Anybody recording Vocals into Session View? Strategies?

[mholloway]

recording vocals in Session introduces a lot of confusing obstacles, and I'm wondering if anybody here has found any convenient/effective/interesting workarounds....the main issue is that vocals often start before a given "verse"/measure and bridge over the transition in between various measures -- but my Scenes in the Session view are organized to start right at the beginning of a measure, be it a verse or chorus or breakdown or whatever. So, if I just hit record on a new audio clip in my vocal channel, I'm forced to start recording the vocals that occur literally when the measure starts, but, as stated, usually there's a transition or lead-in / lead-up vocally....if you've tried this at all, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.

so, anybody found clever ways around this? all I can think to do is start recording, let it play through once, start the vocal at the end of the measure so I get the lead in to the main verse vocal, but this means that whenever I trigger that scene, I have to wait a full measure before hearing the vocals start up -- very annoying. Or, I can record vox into a clip that has the stop buttons removed in the scenes below it, have those scenes be the various parts, and trigger them as necessary while recording the full vocal part, then cut that big clip up into all the individual pieces for each scene. This works, kinda, but requires launching scenes while I'm singing, which is less than ideal...

other thoughts?

-M

[jca78]

im recording vox in arrangement view. you could do that, then copy and paste to a clip....might work out the timing issue.

[mholloway]

im recording vox in arrangement view. you could do that, then copy and paste to a clip....might work out the timing issue.

defeats the point though for me, I've done vocals in arrangement all along and want to start doing them in session, while Im' still writing the song instead of waiting until it's sequenced over in arrangement...

-M

[anybody human]

If I'm understanding the problem correctly (always a big if), then you might try giving yourself some running room. It's pretty common to set a marker point early, 2-4 bars, to give yourself a lead in when doing overdubs. Same could apply to recording vocals. Don't forget to turn off Snap in the clips when in Session view.

Another way would be to use Arrangement view, create a bunch of audio tracks, group them and just arm the next as your record takes. To comp them, use Command E to separate out regions you like, drag those to a main audio track. Remember to turn off create fades on clip edges in preferences when using Arrangement view.

Hope that helps.

[Khazul]

I usually set up an audio track in a group for recording vocals. Stick the basic default vocal processing on the group - not the audio track.
Ater each take, add another audio track in the group and record onto it, so eventual end up with a load of track in the group with a take on each.

For comping, listen through each, marking out the best sound bit in each take by cutting the clips and colouring them.
Finally add a new audio track, drop the best clips into it and consolidate them into a single vocal clip and time to goto work on fine detail processing on the group track. Ill also save out the group so I have a separate (out of project) record of all the takes incase I need to go back to them later.

Now Ill move the processing from the group track to the audio track - even if building harmoiues etc, Ill often want the processing specific to each layer, but whatever works for you.

Tried doing it in session view, but never really got on with it as recording vocal nearly allways ends up being a more linear than clip orientated non-linear workflow for me - I guess it depends what kind of vocal you are recording - quick phrases and sounds or a more usual verse/bridge/chorus linear structure against a guide track.

The biggest obstacle for me was just the typical phrasing of alot of vocal parts that often start just before the music phrase, or extend beyond the stricter music phrase stucture - linear just is more the way ive done it on tape/DAT or in other DAWs in the past.

I did once try a sort of hybrid approach with long music clips (cut from arrange view audio) in session view and while this did work well technically for me, I found the end result just didnt flow as well as a linearly recorded complete song from the vocalist - I guess recording clips was too disruptive for her.

[pepezabala]

that's just one inconvenience of the concept of triggering scenes: Everything that starts before the 1 of the beat needs to get fiddled into a previous clip. and can't get triggered easily.

One workaround would be to make "transition scenes". Let's say you have part A (instrumental), 8 bars long, and part B (with vocals). But the vocals start on beat 3 in the last bar of part A.

You can duplicate scene A, call it "transition scene" (A´) and make a clip for the vocals that is empty until the 3 of the last bar - where the vocals for part B start. Then set follow actions so that the scene/clips of part B start automatically. You could actually have only one clip for the vocals, leave it in part A' and delete the stop button below, so the vocal clip just carries on while all other clips trigger to their respective B-clips.

During performance you can now loop part A as long as you want to, and just trigger the transistion scene 8 bars before you want to have part B to kick in.

[Valery_Kondakoff]

that's just one inconvenience of the concept of triggering scenes: Everything that starts before the 1 of the beat needs to get fiddled into a previous clip. and can't get triggered easily.

Exactly! I'm really interested: are Ableton developers aware of this issue? Can we expect some enhancements/workarounds to be implemented in the future Live releases?

[Khazul]

that's just one inconvenience of the concept of triggering scenes: Everything that starts before the 1 of the beat needs to get fiddled into a previous clip. and can't get triggered easily.

Exactly! I'm really interested: are Ableton developers aware of this issue? Can we expect some enhancements/workarounds to be implemented in the future Live releases?

Funny its something ive often noticed in alot of music produced in live - nothing start before the change of phrase - ie the clip alignments stick it
I know some people use clips to just do the skeleton and then work linear to polish and so get all the little leaders and tails in in, but alot dont bother.

[mholloway]

that's just one inconvenience of the concept of triggering scenes: Everything that starts before the 1 of the beat needs to get fiddled into a previous clip. and can't get triggered easily.

Exactly-- this is the basic problem I was trying to explain in my OP above. You and Khazul have some good ideas for working around it, but your'e right that it's just inherent to clip-firing based sequencing. I guess it's inevitable that with the advantages of session view, will come some drawbacks..

thanks for the ideas, some good stuff.

-M