Vocal Comping in Ableton Live 11: Tips and Tricks

Do you know how to effectively pick the best vocal performances from your recordings in Ableton Live 11? In this video I'll show you how to comp vocals like a Pro.

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Intro 00:00
How to Comp Vocals in Ableton Live 11 01:30
Creating Crossfades for Smooth Transitions 02:49
Backup Track for Comping 03:14
Auto-Tune and Compression for Comping 04:00

📝 Video Transcription:

Do you know how to effectively pick the best vocal performances from your recordings in Ableton Live 11? In this video I'll show you how to comp vocals like a Pro.

That way you can record as many takes as you want, then combine your favorite parts later, to assemble that perfect vocal performance.

Hey, how are you? I'm Thales, pop music producer, and since I'm not a professional singer, recording vocals for me is a challenge, and I sometimes have to record multiple takes just to capture the performance I'm aiming for.

So I'm glad Ableton Live now has a comping feature, in which I can just loop any section of my song, and sing it over and over again, non-stop, until I feel like I got what I needed.

Then I'll select the best phrases, sometimes even single words from certain takes and create crossfades to connect everything seamlessly.

So the first step, recording, right? I've already done a video on recording vocals in Ableton Live, which will be in the cards for you.

So what you're looking at right now is a song I recorded yesterday, and these are all the takes for each section of the song. It's a lot, I know. I like to have many takes to choose from.

What I'm looking for is not perfect pitch or even timing actually. I just want the takes with the right feel, articulation and the attitude that matches the lyrics.

Tuning and timing can be fixed later, but the emotion has to be there from the beginning.

So here's how to visualize your take lanes. Right click on the track that you used to record, and select "Show take lanes".

By the way, you can't have automation mode turned on, or else this option for take lanes won't be available. I've seen many people with this problem, so just disable automation mode for now.

What I like to do is turning on looping, then click the speaker button on each lane and listen to all of them, one by one, taking mental notes of my favorite takes.

You could listen to your whole verse, or chorus section, especially if your vocal track was recorded by a good vocalist. But I listen to each phrase individually before moving on to the next one, unless I'm working with a great singer.

Once you find a section that you like, highlight it and press Enter. That will move the highlighted section to the main lane, which is what we're keeping.

You can also use the draw mode, by hitting B or clicking this pencil icon, to select the takes you want to move directly to the main lane. This is actually way faster once you get used to it.

There's also a secret swapping trick where you select the section you want to audition, then you hold Command on a Mac or Control on a PC, then you use you keyboard's Up and Down arrows to quickly swap takes.

Notice how the takes are getting sent to the main lane as I'm pressing the arrow keys.

Now it's really important that you create crossfades between the different takes you chose, to avoid clicks.

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#ThalesMatos #MusicProducer #PopMusic

[kithy]

You moved the takes to different tracks simply by clicking and dragging? The problem is that the take you move replaces the one that it landed on rather than knocking it below it.

[kithy]

I don't really understand what clicking command plus arrows does. It just seems to move the highlighting of the takes up or down. Is this all it is doing? I'm afraid to try it that it might mess something up. I tried it and then very quickly pressed command undo.