Timing of the double-tracks

Sibilants and breaths

Timing discrepancies between the master lead vocal and the double-tracks are particularly troublesome where they concern breaths and sibilants as well as short consonants such as “K” or “T” at the beginning or ending of words. You will therefore want to make all such sounds quieter on the double-tracks than they already are, and even, in the extreme case, mute them altogether.

For this purpose you use the Sibilant Balance Tool. Select all notes of the Dub-Vocal track and drag the tool downwards until the overall sound pleases you.

Sometimes you will prefer not to reduce the volume of the sibilants and breaths, in order to preserve the illusion of several people singing in unison. In that case, you eliminate timing discrepancies by shortening or lengthening words with the timing tool.

The beginning of words

Once you have optimized the breaths and “S's”, you can get down to the beginnings and endings of words. Here it is advisable to summon a manageable number of double-tracks (four to eight, say) to the Note Editor and then fan them out in the display with the switch near the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.

A quick way of improving the synchronization is to begin by selecting one note and thereafter step from note to note using the arrow keys. Any note that is too far offset from the corresponding note of the reference track can be nudged to the right or left as appropriate using the keyboard shortcut “Alt-Cmd-right/left arrow”. If you would prefer to assign some other key combination to this command, you can do so from the Preferences property sheet.

Using the Quantize Time Macro

An even faster technique takes advantage of the Quantize Time Macro:

• Shift-click on all the notes (regardless of track) that are mistimed, in order to select them.
• Open the Quantize Time Macro and choose the lead vocal track as the groove reference.
• Set the Intensity to 100 % (or thereabouts).

This method corrects the notes quickly and efficiently but harbors one risk:

If the master lead vocal has been sliced into smaller snippets than the double-tracks, it can happen that notes when quantized “seek out” the wrong targets and end up in the wrong places, in which case you may end up making the timing worse rather than better, if you’re not careful.

But don’t worry: This is something that is easily noticed and quickly put right. All you have to do is select the erroneously quantized notes, right-click and choose “Reset Timing” to return them to their original positions.

Now you just move them to the desired positions by hand or using the keyboard shortcuts.

Word endings

To move the ending of a word, you must usually begin by detaching it from the following note by severing the “ties that bind them” i.e. by replacing the soft separation between them (vertical dash) with a hard one (square bracket).

You already know this technique as it was discussed in detail in the section on lead vocals.

Summary

To correct the timing of vocal double-tracks, here in a nutshell is the procedure to follow:

• Display the master lead vocal in the Note Editor for reference.
• Move four to eight double-tracks at a time to the Note Editor, this time for editing, and fan them out so you can see what you are doing.
• Reduce the level of sibilants and breaths using sibilant balance tool.
• Open the Quantize Time Macro, select the lead vocal track as the groove reference and set the desired intensity.
• Alternatively (or in addition), move blobs by hand (to do this quickly, use the arrow keys).
• Next, adjust the word lengths (for which it is necessary to release certain notes from their “social ties”).