Stretching a Vocal Note

[jackibar]

I have a song that about 10 vocalists have already sung their individual parts and I really don't want to get them back over here to redo it! What I need is for a note they sang to hold out about 4 beats longer before cutting off. Is there some way to do this in DP 8 without it sounding obvious that you've pasted them in?!

I tried copying and pasting the held note a few times to extend the time it's held and then using the cross fade feature but it is sounding "wobbly" every time it hits one of the cross fades. Is there a different way to do this (a better way)? Or is there a way to get the wobbly sound out of the cross fades?

Thanks SO much for any help!!

- Jacki

[Shooshie]

I've done that before, but its effectiveness may depend on the source material. The longer the selection that you copy, the better it will work.

If it's going "wobbly" at the fades, it's probably because of the exact points where you chose to start and end the selection you copied. See if you can determine locations to start and end where the pitch and volume are very similar. Then make your crossfade longer, even a half second or so.

In fact, you may just try lengthening your crossfade on your existing material and see if that helps.

Shoosh

[mikehalloran]

You can time stretch and compress sound bites in DP. It's easily done by dragging a corner. Find it in the manual--it's easier to do than describe.

If you are extending just the end of a phrase, you can do that too. Highlight the area (the last word in the song?), cut and paste without moving. This will let you stretch just the selection instead of the whole track. You may have to apply a Fade to blend the result back into the previous sound bite but it will usually butt seamlessly.

Unfortunately, It can cause artifacts if done to extremes but small stretches or compressions can be seemless. Making this tool better is on many users' wish list.

There are other tools that let you time stretch and compress to a much greater degree such as Mach V and IRCAM Tools.

I have no idea whether this will be something that takes a few seconds and comes out perfectly or will take hours with mediocre results. In other words, yes, you can do it. I hope it turns out well.

[jackibar]

Thanks for the tips so far! I really appreciate it! I guess I forgot to mention the "hard part" - the part I need to stretch is in the middle of a word! They are singing the word "earth" - so I need the middle part "ear" extended without the "th" at the end and it's for about 4 beats I need to extend that part of the word... Would that stretching feature still work (but I don't have a corner to drag since it's in the middle of a soundbite)... Ugh, not sure what to do here!!

[bayswater]

Until I saw your follow up on the "hard part" I was going to suggest putting the sample into something that is designed to create sample loops (e.g. DSP-Quattro). That worked for me with a piece with several vocal lines. But the specific sound segment I looped was pretty homogenous, and the loop points were masked by looping at slightly different places for each singer. But that's not going to work on a syllable like "ear"but might if you can catch the "r" bit separately for the loop.

I wonder if granular synthesis would do it? Not in DP but available in other places like MachFIve.

[James Steele]

Thanks for the tips so far! I really appreciate it! I guess I forgot to mention the "hard part" - the part I need to stretch is in the middle of a word! They are singing the word "earth" - so I need the middle part "ear" extended without the "th" at the end and it's for about 4 beats I need to extend that part of the word... Would that stretching feature still work (but I don't have a corner to drag since it's in the middle of a soundbite)... Ugh, not sure what to do here!!

Use the scissor tool to cut the middle part out of the larger sound bite. Make a cut right after the initial attack of the word "earth", then another cut just before the "th" sound. Grab the "th" and slide it down to where it's supposed to be, then try stretching the soundbite to the start of the "th" at its new location. It might be that if it's a long stretch it may sound weird. You might also take a look at the pitch transposition view and smooth out any vibrato either before or after applying the stretching.

Come to think of it, you might use the slip tool to do this. Too hard for me to explain exactly so you might take a look at this very old video I made:

[Guitar Gaz]

This is no doubt my ignorance or laziness in finding out how tools work - but I have never used the slip tool or scissors tool.

If I have a note or two in an audio track out of time, I usually make a new soundbite of the note by highlighting a selection and creating a new soundbite, move it till it sounds right, do some edge editing to make sure there are no hanging audio noise or clicks , and then fade and merge within the same audio track.

Is there a better way of doing this? From the video of the slip tool I can't see any real advantage to me but obviously I am missing something.

[James Steele]

In the video posted, it's a quick way to extend a particular syllable in phrase. If you created a new sound bite and then moved it leaving the old soundbite underneath it would accomplish the same thing. This is just the way I do it. It's faster for me. I just make sure that I make the cut in the correct place so that when I slip it, especially if an attack is earlier, the part of the audio that's being exposed as I slip in extending an area that sounds natural, like a sustained vowel sound or in the case of the example, "mmmm." Like I said, it's just *my* way of doing the same thing.

[jackibar]

Thanks, James! That's a cool trick! The only problem I'm having is it's such a long "stretch" I'm trying to do that when I do the "slip" part it starts exposing the parts before my scissor cut (catching the beginning of "earth" again which begins on a different note). Is the only way to do this to do it multiple times and then try crossfades to try to get rid of the "bumps" in between each one?!

[jackibar]

Forgot to ask - where can I find the pitch transposition view and get rid of vibrato? I didn't even know you could smooth out pitch like that!

[Shooshie]

Forgot to ask - where can I find the pitch transposition view and get rid of vibrato? I didn't even know you could smooth out pitch like that!

Sequence Editor, layer menu. (it will probably say "Soundbite" if you haven't changed it) The last selection of the menu is Pitch.

[Guitar Gaz]

In the video posted, it's a quick way to extend a particular syllable in phrase. If you created a new sound bite and then moved it leaving the old soundbite underneath it would accomplish the same thing. This is just the way I do it. It's faster for me.

Thanks James - I guess I have got used to my way but I will give your method a try to see if I prefer it. At least you have confirmed that essentially its a different way of doing the same thing. Thanks.

[waitsongs]

I'm assuming the 10 vocalists are all singing together on one track (either mono or stereo), or this task would be even more daunting with 10 individual tracks and the phase/sync issues.

If you try DP's stretch tool and it doesn't sound good enough, I had one other crazy thought... perhaps you could do a REALLY careful cut, stretch, paste and crossfade (as others have suggested), and if that's still not good enough, duplicate your take so you have a safety copy of your meticulous labor, merge the duplicated section with all it's edits into a new, seamless soundbite, THEN use the pitch tool to even out any remaining wobbles. I don't know if it'll work, but it might be worth trying.

Short of that, you may have to try 3rd party software, or even Pro Tools, which stretches stuff pretty well, IMO.

[Shooshie]

Or just reassemble the singers and record one note.

[kinnylandrum]

I have done this exact thing before with Melodyne and it worked well, even only extending the vowel and leaving ending consonants in place. It's been a while since I did it, but I think I just played the files into Melodyne and stretched them on the Melodyne grid. It was very workable, although 4 beats can be a long time to get away with (you didn't say the tempo).