[Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

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[Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

Postby SpiderPubes » 13 Mar 2013 02:34

I noticed there was another thread about this, but it focused on FL Studio and SliceX and as SliceX doesn't work in Ableton, it seemed like a good idea to open a thread specifying in Ableton?..

I was wondering, how do you achieve the seamless vocal chopping used by Skorp in Style and Speed? Skrillex also pulls off the smooth vocal chopping where it doesn't even really feel chopped? - People have said that it's Melodyne but I can't get my head around that properly, others say to slice to midi and hope for the best, but that always results in really jumpy cuts..

So would there be any tips for vocal chopping under Ableton? Or is it just best to play around with slice to midi and hope for the best? :?
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Re: [Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

Postby Genkar » 13 Mar 2013 04:26

When I asked for help on this, itroitnyah gave a useful technique that could be done in audacity, so as long as you own the program, you should be fine there.
itroitnyah wrote:Use Edison in FL Studio or Audacity.

Cut out consonants, keep vowels. When cutting out the consonants, cut it out so that at the beginning of each section, the waveform point where you cut it off from is at the center line, with the wave starting above-on the center line, and the end of the sample should be so that the waveform is going upwards from the underside of the center line. That will avoid clicking.

The samples will be really short. That will be good.

Also, import the glitched sample into a program like Newton, and then pitch correct the sample to keep it on tune with the song, and you could change the pitch of the samples down or up a bit to provide more variation and make it interesting.

As far as pitch correcting goes, your best bet would be melodyne, but if you don't really understand it, I guess you can just keep experimenting with the program and you'll probably grasp it eventually.
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Re: [Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

Postby itroitnyah » 13 Mar 2013 05:54

A lot of vocal chopping, especially what Skrillex does, is by taking vocals from only one source. Cut out all the consonants, keep vowels only, like said above. The hard part is putting them all together to get them to work. A way to do this is to use only similar vowels. A and E are very similar, and if you listen to scary monsters and nice sprites you can hear that those are mainly the only vowels that Skrillex used. O and U are similar as well, so you would use them together. "I" doesn't seem to fit anywhere, I've never heard "I" ever used in a song where vocals are glitching similarly to Skrillex style. So just pair the vowels of the sample together, like I said. Of course, there's a bit more to it than that. Placement isn't something that we can really tell you how to do, it's just something that you have to experiment with and hope you get it right. Another thing, never switch between samples really quickly. Like, don't go A-E-E-A-E-A, because that doesn't actually sound very good. Use samples of the same vowel repetitively. A-A-A-A-E-E-E-E-E-A-A-A-A that will sound much better. And even another thing, they won't sound good together if you use the sample vowel samples, take different samples of each vowel. That will allow you to have "transition" vowels that sound like a mixture between an A and an E, use those between a solid A and a solid E to transition between them. It'll make it sound nicer.

Of course, when done correctly, you can indeed use AE and OU in the same glitching sample. It's harder, but you can do it with enough practice and when the time in the song agrees. E and O are pretty similar, similar enough that you could potentially use them together, although not often.
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Re: [Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

Postby Forza SoundFire » 13 Mar 2013 08:10

Cut up the file and load into a sampler. (like you would with a drum kit)
It's then ~really~ easy to recall the samples you want!

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Re: [Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

Postby the4thImpulse » 13 Mar 2013 09:04

Forza SoundFire wrote:Cut up the file and load into a sampler. (like you would with a drum kit)
It's then ~really~ easy to recall the samples you want!

Nothing more to it in Ableton!

Place the sound clip in the arrangement view, zoom in close and cut away. Specific cutting techniques will take time to learn and develop and I since I do minimal cutting myself I don;t have any tips to really offer in that department. Once you have you clips I would load them up in abletons 'drum rack' and trigger them midi clips.
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Re: [Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

Postby HMage » 13 Mar 2013 09:22

You can also manipulate sample offset of the audio clip if you want to do smashing and shuffling of sounds.
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Re: [Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

Postby skorp » 13 Mar 2013 10:01

I was wondering, how do you achieve the seamless vocal chopping used by Skorp in Style and Speed? Skrillex also pulls off the smooth vocal chopping where it doesn't even really feel chopped? - People have said that it's Melodyne but I can't get my head around that properly, others say to slice to midi and hope for the best, but that always results in really jumpy cuts..

Hm. Actually it's easy to do in Ableton. In "Style And Speed" I just placed vocal slices to the single audio track and used transpose knob for each slice, to make all of them sounding in the key of the song. Heh, and when you transpose it in this way, your slice may become short or too long (and also this will cause sounding them weird but cool IMO), so make sure all of them are placed in correct timing.
And yeah, a screenshot how it was done in Ableton:
Image

Skrillex, mentioned in one interview that he uses Melodyne for detuning recorded vocals, and then he manually chops them with pitch envelopes and with Ableton transpose wheel.

Cut up the file and load into a sampler. (like you would with a drum kit)
It's then ~really~ easy to recall the samples you want!

Yeah, great Idea. You may also try to apply arpeggiator and see how it will generate pretty good sequences so you don't even need to make them manually :D I did the that thing before with Fluttershy's samples, but it worked well only if all vocals slices were in the key of the song.
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Re: [Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

Postby Nine Volt » 13 Mar 2013 12:50

What the fuck is up with your username...

Anyway, yeah, listen to itroitnyah. I don't quite see the purpose of this thread though; the techniques themselves should be cross-DAW, and I refuse to believe Ableton doesn't have a sliceX style function. Hell, even Reason has it.
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Re: [Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

Postby Dabrenn » 15 Mar 2013 21:33

Nine Volt wrote:What the fuck is up with your username...

Anyway, yeah, listen to itroitnyah. I don't quite see the purpose of this thread though; the techniques themselves should be cross-DAW, and I refuse to believe Ableton doesn't have a sliceX style function. Hell, even Reason has it.


It does. At least, I think it does. Just right click an audio sample and hit "Slice to Midi"
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Re: [Ableton] Vocal Chopping Help?

Postby v.lossity » 16 Mar 2013 06:58

Thanks for responding skorp, I was wondering too how you did that. The transpose wheel was one of those things where I was like "This is easy.....too easy" xD
As for slicing to midi, it does create some clicking on all the settings I have tried. I would just zoom in very close to cut what you want. Make sure you zoom in close enough to see the wave, and make sure you cut it where the wave is at 0, otherwise you will get a click. Ableton is pretty good about this I have noticed, but in audacity sometimes even this technique would sometimes give me a click, so give it a few tries if it doesnt work at first.
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