Original subtitles

so we have our track

we have a little bit of scratch vocals

we have our basic outline

slash skeleton

whatever you wanna refer to it as um

of the song uh

again there still might be a section added at the end

but right now it's a pretty solid skeleton of the song

so the goal right now is to get some final vocals

even when the production isn't all the way done

but you wanna keep yourself excited uh

and a way to do that is to get a final vocal

and it's sounding really tight

we're gonna use vocal line

we're gonna use auto tune or melody uh

whatever you prefer to use and uh

then that's usually how I do it anyway uh

I can't really get a full song done

all the lyrics done in one sitting uh

so right now

we're just gonna focus on getting the chorus

all nice and tight sounding uh

and we'll continue on from there

alright so let's listen to this

very robotic sounding scratch demo you say

I don't so the drums come in there still

okay so with Fresh years

I'm really excited about it

I had the song in my head last night

which is a good sign

which means that it could be really

really good

because the melody wouldn't leave my head

and I already can hear

all the lyric changes I'm going to make

for example

this right here

I like that

but I'm gonna put that at the second half of the course

I'm not gonna start off with that

and I was in the sauna

and I took out my trusty notepad on my phone

probably not the smartest idea to have a sauna or phone

in the sauna your phone tends to overheat

but wherever the inspiration strikes

um in the recording we have this lyric

I thought a better line would be

cause you really wanna get the listeners attention uh

with something that they either have said in the past

or something that's super relatable

so I could say something like

why you gotta go

and get my hopes up and love me like it did

and act like I do not exist

because that's definitely happened to me in the past

where I've been super infatuated with somebody

and then maybe they move on

and have eyes for somebody else

they don't really know how to tell me

so I get all caught up in something

that isn't really realistic

um so I thought that would be a really

really good way to start off the song

why you gotta go

so I was list

I was thinking about what I could put there

I understand me on

I like that syllable count

but in order to get the message in

I'm just going to add one little syllable

so instead of understanding

gone come on

distracted then

yeah you get distracted then you're gone

she in this case

she gets distracted by something else

job opportunity

another person

then she's gone come on

and people say come on all the time

and it kind of rhymes with gone

gone come on

that internal rhyme I really love a lot

why'd you come on

why'd you have to go and get my hopes up

you had me so convinced you love me from the beginning

so I had that originally

um in the last lessons demo

the bugging in at the beginning of the course

and like I said

we're gonna put it at the second half

you could totally write lyrics in the studio

I personally never write lyrics in the studio

I have to go outside and look at birds

and see trees and stuff like that

and in this case

I was in a sauna

so I think the first logical thing

you always wanna think about

what the hardest thing to sing is first

and that's that octave jump

from the C sharp to the C sharp

hopes up and something that Quincy Jones

and Michael Jackson used to do

when they were tracking vocals for we are the world

Quincy would have Michael back up from the mic

and sing it in

kind of like

different character voices

still the same Michael voice

but one voice

I'm not gonna sing it

but one voice

he'd sing it super close to the mics one voice

he'd sing it super far away

and then in the middle somewhere

so you had that nice blend

and that's what we're gonna do

but not with the entire chorus right now

we're gonna just do it with the lyric

hopes up um

and then when I hear that all super clean and vocal

lined and timed up correctly

um I'll get excited to record the rest of the chorus

so let's get to it

why don't we

we're gonna mute this chorus vocal

let's do this

hmm I have this all in my mind

so I'm actually just gonna delete that

I personally never use playlist

I just gets too confluent and confusing

but you can use playlist all

right so in order for to be super clean

you have so many liberties

you might as well break it up

so I'm not even gonna sing hope set

I'm gonna do hopes

just hopes um

so in your song

you have a kind of difficult part

that you wanna make super clean

just split it up

Ryan Tater always told me to do that

in one of his songs

he split up each individual syllable and word

and I thought that was very ingenious

it gets it super punchy

alright so just hopes hope hope

hopes hopes

I'm gonna sing the up a little bit

so it sounds connected when I do connect the two

let's start for before

metronome I don't know why I got my hair all did up

it's gonna get messed up from these headphones anyway

so I'm just saying hopes

but I'm still leaving that siblings there

because I know I'm gonna say up after it

so let's drag it down to our first vocal bus group

sounds like this pops

let's take the alter Boy off pops

pops pops pops

and I'm gonna line tune these in auto tune

but it's good to get it as clean as possible pops pops

