cool for that style. And maybe you're doing some sort of washed Indie song that actually wants a lot of reverb on your vocal because reverb can have a very emotional effect. You can also choose the amount of harmony you want. Like, the sound of silence, Simon and Garfunkel, there's harmony. The whole song is a harmony. So that whole vocal is a harmony vocal. Ariana Grande has songs where the whole vocal has harmony to it. So you have different techniques that really help you tell the story of your song. How much harmony is there? Is there ever a naked lead vocal? Does the harmony just come in for one part? Is the harmony there the whole time? Is there a double for the whole song? Is there just a double for one part? Is there a lot of reverb for the whole song? Is there just reverb on one part? You might have a good contrasting lead vocal, that's like whispery and in your ear. And then in the ors, it's more singing with lots of reverb. Any other combination or the whole time is just a harmony, just like the sound is silence. Lastly, you can talk about some unique effects. You can think about the talk box effects or some filtered vocals. Maybe you're trying to do a daft punk robot voice thing the whole time, a vocoder. And that's your sound. Maybe you do like a gorillas or foster the people, like filtered talk boxy kind of vocal. Maybe you do like a pitch down low EDM kind of vocal. There's all sorts of different styles that you can go for vocally if A just singing a normal doesn't feel right or just doesn't sound good enough. So let's dive into this vocal here. We have a lead vocal in the middle. So Co. And then it has two doubles. Let's turn these doubles off. I'm also painting the doubles left and right, so it's giving the lead vocal a thicker sound. This also already has some reverb on it, so let's turn all of that off. Co. We've been. We've been talking on n with the tago Won't you tell me why fine Mass Cho. Now, let's try adding in our doubles. Fine Ms Cho. We've been solo. We've been talking on n with the Dago. Maybe that's exactly the sound you're looking for, and you want to move on. Or as I'm listening to it today, there was something about the lead vocal alone that I liked. So let's create a group and group our doubles together. And because we have a lot of different things here, let's just call this Dub. Let's change these visually so that it's easier to look at. We'll call this one lead. We'll change this visually, so this is easier to look at. And now we kind of have a better landscape. It's healthy to color code things because it just makes it easier. And let's say we're like, Okay, I'm liking that it sounds a little thicker with this double, but I feel like we're compromising a little bit of character. And that's generally what happens. You compromise some of the uniqueness of your voice for it sounding a little thicker, which is a balancing act. So maybe we just want to turn these doubles down. So cono. We have so solo. We've been talking on ny, with the tago Won't you tell. And that sounds pretty good. Another thing you can try is to e Q the doubles so that they're a little smaller than the lead vocal. Nothing in Ms Co. We've been eso Naso. We've been talking on ny, with the tago. Won't you tell me why. And that sounds pretty good. Maybe maybe you want to turn down a little bit of the high end on the doubles. I'm not sure. Nothing in Mo Co. We've been eso Naso. We've been talking on ny, with the tago Won't you tell And that sounds pretty good. So what we have here is we have our lead vocal, and to find the sound of this lead vocal. At least this part, we're using two doubles, one that's panned a little bit to the left, and one that's panned a little bit to the right, specifically 25 and 25. I like to keep my vocals 25 and 25. I don't like to pan them more than that unless I'm doing something where they're panned completely like 50 right and 50 left. So this is a very common panning I tend to do. Now, I also have my vocal reverb. So let's turn on this reverb. And let's hear what's happening. We're e Qing before and after, so it's only this middle range, and we have this bright reflections reverb. Mazo Cono We've been iso Nicolo. We've been talking on n with the tago. It has a good emotion to me, and I like this quality, but let's just turn it down a little bit. Ms Co. We've been so a Nicolo. We've been talking on n with the tag. Notice that when we have the reverb, we trade breathiness and grittiness for a little bit of glossiness, which is a subjective choice. I also have this vocal delay on. And so here again, the same classic move I usually do, and then we have this delay. So let's hear what this sounds like. You don't know. We've been living so high. We've been talking all night with the day. Won't you tell Moya Masco. We've been Lina. We've been talking all night with the tago Won't you tell. So we're making this sound a little bit more produced, a little bit glossier, which either is or isn't what you're going for. But we're shaping and finding the sound of this vocal. We also added some harmonies here. We'll dive into harmonies more in a different lesson. I have two harmonies, 125 to the right, 25 to the left, again. And let's hear it with the Harmonies. Nothing in Ms Chono. We've been live so high Nawloo. We've been talking all night with the Tago Won't you tell me why Cath Ms Chono. We've been live so high Nawloo. Now, maybe you like the sound of the harmony, and you do want that to be the sound of your vocal. But because the harmony is above, it's sort of competing for your ear. A lot of modern pop music, which is borrowing from R&B music uses harmonies that are below your melody. So if you're able to add a harmony that's below your melody, That is definitely better. For some reason, my ear always gravitates the finding harmonies that are above, and I do like how that sounds as well. So here I do have some harmonies that are above. So sort of do, as I say, not as I do kind of thing, but I do suggest that you have harmonies that are actually below. But let's go ahead and turn these harmonies down so that they're not overpowering. Math Mao Co. We've been solo. We've been talking all night with the tago. So that sounds better to me. One thing that you could try is pitch down the harmonies and see if that sound is something you want. Math Mas Con. We've been h solo. We've been talking all night with the Jago. Co. We've been living. So that has its own sound, too. So what you're doing in production is you're trying to find and shape the sound of your vocal. Some songs call for very little processing, and you just want basically how the singer sang it without a lot going on. And that's totally fine. And that might be the perfect thing for that song. Some songs, even if you have a good recording and a good singer, they want a little bit more. It just depends on what you're going for, what sound you want, how good of a performance did you get. Sometimes you want more of a raw vocal, but, like, you just didn't get the take that really just stands alone, and you have to layer it a little bit. That's totally okay. You have these tools and they're available to you, so you can use them to fix something if you like, just tried and tried and tried and ran out of time or just didn't get the take or whatever it is. You can use some of these other techniques to help enhance or fix or solve a problem, or you can just go completely creatively, you're like, Okay, we got the take we want it. It sounds great. Is this just naked vocal the best way to tell the story of this song? Or maybe we're writing like a futuristic song, and we want more of like a auto tune or like, vocod or sound, even though you had a good take. It just depends on what is the story you're trying to tell and to be intentional with your vocal style? 