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Synchronizing vocals to a Instrumental

EvalLin	Date: January 29, 2007 @ 1:09 PM are there any tutorials on how to Synchronize vocals and instumetals together.
GeneHilbert	Date: January 29, 2007 @ 1:23 PM The simple answer is to record your singing, and mix it with the instrumental tracs. Mostly when you arrange or write vocal melodic lines you have some concept in mind. If you are lifting vocals from one song and attempting to place them in another piece; that my friend is a crap shoot. Selecting tunes and or rhythms that are suitable for both and splicing them together involves a lot (emphasizing a shit-pot full) of editing. Time alignment, phrasing, keys, tempo….. Sometimes you get lucky and things fit, but more often than not. You’ll have your work cut out for you – if it’s possible or practical to do it at all.
DaveWL	Date: January 29, 2007 @ 4:47 PM Think you’d have to explain where you are getting the source tracks from. Helps if you know the tempo of both. Fitting commercially available vocal loops to a music track is pretty straight forward with most of the big music packages as they have built in functionality to adjust tempo and key. If it was an ad hoc vocal with no tempo info then yes it could be a slow painfull process of cutting up the vocal into individual phrases or notes and carefully placing them in different parts of the track, maybe pitch editing them too. Some tools could make it easier. A tool like Celemony Melodyne would allow to edit a vocal track like it was a MIDI track with no need to chop things up.
evansorchid	Date: January 29, 2007 @ 6:21 PM Whenever I am manipulating a digital audio vocal track I usually begin by sliding the track backward a couple of miliseconds to account for the latency of my computer. Then I divide the vocal track into segments which are the length of each line in the verse or chorus. Then I slide around each segment until it sounds right to me. I usually have to mute all the other instruments except the drums and bass to line it up.
leedsquietman	Date: January 29, 2007 @ 10:36 PM All of the above can help. Timestretching/audio warping can also help, although some programs are better suited for this than others and bear in mind, a tight vocal overly warped to high groove quantization (i.e. 1/16th, 1/8th) can sound a bit expressionless , especially for long passages. Ableton Live is great for timestretching/warping audio, including vocals but short loops in 'tones' warp mode rather than long passages in 'beats' mode works better. Audio editing such as using Soundforge/Wavelab can also help. If you have good equipment and a relatively proficient vocalist, nudging tracks should not need to occur frequently (no offence evansorchid buddy, your vocals are kewl, maybe some new hardware/software could help you out there!), a program that has plug-in delay compensation helps here as adding fx can throw the latencies slightly out of sync otherwise.
evansorchid	Date: January 29, 2007 @ 11:44 PM If I had some new hardware then it probably wouldn't sound like me. Wait a minute, that might be a good thing.... I'll have to look into that.