let's brag this over

I'm hearing a buzzing

I think it's from one of my keyboards

so let me turn that off really quickly

so much better

pops pops pops

so you wanna kind of like we did in the last lesson

by lining up drums

you wanna take that same approach

by lining up vocals UPS UPS

I mean we have every resource

they used to have to do this with tape

and if you messed up

you get fired

so now we have virtual tape so we can make

and as many splices as we can

so we might as well use it to our advantage hopes

let's do another hopes

okay drag that down here

it's louder so you can hear it

this s I'm gonna drag over

and line it up with this s here

vocal lines are really great tool

but nothing is a better tool than your eye

in a physical cursor

sorry there we go

hmm

still leaving the s at the end let's do two more hopes

I'm gonna back away from the mic a little bit ho ho

maybe sing a little bit stronger

hmm

alright let's do this

lining it up as so even the end

one more

starting to get fuller

you can and I get super

super stoked when it starts to sound like a

clean group of vocals

you know and these last two I'm gonna sing like

you gotta pretend like you're a different person

uh uh because if you're just making this alone

I and you only have your vocal texture

you got to kind of pretend to be someone else

so just put format your voice a little bit like soon

so my voice would be like ho

so I'm gonna instead go ho ho

and you're gonna get a different vowel shape

and it's gonna blend really nicely

ho ho ho pops

I'm gonna give myself some more pre roll pops

Ho ho pops pops

that

was actually good I like that

so just soloing all these

this is what we have we have

it takes a while but it's so worth it

you want something to take a while

because if it's gonna be around forever

you wanna listen to it forever hops hops

hops these are just C sharp

so I'm gonna take in was do uh

advanced auto tune

let's just take the E flat out

let's take the C so it's super clean

drag that down

drag that down

drag that down

drag that down

drag that down

hmm hmm hopes

oops oops okay

and now oops

now we're gonna do the up up

but okay so here's the thing about my voice uh if

maybe if I had a better voice or

like a wider voice on

like the top range of things

I'll sometimes do this with my voice

while sing a lower note and then pitch it up

because the vowel shape

will be a little bit more consistent

um with what I'm singing

so if I sing ah

it's gonna sound kind of thin and nasally

but maybe instead

let's just solo record and then host ah

up let's turn the auto tune up up

up up up up

let's sing an a natural

because if I transpose that a natural up to a C sharp

it'll sound

it'll sound better

it's hard to explain

but turn the metronome on

like that last one

go into your audio suite

you're gonna go up 4 format it 1 2 3 4

put it in graph so it's not hitting any tune

nice and clean

see here so you want make this bigger so you can see

you wanna blend the end of that s

into your up like this

that sounds robotic you don't want that

so you just drag it over a little bit upset

pops pops and it's okay

if it sounds a little cutty there

because it's only one layer pops pops

so it'll make more sense when you add another one to it

let's do another one we did a natural up up up

set

set

pumps up pumps up see the first one pumps up

pumps up I like that one

take go back to audio suite I don't know why I x it out

hmm I find this so fun

I really do it's like super entertaining

and while we're at it

let's just take that hopes up

hopes up hopes up

just line tune that

make it super on the grid upset boom

there just a little glitch upset upset

so now I have

gonna bring this over here

close up and blend this one

now this one should sound a little bit more natural

let's see pops

pops oh

hopes up actually gonna redo the first one

because I like how I was singing into it a little bit

or so let's put the auto tune window

hopes up hopes up

okay here we go close up

same thing take it hard tune it

I guess make sure that it's on the

up UPS up boom

a a format UPS up UPS up transpose Force UPS up UPS up

pops up bring that to this up

kind of tie it together like so

that's good

together sounds like this

and still sounds a little bit you wouldn't like

have that as like the lead but we have four more to do

let's do it for real now

let's put this auto tune back on

bring it down

one more

and

now in kind of our goofy voice

like Michael McDonald

get that air in there and

one more

and finally

it's pretty good

I would do more but we won't go too crazy

let's go crazy two more

now let's do it for real

like pops up

and think about it

you'll be recording one lead vocal before this

and look forward to a nicely grouped vocal

coming up to it so pops up

so that supernatural one is gonna be blended in

with these kind of Frankenstein ones

I also just realized that these are not at zero

now it will sound better

okay so we have one layer of hopes UPS floral

uh with the super attacky

uh nasally kind of thing

now we wanna add like 4 hopes up to the babyface method

hopes up hopes up

and this is doing this is gonna glue it all together

my song See You Again

had 180 background vocals on the chorus

so we won't do that right now

but you get the point

I love background vocal layers

once it sound like tears for fears