12. Vocal Chain: Basic Techniques: Once you have a good recording, you need to think about your vocal chain. And what your vocal chain means is just what is the processing of your vocal? This goes hand in hand with finding the sound you're trying to create because the processing of your vocal can really change the sound or not, depending on what you're going for. So here we have our lead vocal, and let's turn off the harmonies just for a second. Miso Co. We have amo. Let's go ahead and listen to what are the different effects that we have that's making the sound. The first we're going to look at is auto tune. Now, auto tune does not come with Ableton. It is a third party plug in. I'm sure you've heard of it. It's very plug and play. You drag auto tune on to your track. It helps to know the key of your song. So if you can tell it what key, like C Major happens to be the key of this song, if can experiment with the different input types, and then you move these knobs around. Some people like to just do 2020, whatever, I like to do 20 here and 60 here, but it doesn't really matter. You just tweak it. It can sound more or less robotic. I tend to not like it to sound robotic. I just wanted to enhance the pitch of the song. So it sounds like the song was sung with good pitch. That's usually the sound I go for. But of course, as I'm sure you've heard in a lot of rap music, you can do these really cool auto tuny things, especially into some reverb, that kind of to me, sound like a vocal candy kind of sound, which is, also super cool. So it just depends on what you're going for. I tend to go for settings like this. Next, we have an EQ. What we're doing with this EQ is we're cutting the low end, and we're boosting the high end. And this is a very common EQ move you'll see with vocals. A lot of the time, we will do a high shelf right here. We will boost from about one or two K up for the whole rest of the song because the high parts of vocals tend to sound really good. So what I try to do, I tend to record very close to the mic, and that makes a lot of base in the recording. The further from the mic you are, the less base in the recording. You want a lot of base in your voice, sing close to the mic. The irony is that I actually don't like to have that much base in my voice, but I like how singing close to the mic affects the rest of the sound. So I sing close to the mic, and then I boost the high end a lot to try and overcome that base. Another move, of course, you could do would be to lower the low end instead of boosting the high end, or maybe even a little bit of both. But what we're doing here is we're boosting the high end with the high shelf, which is very common. We're actually boosting it a lot, which is also pretty common. I will totally see 60 b boost, 70 b boosts like a lot of the time, or the reverse of pulling down the low end. It depends. Of course, there's engineers that you're going to meet out there that will say this is sacrilegious, and you said never do this. Always listen to your ears, and yes, of course, it's better to affect things less than more. But the way I see it, we tend to like high end in our vocals. Also, we can do some ten k boost right here, and ten Ks are really pleasing frequency to the ear. We really pay attention to ten K. So if you boost ten k in a sound, that sound will usually call your attention. So common things that we boost at ten K are vocals because we really want to hear them. And then sometimes the kick drum or the snare drum might have some ten k in it so that we really car those cut through. So what we're doing here is we're boosting ten K, and we're boosting a high shelf of this lead vocal. So we're boosting all of the high end above, what is it? 2.7 k. And then we're also on top of that on top of that boost. We're also boosting ten K so that ten K has a little bit of a peak above the rest of the boost. So this is what our EQ is doing. You can do more moves with EQ. Some vocals go really deep, and they're like, cutting here and boosting there. You can go hand like that. Some people like to do that. Another thing that people can do is pull up these really narrow make something that looks like this, really narrow frequency and scan your song. Muscle done We have a nasol. We've been talking on n with the Daigo on. Tell me why Ms Co. We have a nasol. We've been talking on ny, with the Dag on you. And you try to find these really unpleasant kind of ringing frequencies. This is not quite it. It's close. This is the closest that I can find. Ms Co. We have a Hi, that was so low. We've been talking all night with the tag. Sometimes you'll do this. Don't do this in headphones or do this very quietly, because sometimes you'll scan, and you'll hear a frequency that'll be like crazy loud and ringing. You don't want to hurt your ears. So this is kind of an unpleasant ringing frequency that happens from recording in a not perfect room. That's totally fine. I never record in a perfect room. So this is a way to fix that. You scan around for some ringing frequencies, and then you want to bring them down like for d B or so. It depends. F d B is a good starting place, and then you can kind of keep tweaking from there. But pulling those narrow frequencies down can help your vocal sound a little cleaner. Ms Co. We've been lis. We've been talking all night with the tago. That definitely sounds a little bit better. So you can scan your vocal for all the ringing frequencies and pull them down. You know, It's not uncommon to find a few of these different points. And it's okay to spend a long time eQing your vocal. You know, It's totally okay. You don't have to, but, like, the vocal is super important. You're never gonna regret spending a little bit more time making your vocal sound a little bit better. So spend the time to EQ your vocal. Does it have enough high end? Is it cutting through? Is it too basic? Is it boxy? Does it have ringing frequencies? Is it exactly what you want? Is it strong enough, et cetera. And one last tip, I'll say, sometimes something will sound nasally or something, and you might want to boost or lower around one K. Usually, if you want your vocal to have a little bit more power, you can boost it a little bit at one K. And if it's a little nasally or maybe a little too pointed, sometimes you could try lowering at one K? That's a general rule that you may or may not run into, depending on your vocals that you're dealing with? Next, we have a little bit of subtle saturation, a little bit of distortion. To give the vocal a little bit of grid. C. We be high. I like doing a little bit of subtle saturation on my vocals. Just gives a little bit of color. And to me, that just adds a little bit of juice to it. I don't really want to hear this too dramatically. I'm not looking for a distorted vocal. Sometimes you might be. But in this case, I'm just looking to subtly enhance our