Vocal harmonies are used more commonly than you might realise in all kinds of musical genres. Often their job is not to be overly prominent, but to enrich and fortify the lead vocal, providing a bed of sound to fill out the track. Ideally you will record them live but sometimes this isn't possible and at that point you can turn to software to help you. In this video from the course Vocal Tuning 101: The Art Of Vocal Tuning, Josh Carney compares and contrasts two approaches to creating vocal harmonies.
Vocal Tuning 101: The Art Of Vocal Tuning
The first thing to consider is what type of music you are making. For acoustic or folk music, artificial harmonies might sound strange if not done correctly whereas in EDM they could be much more acceptable. Josh uses practical examples to show how auto-tuning lead and backing vocals or alternatively leaving them in their natural state can have very different effects. You'll hear how Melodyne - or a similar tool - can be used to create artificial harmonies from a single vocal part and then tweaked to make it sound more natural by automating volume over time. To learn much more about vocal tuning be sure to check out the full course using the links below.
Discussion
It’s really useful when a tutorial isn’t too focused on a single DAW or plugin, which can feel more like a demo than a way to understand how things work. Having said this, there are some cool tuts on using Melodyne to create back vocals which don’t sound like demos.
So, what makes this course different, in a way, is the balance between plugin features (with a bit of comparison) and the “art of tweaking the resultsâ€.
What this course helped me understand is the benefit of a subtle approach to harmonization.
I’ve mostly been experimenting with ways to rich and complex polyphony, say with voice leading or rotating chords. My dream would be to have an easy way to produce diverse types of harmonies from a capella groups to big bands. The best approach probably isn’t from plugins but from practice. On a podcast, someone made a comment about learning Bach chorales on a piano to really get four-part harmony. As a very inexperienced keyboard player, I find this quite challenging and not that immediately rewarding. There’s a Jordan Rudess course in the Ask Audio Academy which helped me a bit more. Wish there were one with Rudess (or somebody else) doing in with, say, GeoShred. My impression is that it’d be much easier to climb the learning curve quickly than having to use a keyboard.
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