accapella's

[sureno]

ok not sure if this is the right section but i just got the accapella to a track i want to remix, iv taken the original and worked it out to be about 130bpm? seems too much to me but oh well. my question is how would you guys slow it too about 126bpm? would i simply count the numbers of bars and timestretch (or squeeze )it down?

[Khazul]

Ive done this sort of thing quite a few time in Ableton Live, howvere the process there is very simple, as its a central feature of Live, however I think most DAWs these days have some kind of basic pitch-shift_timestrect built in.

In general you have 3 options:

1. Simply play it at a 'slower' speed - equivalent to slowing down a turntable or tape. The side effect of course is you get a pitch change. Between 130and 126bpm you will get just under half a semi-tone pitch drop.

When changing the speed - then about 6% change in speed is equivalent to semi-tone - something DJs who do harmonic mixes etc are usually familar with. At dance music tempos, 6% represents a jump from 126bpm to 133.5bpm.

If you have a re-pitching tool, then you may be able to adjust this back up again.

I generally find that sticking audio into a sampler and running at a lower at higher speed then doing some minimal pitch correction yields the cleanest sounding results if you dont have access to a really high quality pitch/timestretch tool, especially if the pitch correction afterwards is up rather than down.

2. Just use a re-pitching tool alone. Because of the way many of these work, slowing sound down can sometimes leave artifacts. Basically the simpler versions up the sounds in tiny slices of a few ms in length then crosss fade them back together, inserting additional slices if needed. Usually such tools have various modes - some suitable for sound textures and vocals, others more suited to rhythms.

3. Slice it - here you basically use a tool to finely chop up the sound into small slices (qurster beat or 1/16ths for eg). This works well for rythmic sounds, but not for continuous sounds and textures etc and tends to leave little stutter artifacts - however this effect can sometimes be desirable. Combined this with changing the sample playback speed can help alot. Also this doesnt work very well for slowing stuff down as it tends to leave gaps.

There are some excellent tools on the market for doing specifically what you want to do - among the best of them is Celemony Melodyne - if you want to do this kind of thing slot, then could be worth trying. Also very good for re-pitching solo instruments and in it latest version - is apparently able to re-pitch polyphonic samples at individual note level as a well - perfect for remixes

Couple of links
celemony_ :: That's Melodyne

Search for Celemony Melodyne at DV247.COM

[sureno]

thankyou for such a detailed post, i actually have melodyne but not used it a great deal on vocals as tended to tune drums on it but will give it a shot that way. think i will just use the plug in version and manually go through each segment by ear. i use logic btw but im always hearing good things about live, im going to look into purchasing it me thinks

[Khazul]

There is a demo version available from Ableton - Welcome to Ableton that is fully functional for I think 14 days. While live has pitch shifting and timestretching at the heart of its audio processing, it doesnt feature the best version of the algorithm used - so if you have a recent-ish version of melodyne, then its still worth using that.

[modz1]

If you have Logic, there is a very good time-stretching tool already available to you. Although a legacy function, its algorithm's have improved vastly to where it stands now. To use it, double click the audio file within your arrange window, and you'll see your 'sample editor' window appear. From here, choose..

Factory>Time and Pitch Machine

Enter 'free' as Mode, enter 'monophonic' as Algorithm

Then amend the original and destination tempos as illustrated:


(For time stretching polyphonic, or rhythmic files, etc, use a different algorithm)
By the way, your destination tempo will only be accurate if your 'original' tempo was calculated correctly..How are you calculating that?

And as a PS, you'll find your time-stretched vocal will be easier to work with throughout the time line if you cut it up into, say, verse and chorus snippets - so you're not depending too much on something staying 100% in time from beginning to end on a 3/4 minute performance

and PPS, IMO.. the absolute best piece of software for ultra-pro results is Serato Pitch 'n Time

[sureno]

Originally Posted by modz1

If you have Logic, there is a very good time-stretching tool already available to you. Although a legacy function, its algorithm's have improved vastly to where it stands now. To use it, double click the audio file within your arrange window, and you'll see your 'sample editor' window appear. From here, choose..
Factory>Time and Pitch Machine
Enter 'free' as Mode, enter 'monophonic' as algorithm
Then amend the original and destination tempos as illustrated:

(For time stretching polyphonic, or rhythmic files, etc, use a different algorithm)
By the way, your destination tempo will only be accurate if your 'original' tempo was calculated correctly..How are you calculating that?

And as a PS, you'll find your time-stretched vocal will be easier to work with throughout the time line if you cut it up into, say, verse and chorus snippets - so you're not depending too much on something staying 100% in time from beginning to end on a 3/4 minute performance

and PPS, IMO.. the absolute best piece of software for ultra-pro results is Serato Pitch 'n Time

ok firstly, thank you to all who are helping.
im familiar with time stretching but wanted to know the best way to do it not software wise but rather process e.g cut it up or do it as a whole, do i need to trim the accapella down as they may have lead in etc and if so where from, how much do i strech it by etc. i think il have to study the interface of logics time machine, i also have radius by izotope so may give that a shot?

as for working out original tempo i cut a bar out of the original song and used recycle to sus the bpm