vocal. Next, we have our compressor. M C. We have be high so much. We've been talking lo What the digo, won't you tell me why. Both Musso Chiono. We be so high so low. So it depends on what you're going for. Here I have an attack of 156, and then a pretty quick release. So this is like a medium fast attack, but a lot of the beginning of your vocal is cutting through. And then it's a pretty quick release, so it's not holding on to the sound too much. Originally, I had this compressed less because I do have some multiband compressors after. But I kind of don't mind how it sounds being compressed a little bit more. Sometimes vocals can like a lot of compression. Sometimes they like a little bit less compression. It's sort of up to you in the style and the sound, et cetera. Bath Ms Cho. We have be so high, so low. Next, we have this vocal control, which is a multi band compressor. Now, a multi band compressor is a compressor, which compresses the different bands, the lows, the mids and the highs at different amounts. For example, you could compress the lows the most, the mids, the second most, and the highs, the least or any other combination of the two. You can set the different frequencies here. So here, 200 marks the low end and 5.5 is K marks the high end. Meaning the middle is the distance in between. You can slow the different parts, I Muscle that don't know. So you can see that a lot of the vocal really lives in this part. But this is that really crisp clean sounding topic. So what you can do here is pull these around and tweak these parameters and compress these a little bit more, a little bit less. You have your threshold here, you have your tack and release. So you can really affect and compress your sound in a more controlled way. And a great way to do it is just also sift through the presets and just really go ahead and find some cool presets here. If you go to audio effects, dynamics, multi band dynamics, and just try some of these. And a lot of people really like this OTT. Lastly, we have a DSR. Now, a DSR is something that gets rid of the It's like all this what's called sibilants. The top end like that kind of a sound in a vocal, which now that I've made those sounds and draw your attention, you might hear that in my own voice. I don't know. It's there, and sometimes you don't want an overly powerful S sound or something. So that's when you go for a DS, which tries to compress that frequency so that it's pulling down those sharp top SFP sounds. This is how I affected this lead vocal, and this is the sound of this. I put the same processing on the harmony part so that they sound like they live in the same world. We already went through the reverbs and delays. So you take everything together. You know, the EQ, the compression, the multi band compression, the reverb and delay. You have the doubles, the harmonies, and all of those sounds together are coming to create your vocal sound. 13. Vocal Chain: Advanced Techniques: Now, let's explore some advanced vocal chain and vocal editing techniques. So you want to edit your vocal for timing and volume. You might want to tune your vocal with Mladin or auto tune. And then there's some third party plug ins that I do tend to use on my vocals. So one protip that my friend taught me a long time ago was not to rely too much on the compressor, because the compressor, yes, will even out. Oh, if this parts a little quiet and this parts a little loud. Yes, it will even that out. But You can do that with volume as well. If you really think about it, if you're trying to control the dynamics and you're like, Oh, I want this part to be louder. Well, you could go in here, and you could turn this louder. You could make a cut. You could even cut this first part and turn up this part. And you can start seeing visually how this is becoming louder. So you have the control to do this in a way where you're just actually working the volume, and that's a cleaner way to get a consistent sound than to rely on the compressor. And it gives you more control, too, because you might want one part to be a little quieter or a little softer and one part to be louder and a little bigger. And so it gives you the control to make those decisions really intentional. And this way, if you even out your vocal with volume first, and then use a compressor. The compressor won't be working too hard and it'll have a more consistent sound across the vocal, which is usually desirable. So obviously, you actually want to be doing this by ear, not just visually, but you can tell when something's not the same volume, it's a little bit smaller, and then when it is the same volume, it's larger. So the work flow would be listening. De go, te da go, 12. And you're like, Okay, this too quiet. Let's turn this up. To d go one. And you would go from there just making sure everything's the perfect volume. This obviously takes time, but like I said, you will never regret spending too much time on a vocal. So now that you have your vocal in the right volume, everything is like tweak to your perfection. You like how it sounds. It's quiet, it needs to be quiet. It's loud, what it needs to be loud. You're feeling good about it. You also maybe want to adjust the timing a little bit. And sometimes I honestly do the timing first thing after recording. So there's multiple ways you could do that. You can actually go ahead and make a big cut and turn off the grid, which usually helps and move this whole take together. So here we're moving everything to the left, moving it earlier. This is changing the timing. Chiton. Of course, then there was a little blitz there, so you might have to fines that and see if there's a way where you can get away with a good cut. So you can move things on the timeline. You could go ahead and move this in and move this whole take over here a little bit. Oh, the chiton. This was an easier one because this is silence, and this is silence. So when you have cuts in silence, it's less hard to deal with when there's cuts between sounds that are already in the recording. So this is one way that you could deal with moving the timing. Another way can be you click in here and you open this menu, and you can create these little warp markers. And you can say, Okay, like, let's just move this part of the vocal is a little late. I saw the zone. It wasn't actually late, so moving it made it sound weird. But you can see how creating these warp markers and moving things like this will change the timing of your vocal. I in my soul that you don't my my soul in my soul that you and in my soul that you don't know. And in my soul that in my soul that you don't know, and in my soul that you don't know. You can go ahead and get your vocal to be the right timing. A lot of subtle groove and the placement of each different word can go a long way into showing the character of your vocal. How laid back is it, how ahead of the beat and excited is it? What emotion you going for. So timing is super important. So I encourage you to spend the time to time your vocal. Obviously, it's best if you can just nail it in the performance, but sometimes you get a great performance and you can even enhance it a little bit more. There's nothing wrong with that. So you've done your timing, you have done your volume. Let's look at some advanced vocal chain that I sometimes use. Let's delete this existing one. Here