Page 11 - August InDesign

Paul Sykes

DON HENLEY’S VOCALS start of the words. What many miss is where to

end the words. Once again, if you see this on
recording software, you’ll see the phrases all end
at different times. Imagine a word that ends in
T. Suddenly, ten of them slightly out of time and

the harmonies have all these random tt tttt tt
splattering at the end. There’s a couple of things
to do with this. Using T as the example, if the

takes are already tracked and you have to work
with it, cut the ends off all of them in the studio
with a slight fade out and leave a couple making
the T sound. The body of the harmonies will still
sound right and the ends will now sound clean.

In a mix, it will be just fine. There’s also software
called vocalign but I’ve never used it because I’d
personally rather just get my take right.

The easiest way to get the back ends of your
words accurate is to time them. Siii--2---3---ng.
Or Sii 2--&ng. Whatever you decide is fine, just
make sure they all do the same thing.

Finally, one thing that’s a slightly less of a pri-
ority with harmonies is vocal tone. Of course, a

choir of great singers is amazing but when many
vocals are combined, they average out. Bright
voices are balanced with dark ones, breathy ones
with clean ones, older tones with younger voices
and so on. So long as they’re in tune and super

tight, they’ll sound great. And THAT, is what we
hear when we listen to Don Henley and all the
wonderful music he has made throughout his

career.

This month, I have created a completely free
singing course for you. You can find it here.
Enjoy.

https://vocal-pro-courses.thinkific.com/courses/

vocalpro-the-great-free-course

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