tips...025.
A REAL RECORDING SESSION WITH POWERTRACKS.(cont.).

ok...back up vocals time.
the band CEFE luckily have come across some good back up singers to help them.
this will really help the song in places where harmony back up vocals
are needed in a chorus or two.
but you dont have a huge mic locker.
there are two ways to do back up vocs.
give each singer a mic, or u could group the singers
round one mic, assuming the singers were very good.
you could even , if u wish put up a stereo mic...
and record the back ups to a stereo track.
in summary many ways.
BUT.ive found (maybe its psychological.) sometimes grouping the singers
round one mic seems to work rather nice.
and doing two takes .(you can do more if u wish).
then we pan the different takes mebe.
as mentioned before...one could "stack" multiple takes to get a nice choir effect,
it depends what the song called for.
but for now lets keep it simple.
as before we are going to use 5 traks.
(we are going to leave tr 22 and tr 23 as blank traks just in case we want to do any
added lead guitar work later on.
so the track layout for back up vocs will follow a format that should now becoming
familiar. cos the song calls for simple back ups in places.
ie...
tr 24...named....back up vocs punch ins.
tr 25............final b'up vocs 1.
tr 26............final b'up vocs 1 fx.
tr 27............final b'up vocs 2.
tr 28............final b'up vocs 2 fx.

thus group the singers round the mic like this.
singers>>>windscreen>>>mic>>>audio mixer etc.
the procedure is the same as before...so i wont go into as much detail.
ie...record the singers to 24, cut out any bad spots.
transfer to tr 25. then do punch ins on tr 24..and transfer to
final tr 25.
then repeat the whole process for the second round of backup vocs.
recording on 24 and transferring to 27.
(for the experts amongst us.....YES...i KNOW ive used several punch in traks in this project...
but i'm trying to keep things easy for folks new to recording.
as best i can. ie...little steps at a time.....also the punch ins traks have their uses later
as we will see.....!!)
once again the black art of audio engineering rears its head.
things like choosing the right location to record in etc etc.
mic positioning/distance from singers/amount of room sound desired etc etc.
mebe some singers are better than others.
so u want the poorer singers further back mebe without hurting their feelings.
and the good singers nearer the mic.
once again judgement calls are involved.
let me state in some respects..lol....the audio engineer recording the client band
or any client has to be rather a "tactfull politician", ..sometimes this
personality trait in an audio engineer can be highly beneficial if lots of strong egos are involved. one does ones best of course.
if its a mixture of male and female back up singers, and this is a producers decision.
does one intermingle them on both final takes ??
or...have a male take , and seperately a female take and pan the different groups differently ??
for example if final 1 was male. and final 2 female.
how would the song sound with panning tr 25 left and tr 27 right ??
do you want this ??
OR...another approach with large groups of back up singers...
do u want a seperate final back up vocal trak for say..
bassos, altos, and sopranos for example...and pan them differently ??
in the ptw mixer ?? once again judgement calls need to be made.
with a large choir for example multiple mics might be used on different sections.
mebe .for example its later decided that ptw will be used on location
in a cathedral to record a choir as another trak for this project, on say a laptop.
then the trak brought back to the studio and integrated with the CEFE song.
lots of possibilities i just want to draw your attention to.
(another reason why ive tried to leave spare tracks i the project..
in case things change. a little point...ALWAYS ALLOW FOR FUTURE CHANGES IN
A SONG PROJECT.)
i wont belabor the same points ive made before...
but haveing got the final 1 and 2 back up voc traks.
u can try some of the ptw fx and other triks like trak slipping forward
in time on tr 26 and tr 28 .
there are a slew of options.
for example.(one of many.).
in ptw mixer ...pan tr 25 and its fx tr 26 to 9 o'clok,
with the fader of tr 26 just under the fader of tr 25.
and ..YES..youve guessed it....
pan 27 and 28 to 3 o'clok withthe fader of tr 28 just under the level of
tr 27. once again the final result depends on your choice of ptw
(or third party fx.), wet versus dry, how u choose to set your pans and levels
of the dry versus effected tracks. etc etc.
once again the black art of audio engineering comes into play.
DONT YA JUST HATE MAKEING DECISIONS ??..lol.
its really tough ..huh ??
of course u dont need to use any fx whatsover if u dont want.
once again .a judgement call.
once again...remember to clean up your tracks.
consolidate tracks, and back up the CEFE song project.
if.every half hour u get used to saveing to the seq ....
u wont go far wrong either.
heres another point to think about.VERY CAREFULLY...
and an advantage of why i'm a stickler for haveing two hard drives in
a recording pc....
at regular intervals during the day...
i can back up very fast the seq song project on another drive.
just in case i get a bad drive crash on my recording drive.
the problem with useing just one drive in your pc is..
you cant do this.
also..if it goes bad...your in serious trouble imho.
just my opinion.

(more to come.....please comment in off topic....
if u have any questions etc etc.
also perhaps folks new to ptw recording can comment if they are finding this usefull.
this will encourage me to post loads more topics....lol.. tons to describe yet....over a couple of months or so.
just doing the best i can/labor of love.
still just scratching the surface of recording.
or PM me...with comments/questions etc etc.)