in this blue tab, I have saved my vocal chain that I use on my voice most of the time. Obviously, it might not be able to be the same vocal chain that you use because this is specific for my voice, but let's go ahead and grab vocal 2.0 and pull that down onto our track. When it opened, everything that I have. And it also opens, so we had to close all of these, and there's a lot of different things here, and I'm just going to quickly show you what's going on. So first of all, we have our auto tune. And I know this happens to be in the key of C major, so I'm switching that. I know the rains is Auto tener, so I'm keeping that. These settings are the same. So here our vocals should be in tuned now. Next, we have an EQ, and I'm cutting off basically around 100 hertz. We're cutting off the low end so that we don't have any low end, and this EQ is just for cutting away the low end. Next, I have an EQ that's raising the high end. Them doing this a lot less dramatically than I was with the Ableton EQ. This is my stock sort of template. So maybe for this song, I will end up boosting this a little more, but what we have, again, is a high shelf here, boosting everything, and then a boost a ten k. We then have this vintage tape, which is some subtle distortion. So you can already see the parallels in the vocal chain I made in Ableton and the vocal chain here. We're having so far all the same elements, including the same compressor with actually even the same settings. Now we have a DSR like we had before. These work in the same way, they're just different plug in, so they look a little different. We also have a multiband compressor. What we're doing mostly differently here though is the multiband compressor here, we're boosting the high end from 16 K, and we're also boosting the high end a little bit from four K. So this is doing more high end boosting. I'm not doing all the boosting with just the EQ. I'm doing some of it with this multiband compressor. So there are multiple ways to achieve the same thing, and this is why I am not boosting as much with the EQ. Next, I cut off the low end again. I have a friend who's a super talented producer, very successful. He laughs at me for doing this. He thinks it's ridiculous, and you don't need to. I swear that I hear the compression bringing in some more low end that I don't want, and I swear that I like cutting the low end even this second time. That's up to you. Just listen to it. If you like it, you like it. If you don't Next, I have some more distortion. So we have a more subtle tape distortion after the CQ. And finally, we have another compressor with the same settings compressing it subtly. So I have some repeat effects here. Multiple layers of compression is pretty common because you don't usually want one compressor just slamming something. Having each compressor, not having to work too hard tends to sound a little bit better. So here we have layers of compression and layers of distortion. I usually even have layers of EQ, but like I said, that's a little bit controversial. Lastly, I have this multiband compressor here, which I do sometimes use and don't sometimes use. What this sometimes does is pull down even more low end if I feel like I need to with a specific vocal. So, let's go ahead and listen to our vocal now with this new chain. Co. We've been Leo Nasolo. T. We've been talking on ny tago Wnt you tell me mas Con. We've been Lesa Naviso. We've been talking on ny Tago Wnt you tell me why I think this sounds pretty good. So we are taking down this low end right here, which is this second band, and the second band is 100-200. So we're taking down a little bit more of the low end. We're really making sure there's no low end down here and compressing, e Qing, a little bit of saturation. Into my ear, this sounds pretty good. C. We've be it so high. Because we're compressing this a little bit more, the breaths are really coming through here. Wave. So sometimes you have to go through the tedious work of making a cut at every breath and turning them down in volume. If you have doubles, you actually don't need to layer your breaths. So you can literally cut and get rid of every single breath in your doubles and your harmonies, because you just don't need that. So here you can get rid of all the breaths. I know. It's kind of annoying, but to be honest, it's worth the time, get rid of the breaths in your doubles. You can also get rid of the S sounds in your doubles two if you really want to because you don't need layers of that or the You don't really need layers of anything except for the actual, vowel sounds of your singing. So that's something to keep in mind. You can get rid of all these elements in your doubles. Sometimes you can get rid of the breaths in your lead, but then sometimes you can't. And sometimes you need to just turn them down instead. I've come across some songs that sound robotic when you get rid of all the breaths altogether, and they like to have the breaths in there just quieter, so we can listen to what this sounds like. Nothing in so that you don't know. We've been living so high that we so low. We've been tough Occasionally, we like the breaths. But for this instance, I actually think it was sounding better. If you want a ballpark, I usually turn the breaths down minus ten or -15 to start, and then I listen and see how it goes from there. But usually I'm able to pull the breaths down significantly, and you still feel that they're there, and they still sound good but they don't really catch your ear. This is tedious, but it's highly worth the time to do. Lastly, let's talk about a chorus effect. So we'll go over here and we'll go to pitcher modulation, and we'll go to Chorus ensemble. And let's see here. Go to this classic chorus and we'll drag it on our vocal. We We've been talking on Choruses can make your vocal sound wider, which is where they get the name. And let's try this warm ensemble. We have a iso hasolo. They make your vocal sound wider, but they they do have very, like, affected sound. So sometimes you like that wideness, but you want to turn it down. We have a Nisha. We've been talking on Wego. Choruses sometimes work their way into vocals. I actually don't use them too much for my voice, but, like, some people use them all the time. You could also use it on a send instead. So let's just gave it 100%, and we'll send this all the way to the send. We've ever so high, Novasolo. We've been talking night with the Dago. Once you tell me? We've enever so high, Novasolo. We've been talking all night with the Dago Won't you tell me why? We've eeniver so hot. We've eeniver so hit. We've been neever so high Novasolo. So this sounds pretty good. And sometimes a chorus is totally the right move. I know that's a lot to take in. There's third party plug ins, different techniques and everything. I just want you to understand what I actually do for a vocal, because there is a lot that goes into it. And I will spend as much time on the whole beat, the whole music as I do on the vocal. The vocal takes as much time as everything else does. And that's a good way to spend your time, because like I said, melody is king, the vocal is the most important thing, and if your vocal really shines and sounds great, then you probably have a good song. So if you're going to spend your time tweaking your guitar part, but it is a song that is vocal centric. I would spend most of your time on the vocal first. And I'm not saying you shouldn't tweak your synth and get the perfect guitar tone, and you shouldn't make everything as good as you can. You should. But spend the time first on the vocal because it really needs it. And then if you still feel like working on your song even more after that, then I would say, go ahead and keep perfecting the rest of your music. 