Tips for Editing Metal Vocals (Singing and Screaming)

Need some help editing your vocal tracks?
I’ve spent hundreds (maybe thousands?) of hours working with all different sorts of vocals… and I’ve tried almost every approach and workflow to get vocals that are in time and in tune without sounding fake or T-Pain’d.

After all of this trial and error, I’ve boiled it down to a small set of tools and a specific plan of attack that I follow when editing vocals.

Make no mistake… vocals are the first thing the listener connects with regardless of whether it’s brutal death metal or Backstreet Boys. So you've gotta nail it!

Here’s the workflow that delivers the best results and the least artifacts in the shortest time.

[deltavistastudio]

Hey Jordan, Great tip about cutting on the "S's"!

[gregorycurry]

great quick tips clearly explained and demo'd. thanks!

[TheHumanPorcupine]

Great video as always, Jordan! I've been doing it pretty close to this, but I got some new tips to use regarding backing vocals.

A suggestion is to turn up the volume of your voice in the video. I find myself having to turn up when you speak and then turning down again when the music is playing.

[bunkowske]

I've been waiting for this video for a while now. Thanks for the insight!

[purplemonkeyelephant]

Seen some tips here I've never seen before. Awesome

[raykrush]

Awesome video as always definitely going to try this out thanks Jordan!

[deltavistastudio]

Thanks J!
Vocalign is powerful, but because it lines everything up so tight, it suddenly sounds SMALLER!

[jimmylennon]

thank you.great help.to.me.allways have truble with vocals

[ncrstudio]

this is the same workflow I've used for about the last 12 years or so...but I honestly can't stand the sound of elastic audio at all...I manually nudge everything except when absolutely necessary...then I'll use Revoice Pro to barely tweak it. I've got most of the tuning software out there and I've found that Autotune works the best for me on well sung vox, but Melodyne is a bit better for stuff that''s off by more than a half a semitone. Revoice Pro is the most transparent, but I can't stand dragging around the notes by ear only...especially when I'm tired and start making mistakes...with Autotune it's so much better using the snap to grid and having the security of knowing it's dead on. Even when editing at 4am lol... I was kinda surprised that you didn't select the key of the song first though...to my ears it actually does make a difference in how the plugin responds...even with tracking the pitch from the very start...

[VarietyShop]

The auto tune editing looks so much cleaner than Melodyne. Thanks for the video!

[anthonydahl]

Hey really nice video! By the way, what is the band you are editing in the video, music seemed really promising!

[jdfcovers]

Yo I love the song man! can I find it somewhere?

[dominicchristoph]

If I'm doing demo stuff at home to send to my producer should I edit my vocal tracks in this way before sending them out or have my guy do it? Great instruction for sure.

[BetonBenni]

So are you using 1 track in center for the clean vocals and than layers l and r? Or do you use 2 loud tracks for main vocals and than 2 more layers on each side?

[elbuenmexicano]

Is this a program built into Mac? Or is it universally available?

[MetalArcade]

What version of Pro Tools is this? I'm on PT 12 and I can no longer use my VocAlign project... did you do something special to allow it to work?

[eddietaylor]

Great video, ive leard that melonine works similar to auto tune. have it never used it know that you told me i will open it up, and use your techniques.

[seanmichael]

What song is this that you're editing? I dig it.

[kevinvangelooven]

I sing and if you need to nudge so many stuff... I would feel bad about my timings/performance :p

[JulianWorden]

How come you use polyphonic mode on screams? Any special reason, or is it just sort of a set it and forget it kinda thing?