ah now we're getting somewhere

I think two more and we're good

into a lot of those

we're gonna drag the record channel down

staying organized oh oh

again I could easily auto tune these

but you don't want them to sound super robotic

that's why I'm trying to get

taking extra care to make it as clean as possible

from the gecko oh

I have some reverb on this B track here so it's a

so here the difference between this layer

let's take out the C natural

cause I hear myself kind of hitting a C natural

advanced take the C natural out

all the way down

so those are a little more gentle

and these a little bit more

in your face

and together you have

a nice group

I might even go as far as at the very

very end of the breathy chain

just taking a little lows out

this is before this is after just a little thinner

let's do this we just keep it nice looking

I have this little

wide sauce thing that I've been using on my lead vocal

I'll probably put it on the more in your face ones

this is exaggerated here

sounds pretty good though

so if you bring it up all the way there

you have to bring it down on your channel

what does it sound like on the

it's all trial and error anyway

let's what does it sound like on the breathy ones

that's nice

all that white sauce is doing is just it's just a delay

it's making it a little bit wider

I think that sounds good

so I can copy and paste that to the next part

dope

actually like those come ons from the demo yesterday

so we're gonna bring well you tad two more tracks here

I like those

I like the way I was singing it

but with no auto tune like nice and bendy

I take that back

we're gonna put some

we're gonna cloud it up see how it was wishful thinking

I thought it was gonna be nice without any

okay so let's

let's do this in pieces it's like a puzzle piece

it's like a puzzle rather

let's get this part

I like it there so let's do this

by the way you can sit or stand your record

I'm just I feel like sitting right now

okay let's get this super clean why why

see how it was like

I didn't really singing to sing into the hope

so it sounds a little disjointed listen

get my hopes up I mean it's cool if you wanna do that

but I don't think it works here

I like what I was doing before

let's just get get my

if you can do this on your own

and you don't have to rely on an engineer

having an engineer is a luxury

it's amazing

but if you can do this by yourself

you can work your own hours

I don't have to depend on anybody to get my vocals done

why you gotta go

back the wide sauce off a little bit

so much better

you don't want the lead vocal to be wide

and the hopes up vocals to be wide as well

you want some different

different parts

so I'm gonna sing into hopes

get my hopes get my hopes up get my hopes up

and I'm leaving this this little hope

maybe just fade it down a little bit

so it kind of blends in a bit better

maybe a more aggressive fade

why you gotta go and get my

let's do that next line I do line by line

and love me like it

and love me like you did oh I like that did

I like that did I don't like anything else though

could do not be from hmm you're my

ah bring this up a bit ah

see what that sounds like

and love me like

and love me like

and love me like it

I don't like me like

you want to kind of be relaxed when you do it

I go and get my hopes up

and love me like it did

and love me like it did

I think that's good

see and love me like it

why you gotta go

and you don't have to worry about like it just

just get some notes

can be like like

I kind of hit an F sharp there and I wanna hit an F

but I know I can fix it

um but the performance matters the most

so don't trip over the pitch too much

why you gotta go

and love me like you did

you did I'm gonna bring the dead over

put it so I'm lining as I go

I'm like lining up and finalizing almost finalizing

and love me like you did

the one I wrote in the show the sauna shower then

okay so I'm gonna sing out of the did into the then

that's a weird sentence but it

act like I then act then act

then act like I then love me like you did

then act like I don't know

then love me like you did then act like I did

I like the act then act then act

then act like I just that like you did then act

then act nice then act like a

I do not exist

I want that gritty tone a little bit

cause I know I think I'm gonna probably like

gonna stack it like Adam Levine's vocal

just like one in the middle um

and then maybe two pan on the right

and love me like it

do not exist

I don't like the not though act like I do not do not

did not exist

get that right there

everything has to be sort of perfect

and then like the next day you're bound to like

make certain changes

but get a really good skeleton

like you do with the overall song

do it with the vocal production

and love Me like you did

act like I do

what did I say yes you got distracted

then you get distracted then you gone

that I don't like

I'm like I sound like screeching there

so I'm gonna just punch in every line

has to be almost perfect

and then you listen back to it a day later

and then you kind of improve

but make it as good as possible right now

act like I do not exist so much better

act like I do not exist

act like I do not exist hmm like I do not exist

okay

and the lyric I had on that last one was

you got distracted

so I'm gonna sing