14. Harmonies and Doubles: Enrich Your Vocal Texture: Harmonies and doubles are so important for vocals. Even if you have an amazing take, they can really enhance your lead vocal to the next level. Harmonies can add dimension, power and vibe. You can have a whole new emotion with harmonies. You can have so much more power and so much more texture. Harmonies are really, really the juiciness in music, in my opinion. Doubling can add emphasis and power. You can double a more important part of the song. You can double a part, you want to have more mph to it. You can layer as much as you want. People really use tons of vocal layers. So styles that you wouldn't expect really are like these soft breathy vocals that you think maybe is this one voice is actually a huge orchestration of layers of lots of different takes. And that's fine. However you can get the sound you're going for is the right choice, whether you do one take, no processing or 50 takes with tons of processing, whatever it is, you'll find the right sound for you. Whisper takes, yelling takes, and talking takes. In a lot of pop music, sometimes you'll have a part that's sung, and the artist, like, Billy Elis and Taylor Swift do this a lot. They just kind of talk part of the vocal as a layer. So one part, I'm not thinking of a specific example right now, but one part might be like, There we go. And then the double might be like, There we go. And those together sound like kind of weird, but they stand out in a way that is good for the song. So you can be really creative with your doubles. You don't just have to go. There we go. And go. There we go. It doesn't have to be like the same thing. You can actually change the way that you're doing it and have fun with that and be creative. Harmonies are usually a third above or a third below. Those are like a solid basic harmony. There's a world of harmonies you can choose from, and I would never want to just limit you to just those two things. But if you don't know, you're like, I don't know what to harmonize, try harmonizing a third above or below your melody. That being said, six, fifth, seventh, can be nice, too. Sometimes advanced harmonies just don't work, like these jazz layer R&B harmonies, just doesn't sound good on your song, but sometimes they sound amazing. So you have to experiment. Jacob Collier makes the mega crazy choirs that just sound insane with all of the layers, and I don't even know what he's doing, and they sound so juicy and amazing. Sometimes that's what your song wants, just like that queen sound, that huge sound. And then sometimes that's just not appropriate for the kind of music you're making. So I like to Only add one is really needed and not to overdo it. You don't want to go queen on every single song. Like, sometimes you have a piano ballad, and you just don't need 1 billion vocal layers, but sometimes you do need that. So there's no cookie cutter way to approach this. But I just want to talk to you a little bit more and show you some harmonies and some doubles and what you can do about that. So, as we've explored before, here we have our lead vocal that has some doubles, and then we have our Harmony track that is harmonizing a third above our melody. And that was what worked for this song. Ms don't know. We we living so high no solo. We've been talking on night. Listening to the harmonies? Nothing in my soul, that you don't know. We were living so high no solo. We've been talking all night with the digo. Won't you tell me why Nothing in my soul, that you don't know. We were living so high no solo. Listen to just the doubles here. Nothing in my soul, that you don't know. We were living so high in no solo. We've been talking all night with the day go. Won't you tell me why And that's what worked for this song. So you have some harmonies, and you have some doubles. The doubles were there to really add some dimension and some power to our lead vocal because it sounded just a little bit a little bit too intimate, not quite enough body in my opinion. So we have the doubles to make the lead vocal sound a little bit more powerful. And the harmonies just sound kind of pretty and add, like, a more of an emotional aspect to it that sounds good to me. You may come across wanting to just record doubles or harmony for certain parts of your song. Like, you only want to harmony on the chorus, and the verse doesn't have a harmony. And maybe you don't want to double throughout the whole song. You just want to double on some standout words. Like, you could just double nothing in the so that you don't know. Like, maybe you just want to just double the ends of every word to make those stand out even more. Because if you double something, it's going to pop out. So that's another interesting technique you can try. You could maybe have in the verse a double that's in the middle, and then, like, the don't know, say so, those are on the sides or something. And the more contrast and the more change and interesting things happen in the recording, The more interested the listener will be listening to the song. So you can really have fun with your production. You can really say, y, the lead vocals in the middle, but then on the ends of every word, they're going to be on the side. Maybe we're only harmonizing the sides. Maybe the harmonies have a lot of reverb and they're sparse. You can start getting creative and play with your song and start just having fun, try different things. Maybe you do some weird effects on the harmonies, or some really weird effects on the doubles, and maybe you're only doubling part of the song. Maybe you want harmonies on the whole song. There's no right or wrong way. And I have so much fun in this process of making music, and I hope to share some of that inspiration with O. 15. Ad Libs: Add Spontaneity to Your Tracks: Ad libs or callbacks, whatever you want to call them, from the Beach boys to Migos, from old school to new modern music are such a key part of making your vocal parts interesting. So let's dive in to Ad libs. Like I said, from Migos to Beach Boys, call and response ads interest. Multiple voices is fun. You have the California dreaming style, where it's like repeating the same word with the choir, kind of Beatles, very old school, where it's like something in the da da. And the sky is gray. And the sky is gray. There's amazing performance, I know, but, like, you can tell there is the lead vocal says the main part, and then the callbacks really enhance and add some power to those lyrics. So, let's go ahead and listen to that. All these are. The sky. At the sky screen. M O M day Safa Or we can listen to a more modern song. No one right? Love that on that. Let's go. Oh. No, master p. Hey. So we have that. Hey, that's a callback. Ice Cap. Ice, ice. And there he's Ice Cap. Ice Jane. So it's call and response. We literally have different singers in the band here and different rappers in this