SON ZINE

2015#04

Media composer trade magazine SPRING 2015 | #004

Tutorial

Track techniques:

Adding sampled vocals

Kontakt 101: Analysing script

Specials

Session singer insights

Title design in film and TV

Top 3 title tracks

Features

NAMM 2015: Best in show

Russ Landau Q&A

ADDING SAMPLED VOCALS TO

ORCHESTRAL TRACKS

TRACK TECHNIQUESvarious choirs from Eduardo Tarilonte. One notable inclusion, which still sounds great ten years after release, is EastWest Symphonic Choirs. In theory, it’s possible to make this choir sing any phrase at all, as the ‘Wordbuilder’ engine can be deployed to link sampled phonemes together. However, in practise it’s very tricky and time consuming to pull off a convincing phrase, so I tend to use this choir as backing for a solo vocal, which hides the fakery.

Choirs can be orchestrated in three main ways. The first is to provide additional color in slower, more melodic cues with sung chords, or by doubling or harmonizing the melody. Use your legato patches for this. The second use is singing loudly in staccato or marcato to punctuate and emphasize action or chase cues. Lastly, more unusual choir samples (whispers, shouts, etc) can be utilized for unnerving sounds in horror and thriller scores. In fact, unsettling scores of that ilk allow you to get really creative with your choir samples, as you can stretch, reverse and twist them to put your audience on edge. Give iZotope Iris a try – it excels at vocal mangling.

When it comes to mixing the choir, ideally you want to start with the library’s own realistically sampled space, then use the aforementioned reverb techniques and spatial processing to push the sound to the back of your virtual hall, placing the choir in position behind the orchestra. IRCAM Spat and Parallax Audio VirtualSoundStage are both great plugins for this sort of thing.

A final note on comedy. Vocals can be used in glaringly obvious ways to signify a comic moment or deliver a punchline – a descending glissando to accompany a cartoon character’s fall from a cliff, say. My favorite example is the ending of ‘Airplane’, where Elmer Bernstein’s choir really lets rip with some oversung Hollywood cheesiness. Makes me laugh every time.

Reuben Cornell@reutunes

First, some words of warning: Be very careful when using vocals in your orchestral music, because nothing that can ruin a cue quite like the unexpected appearance of an overwrought diva. Sung elements are all too easy to misuse, so tread them with caution. Vocals should ideally be used as aural ‘seasoning’ to complement your cues.

Let’s start with a couple of examples, both good and bad. The stunning ‘Lily’s Theme’, by Alexandre Desplat, kicks off the score of the final ‘Harry Potter’ movie perfectly, with its ethereal vocal effectively setting the mood and melodic theme for the whole soundtrack – a delicate female solo deftly woven into the orchestral instruments. Contrast this with James Horner’s otherwise impressive score for Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 epic, ‘Troy’, in

which the ethnic warbling on tracks like ‘The Temple Of Poseidon’ serves only to distract rather than enhance.

Solo vocals are great for evoking a particular mood. For example, a solo choirboy conjures a sense of innocence and solitude, while a lone female vocal can suggest sadness and longing. Legato solo vocal sample libraries are now quite common, enabling automatic legato transitions from one note or vowel sound to another, mimicking the way a real singer would perform. Vocal libraries from Soundiron and Realitone can do a particularly great job here, and when simple melodies are skillfully programmed and processed, they can be indistinguishable from the real thing.

An ethnic phrase can quickly set the scene, either geographically or spiritually. Non-Western vocals are much harder to emulate using legato libraries, so an alternative option is to use sampled improvisations and songs. Sonokinetic have a wide range of these on offer, from Jewish (Yiddish and Desert Voice) to Greek (Delphi) and others. Using a combination of many sampled snippets to create longer phrases can sound utterly convincing – as long as you’re mindful of timing and timbre.

When constructing phrases from short samples of actual vocabulary, be careful: You might not be able to understand your singer’s language but, obviously, other people will, so make sure that what’s being sung actually makes sense and isn’t just a jumble of nonsensical words.

Processing solo vocals effectively is important. Ideally, they should compliment your orchestral instruments and exist in the same virtual ‘space’. Dry vocal samples may need de-essing to soften the sibilance from close miking. Then, use two reverbs: the first a plate or studio convolution model with a short tail; the second with a much longer tail and similar settings to your orchestral reverb, but wetter. For a really wide wash of vocals, consider using an echo/ping-pong delay effect with the high frequencies rolled off. Tape delay also works well for vocals, as it sounds more organic then overtly digital processing.

“Of course, effective soundtrack vocals don’t necessarily have to be shrinking violets”

Consider the heady chants of Goldsmith’s ‘The Omen’ score, which perfectly amp up the drama. Using a sampled choir – be it male, female or mixed – brings another level of fullness to a score. There are plenty of libraries suited to this kind of use, mostly containing ooo’s, ahh’s and other syllables that can be bolted together within your sampler to create longer phrases. Often, these are themed around Latin or Slavic languages, and my personal favorites include Cinesamples Voxos, Soundiron Mars and Venus, and