I'm not gonna sing into the come on

because the come ons are not technically the lead vocal

they're a backup vocal

so it's cool if this gone

gone leads over the background vocals

hmm hmm get distracted exist

that year has to be right on there for it to make sense

automate that up

I'm gonna redo this then yeah

strike so hear how

see how it's distracted distracted

then that means you have to take the distract

and drag it to the left drag it

you wanted to sound smooth

get distracted

then you get distracted then you

that over to get distracted

then you just gotta use your ear

distracted then you maybe over to the left a little bit

get distracted

this to the right

get distracted

then you get

distracted distracted

and I don't even like how that sounds though so

get distracted then you get distracted

when I record

I have my command spacebar

that's what used on Pro Tools

I have it arm the entire time cause I know

I'm just gonna do it a bunch of times

that's why I never work with engineers

because it's like

much easier for me to just like

have the keyboard with me at all times

distracted distracted

much cleaner okay let's time it

distracted then get distracted then

this little s needs to go over a little bit hmm

distracted then you cool one second

take all this over 1 distracted distracted

get distracted then oh there we go get distracted

get this beginning of this G over ever so slightly boom

and now the best part is we have this already

why you gotta go

love me like you do oh and love me like you do

I like the and love I can do that better and love

Love Me Like You Did

get that get

doesn't really match now that I listen to it

and needs to be a little bit it's too breathy

needs to be get

get distracted then

it's a shame that distracted doesn't work either get

okay I'm gonna have these

just gonna mute those

because they're gonna be distracting

it's got a little more power on that gun

get distracted then get

you ever wanted a little vocal tip

if you ever wanted something somewhere fully just yawn

like pretend you're yawning when you like

when I sang that gone

it was too gone

but I wanted

like the same expression as you yawn gone gone

anyway I distracted them you've gone

that's clean

and now we do the second half of the course

and Love Me like you do

is that fake guitar

sick okay might leave that in there

okay so the second half I wanted

I could have said did again

because the first half ago

and love me like it did

but I wanted to um

like have a word that rhyme with it

because it's very gratifying

hearing something that rhymes with did

so I say on the second half the chorus

you had me so convinced

did convince

kind of a soft rhyme

you had me so

beginning remember

I started off from the scratch with beginning

now that's on the second half of it

you had me so convinced you love me from the beginning

are you gonna go get my hopes up

you know this completes the thought

let's just get that line you you you had you had

just make sure I'm singing it the right way

and love and love and love and love

I'm so control

you had me so convinced

you had me so convinced

wanna enunciate because

got me so convinced you love me from the beginning

I love the internal rhyme there

you love me from the beginning

little vibrato sound like Post Malone a little bit

tie that together I'm so

it's like a weird way to say beginning but super fun

like people would like to sing that

can't really make a from the book from the book I can't

I like the front but I can't really hear the the

I like the way I did it before

make sure that's all lined up

can you that's over a little bit

that good comes in a little early

drag it over and make it super

because then when you vocal line it

all your vocals will tie up nice and tight

now I know that I was wrong simple

just make sure I'm doing the right melody

I do not exist

strong woo I'm the bird in

make sure that this is up

oops wrong place

hopes up

hopes up

let's reverb on these

why you got more compression

it's cool when you bump the compression up on this

you can kind of hear the whispers

it's nice as something to it

that beginning is a little short

I could audio stretch it

but it's not gonna sound as good

and I have my voice right here so I might as well just

fix that fade right there this might be tricky

let's see how looking in looking in

can kind of hear the splice but who cares

uh let's double this lead

you're not really even gonna hear the double

it's just gonna sound

it's gonna resonate as like one vocal

but it's just gonna add some character to it

and love me like you did

sing it a little bit softer because it's not

the lead vocal is just going to be supporting it

so it's going to like surround the lead vocals

going to do this whatever this means

gotta get that little cry there

alright that's right let's do

let's make a quick little

BGV for this part here

just three tracks 1 2 3 duplicate

send the bus going somewhere else 23 24 23 24

trim drag down

1 2 3 I would like to put it right under the lead

oh

1 2 3 1 in the middle

and love me like you did act like I

then I can dance and act like 100 times

we'll double this one too

sounds good let's do it again

stay with the first half

act like I do not exist get distracted that was good

check out a mint in my mouth

maybe it adds something to the texture

act like I do not

so those little hopes up