group. And they're doing a call and response thing, doing Ad lives, where there's the main person, and then who's ever not doing the main verse at the time is singing the callbacks. And they're just can be repeating the last word like the California dreaming is, or it's just adding some influence, like a y or B or, like, whatever it is. You're adding some interest to your lead vocal. As with everything you don't want to overdo it, but let's go ahead and listen to these ad libs I recorded for this song. C. We been. We've been talking on with the take. So tell me. So that is super simple. I just repeat the last word that was said, and I sing it in a different take. I have some different processing here. This is going to the rever we have, but all the way. So it's like more spacey, so it stands out. So it's cool when your call and response has a little bit of a different sound like production wise. Like if one of them is e dry, one of them can be kind of more echoy or something like that. It's cool when you separate them in some kind of way. We also are cutting the high end of our callback. So the low end and the high ends really cut a lot. So this is a smaller sound when it comes to the frequency spectrum. No. C chiton So this makes it sound different. And the fact that it's contrasting is cool. Other than that, we have similar processing here, and ad libs just can fill the space. Like, without these ad libs, there's just a little bit of a space here. Con. We so high now was so low. Tuck. And the space might be perfect, and maybe you don't want to mess with that. Or maybe you're like, this could have a little bit more excitement or if this was like the chorus of your song, maybe the second time it adds the ad libs or whatever you want. But you don't know. So talking with the tao The main and most important thing with ad lips is to have fun. It's got to sound like you're adding energy or something fun is happening in the song. Otherwise, there's just no point, but it is a lot of fun to do ad libs. And I'm sure if you try and find some ad libs for your song, you'll be surprised at how much fun it really can be. 16. The Journey of the Lead Vocal: Journey of your lead vocal. Now, the journey of your lead vocal is also the journey of your whole song, if your song has a lead vocal. So this is really the whole journey of your song. So let's talk about the journey of your lead vocal. So you want to start with your lead vocal and then add layers and add harmonies and things just to keep interest with intention. You don't overdo it and go crazy, but you do want to add where is needed to add. So you can add some ad libs to keep the energy going, you can layer to emphasize the big part of your song. And let's dive into an example where I can show you what I mean. Here in this park side paradise song, the lead vocal goes on a journey. So let's see what that journey is. Here, visually, you can tell that we have a lead vocal, and then here in these specific parts we have our harmonies coming in. So that's a choice that makes these parts stand out. Let's listen to this. The city don't sleep. Everybody buzzing on some kind of cafe, running late to shift or important meeting, traveling past so the lights blow softly, softly. So this softly, softly, naturally, in the songwriting is different than the first part, so we're making it sound even more different by adding a harmony to that part. So So sleep. The city don't sleep. Everybody rallies like to the party. C out because we want to keep this song interesting. We want to keep the listener engaged. We're throwing in a harmony to the end of this line to, like, change it up a little bit, 'cause we've heard this whole verse before, obviously different lyrics, but we just heard this verse without any part standing out. So here in the second repetition of it, even though the melodies repeating, we're using some harmonies to stand out in specific moments to keep the listener engaged. This is very different than having a harmony through the whole part. It just the point of it is to stand out. The city don't sleep. Everybody rallies to the party. Drinking to their anxiety here. For scroll until their eyes b softly. Yeah. Softly. No, no, but I'm no but more of a delay. Who's crazy. I'm They don't understand. 'Cause for me a very doubled vocal the whole time, and there's harmony the whole time, 'cause it's the chorus. This is the bigger part of the song. So now there's more people singing together. Because of me that in sate under a tree. This is where I feel happy and the grass under my feet breathing headly. Oh, break the cycle, break w I'm moving yourself. Change the movies in my head pitch sound I'm going to have this, this high pitch part, and this is even layered even more. This is actually a layer of eight different vocals because this is a really high part of my voice, and I needed lots of layers to really get the same power to compete with the rest of it, because normally when I sing it, it's just kind of wispy, which is cool. But for this song, I wanted it to still live in the same genre as the lead vocal before, because you wanted to sound like one vocal going through a whole journey. Probably. But at this point of the journey, there's more characters singing, and then this part, the main persons alone, and then they're up here again, and there's different characters. But you don't want it to sound like in each section of the song. There's like a different lead person. I mean, unless you do want that, but usually you want a consistent golden thread throughout the whole song. But you're keeping things interesting and surprising, and it's good story telling to change things up. So here we have a similar sound, but now we're in a higher range with even more layers and more harmonies. Um the only meds I need are quick med Meditate vibrate T infinity. Cosmic yoga, transcendental feeling. 'Cause I had all the phases, and they don't phase me. Party phase, who phase, non stop working. You'll see at the ends of all these phrases now, we're consistently adding these harmonies, adding these layers. And then we also have this whole consistent layer that comes in here. So this part's basically alone. I had all the phases, and they don't phase me. Harmony. And now this part. Party, phase, who, fa. Party phase, who phase. It is just a double. So now we've doubled the verse. This is something we haven't done before. So now we're doubling the verse, and we are adding harmonies at the end of the phrases. So, in a way, we started out here just a naked verse. Then the second time, we started doing a little bit of harmonies at the end. Now we're doing harmonies at the end, and it's doubled. So this verse is growing from the first time. And on top of all of that, the performance is even more powerful here. So a lot is changing, even though it's still just the same verse. Party phase whole phase, non stop working. So Suck burn out. Chase American dream Nightmare wake up out of that reality. But, um I was crazy. I'm the one. They don't understand cause for me. This is more harmonies and more layers because it's the final chorus, so everyone is singing all together. So that's the journey of the lead vocal of that song. Every song has its own journey and its own way that you want to orchestrate things, but it's so cool and so powerful to take the time to, Okay, you get your really good take, your really good performance. The performances loud it needs to be loud and quiet, it needs to be quiet, all these different things. And then you start adding some cool doubles, some one offs like, Oh, this section just wants a loud double here. This section wants a harmony and then this whole part here wants a whole harmony, and this whole part wants a double. And you keep adding and taking away and really crafting an interesting journey to keep the listener engaged throughout the entire song. 17. Melodyne Magic: Vocal Tuning and Shaping: Go to let you in on the secret sauce that is Mladin, which is an extremely powerful vocal editing tool. You can affect the volume, the tuning, the timing, you can line up doubles, and you can turn down the sibilants and more. So let's dive into Mladin. So, let's go ahead and pull up our demo here, and we're going to go to our lead take, and we're going to go to Mladine, which, yes, it is a third party plug in, but I just want to show you how cool it is. It's made by the company Salmone and what you do is you drag down Mladine onto the track. You then will delete these effects because I like Mladine to be the first thing in the chain, because one thing you have to be aware of is you have to print your track into Mladine. Therefore, you record your audio into Meldine itself, which then overpowers Ableton in a way, and I'll show you what that means. So first, it's on the right track, you hit transfer, and you will turn this loop off, and you're going to hit play from where you want to start recording. And I don't have this on, but it's still working. Y here you go. So now we have recorded. We can turn back on our loop, and we have recorded our track into Mladine. So one thing I just want you to be aware of is that once it's recorded into Mladine, you can no longer really tweak Ableton in the same way. Let's say, Let's cut out this whole section. And let it play. We've been living so high. I deleted this, but we're still hearing it. We're still hearing it because it's in Mladin. So once you print something into Mladine, you can no longer really move it around in Ableton unless you freeze the track or resample it. So that's a big use case for freezing flattening or resampling your tracks. So this is our vocal. So you can zoom in. You can affect the timing. You can stretch it. Sometimes you have to hit option. You can move the timing around. We them is so hard. Ff Obviously, this sounds weird because this is changing the timing that was good, so we didn't actually want to change the timing, but you can. As you don't know. We've been living so Ms that don't know. Mas that don't So you can affect timing. Usually, you want to do this subtly, of course, but you can do it in a bigger way, and you can affect the pitch. Then Mass Athen Mass that you don't Athen Mass, that you don't know. We've been it. Well, what's really cool about Mladin is that if you open up the pitch tool, you can affect the pitch drift and the pitch modulation. So that's these lines here. A Mass if what we're doing now is we're evening out the pitch throughout the journey of this sound. Athene Mass, that you don't know. Cause this is going don't know. So if we really even this out, we can try to change that. Athene Mass, that you don't know. You can go to pitch modulation, which will flat in this line up even more. Offending muscle, that you don't know. Of course, this line is the human element, so you don't want to likely get rid of it, but you can have a lot of control over it. Offen in Muscle, that you don't know. We've been living so high, Of in Muscle, that you don't know. We've been living so high, now we so low. We've been The purposes of this, though, I think that the melody is don't know So you do actually want to hear. And my soul, that you don't know. Now that we have flattened this too much, we're getting some of those artifacts that maybe you don't really want. So this is just to show you how powerful this tool really is. Normally, I don't like to tweak the vocal this much, but I just want to show you the kind of things that melody that Mladin is capable of. Ath M, you don't know. So we've been hath M so that you don't know. We've been living so high now with solo. We've been talking all night with the tago. Won't you tell me why then in my soul, that you don't know. We've been living so high, now we're so low. This part still sounds kind of bad, but down here. Athen M. And then here we can maybe restore original Pit centers, restore reginal modulation, and restore original Pits drift. Nothing in my soul, you don't know. We've been living so high, now so. We've been talking all night with the tago Won't you tell me why. So Mladin is a super powerful tool that you can really tweak your vocal a lot. I'm gonna go ahead and redo this so I can show you how I would normally actually use Mladin in this instance. So we'll transfer here. Nothing in my soul. Don't know. We've been living so high, now so low. So let's go ahead and zoom in here. And what I would normally do is just see, is everything really in the right pitch? Is this fine a little low? Do we want to just curve this like a little bit? Like that, maybe. I think in my soul that you don't know. We I think in my soul that you don't know. We've been living so No. I think in my soul that you don't know. We've been living so high now we so low. Ith in my soul that you don't know. We've been living so high now with solo. Ath in my soul that you don't know. We've been living so high now with solo. We've been talking Athing in my soul that you don't know. We've been living so high now with solo. We've been Athing in my soul that you don't know. We've been living so high now with solo. So I've just adjusted the tuning just a little bit here to make it a little more perfectly in tune. Sometimes you don't want this sound. And actually, I've seen a trend away from this with recent commercial music, wanting things to sound a little bit more live. For a while, everything sounded super deeper tune. So you now know about this tool. You can use it if you want to, but you don't have to, of course. You can also cut these sibilances, these things that don't look like the rest of them, and these are not melodic. These are like the Ss and the Fs and the Ps, and you can actually turn those down here. So we can go to the volume. Turn it down. Athen and M so that you don't know. Then in M so that you don't know. We've been living so Athen in my soul that you don't know. And maybe this is a little too much, turn it up a little Athen in M so that you don't know. And you can really affect and tweak things a lot. You can even change the amount of time in between the S and the rest of the word. Athena M that you don't know. We Athene M so that you don't know. And that just really changes the groove. So you have a lot of control here in Mladine. Now I'm going to show you another really cool use case for Mladine. Let's go to our double here. And we're going to name this lead and name this double. Turn this on. And you can notice we already have a lead in double. Hm. Could that be the same one? Well, I'll tell you shortly. Nothing in my so that you don't know. We've been living so high and was so low. There are other ways to do this that save time. Some people swear that this is not the quickest way to do it. I do