those fake hopes up

we can't even

where I pitch my vocal up

you can't even like hear them anymore

because they're buried with the real ones

and it's like this nice hybrid

honestly just makes me sound better

and love me like it

so we have two left and right

um might put them at 90 just cuz

um and then one in the middle

and then I think we're gonna be good

this over here wait

maybe bring him down a little bit

so the lead kind of powers through

okay let's do the second half

you had me so convinced you love me from the beginning

breathy

it's the middle one you had me so I can

hmm give me so I can

drag this down

do this here

uh huh

drag down

okay fade all these in now boom boom

we already recorded this we just drag them over

no one's gonna know no one's gonna know

I can just do it the right way

I'm kind of not mad at that overlapping there

let's see here

I think that deserve that second half

deserves a little harmony

it's again keeping the listener engaged

I might run out of CPU

so I might have to use a

I'm just gonna use a CLA here

because no one's gonna know the difference

23 24 let's change it to 25 26

layers um we don't need to do a middle track here

we can just do

so confused we're gonna do the fourth up

because that sounds very 80s

gonna turn the compressor up on my record track

and I'm gonna sing close to the mic you

and keep the next part just open

cause it sounds familiar

and one thing

and now I'm gonna put these on 100 pan

because there's that little bit of extra space

one thing I love doing another trick I Learned from Max

I just Learned all my tricks from Max

Lo fi actually no

not this lo fi

that one that works with this one

works a little bit better

this air lo fi

you can hear this on a lot of Ariana Grande records

and just pop records in general

you love me for a little bit of grit goes a long way

let's do it on these two

just add something I can't explain it

it could do come on I don't think it's necessary

let's take some lows out of this harmony right here

make it a little bit thinner

um and I wouldn't do this on the first course

but I would just do a little woo

little better woo just woo

and I think that pretty much does it for the course

after that 2930 just something really

really simple like this holding out a flat

drag this down here

take the lo fi often

very dope

sometimes I like to even put the little

reverb on the channel

does something to it

and that compressor in the previous lesson

where every time the kick would hit

you don't have to just use that for instruments

you can put it on the little ooze too

so it would sound like this

that sounds if you make it a little more aggressive

sounds sick

you do a

one last thing

little scale down

little pitchy but who cares

so now you have kind of this

starting to come together

that's a really good place to start

okay so to recap

we started off with the hardest part of the song

which was kind of gluing together these very far

apart notes

these right here

they sound kind of unnatural

but you don't need to really worry about that

because you're going to double it a bunch of times

with hopes up

actual times that you do it

so when you mend the two together

it sounds like you did it perfectly

which is the goal of course

there was one layer

which is like

the frontal

nasally kind of layer

and then we layered that layer

with a more breathy layer which is

this right here

took a little bit of lows off that

added some additional reverb right on the channel

and then when you put it together it sounds like this

I got excited about the cleanest of that

and I thought I was gonna sing the chorus a bit softer

but hearing those vocals kind of in a perfect place

inspired me to sing the lead vocal

um that would come after it

sing that a bit differently

more like this and love me like

to kind of match the come on

so we got that sounding good

no line tuning yet

just lined it up on the grid

and make it fall into the pocket

and then we did a left right

center double on that lead

which is this alone and my

the middle track

is kind of sung in a similar way to the lead vocal

but you want what surrounding it to be a bit breathier

to give it some support

and then we did my little trick

of just adding a little lo fi on it

it just gets a little electronic frequency

um that kind of pops out in the mix

and it gives like

a very nice resonance

and love me like it

and then on the second half of the course

we added a harmony also adding the lo fi on there

you had me so

so that's it's just a way to keep the listener engaged

and then we add these bed of ooze that I'm

still on the fence about keeping in the first chorus

but I'm they're definitely going in the second chorus

all those intervals work really well with the melody

which is nice

I put a little bit on those ooze

the compressor

the key compressor

that I was using on some of the instruments

in the last lesson

on the better ooze

so when the drum kick happens

it doesn't get covered up by those too much

so now it's your turn to do exactly as I did

start with the chorus

get your lead vocal going

make your supporting background

super lined up with your lead vocal

add some ooze if it's necessary

it might not be necessary

but in this

it was definitely necessary

and just make everything super aligned and tuned

and I'll see you back for the next lesson