it this way because I think this is actually the most accurate way. But what you can do is we have printed our double into Mladin, but you can turn on the ghost, this track here in silver. You can turn on your lead. Then what that allows you to do is you can move your double to be perfectly in line with your lead. You can even do this with the timing. Now, our doubles should be way more in time with our lead. I think in my so don't know. We've been living so high no was so low. Some people have theories of tuning the doubles a lot more and having the leads be a lot less tuned and more raw, and the doubles are way more in tune. Some people do the opposite. There's all sorts of different things you can try. You can go ahead and find what makes sense for your song. I do like, in general, having the lead vocal be a little bit more raw and the doubles a little bit more tuned. That does sound good. Sometimes that's not what you want. And sometimes it's nice to have doubles that are not in time and not in tune so that it really makes your vocal sound thicker and wider, and it sounds like there's two voices more. Or sometimes you don't want it to sound like there's two voices, and you want it to sound like there's one voice. That way, if you tune them to each other, let's say the lead vocal isn't perfectly in tune, but you can tune the double to the lead so that it's exactly in tune with the lead and the same timing, that will hide it under and make it more sound like one big voice. 18. Vocal Chops: Crafting Dynamic and Engaging Edits: This lesson is all about vocal chops. So let's talk about what those are. Vocal chops. Well, like it sounds, you probably want to get out your cut tool and start chopping. You can reverse the audio. You can find interesting or pleasant sounds in there. You can have a vision for, Okay, I know what the sound I'm going for I want, or you can just be totally random and see what sticks out. Here is a vocal chop that I made for this song. Oh. So, what a vocal chop is is, you could chop your own voice. You could record yourself singing, and then, you know, maybe I would take parts of this. And I would cut that up. But for this, I just also just picked a different sample. And this is the sample that I chose. And what you do is you essentially just go in and find a really unique part of the vocal. Ooh. And you can start copying and pasting things around. Oooooooh. Oh Oh. And you can reverse some of them. Go down here. Here reverse. See what that sounds like. You can cut things up even more. You can go kind of random, or you can have an idea in mind of what you're actually going for. And here. This part is kind of cool. And you just start looking for little unique spots. Moo. Oooooooh o. I don't know what this is going to sound like, but And you kind of get the idea. You just take the time to cut up your vocal. You can reverse some parts. You could try to pit some parts around. Maybe this ones to be up anoctave. Maybe you want to switch the texture here. D. Maybe that'll sound totally weird. It just some experimentation goes a long way. And you just kind of explore and have fun and see where things want to land. There's really no wrong answers with vocal chops. You can pitch things up, you can pitch things down. You can go to different warp modes, you can reverse things, you can cut different sections, paste them all around. And you're just chopping up and sort of remixing your vocal. You can even do this live on a keyboard or a beat pad, assign different start points to this longer track. And every time you hit a pad, you trigger a new sound. Show you how to do that in a later lesson. And it's really just exciting how creative you can be with vocal chops. There are no right or wrong ways to do vocal chops. The only right thing to do is to make sure you're having fun while you're doing it. 19. Study the Greats: Learn from Iconic Songs and Singers: As with all music, if you want to get good at something, study the greats. So you want to get good at melodies. Study your favorite melodies. Study classic melodies. Study all the Beatles, all the old Dies. You can even study Beethoven. You can go and study modern melodies. Just like find what you like and figure out what makes it tick. What does a good melody feel like when you listen to it? What does a good melody feel like when you sing it? What does a good melody feel like when you play it? You should sing them, play them, analyze them, try even reharmonizing them. You can try, Okay, what's some famous melody you love, but play it in a minor key instead. How does that change? Does the melody still sound good? What emotional effect does that have? Or maybe you take a minor melody and play it in a major key? You just want to start getting familiar with great melodies. That's the best way to start writing great melodies of your own? 20. Learning Activity Write Your Own Melodies: Congratulations for making it to the end of the melody chapter. Now that we're all melody Masters, I have a learning activity for you to try. If you'll go to the melody Learning Activity, here we have three different beats that consists of some harmony and some drums. What I want you to do is to sync up the tempo here on the right with the tempo of your song and write some top lines, write some melodies to these songs. I would love for you write a vocal to two of these different beats and then write an instrumental lead to the third. I'll let you choose which speechs you want to do the vocals to and which speechs you want to do the instrumental leads to. But just practice writing some melodies. Don't worry at all about if you're a good singer, if you're a good player, if you can even record it, that's not even important. What's important is to start getting the muscle of melody writing into your bones. And so just have fun with it. Set a time or don't spend forever on it. Remember, see does something just come to you because that's the best thing. Don't judge yourself either. It's like, Is that melody? Ripping someone else off? Is it too cheesy? Whatever. Don't even get into that headspace. Just sing whatever feels good to you over this beat. And then worry about all the other stuff later. But for now, we're just getting the ball rolling, trying to let our guard down and just be fun and creative because ultimately in the energy of being playful is where you're going to come up with your best ideas. It's so important that you can find a way to not judge yourself while you're just getting used to writing melodies and while you're learning how to write melodies, because there's all sorts of things that would stop me back in the day when I was like, too in my head about stuff. And that's just like it doesn't help. The only thing that matters is that you start knowing what it feels like to write a melody. And, understand that feeling. What is a melody coming to you feel like? I know I've said that. It's really hard to explain, but I promise you if you take some time listening to a beat, trying to hum out a melody, something will happen. And that's exactly what I mean. 21. Congratulations!: Congratulations on finishing this class. I am so proud of you, and I can't wait to listen to your class project. You can say hi to me on Instagram or Spotify at Benza Maman. And if you like this class, please check out my other music classes on Skillshare.