What vocal apps are you guys using and how is it used in your chain with Audiobus?

gjcyrus

I might do a vocal recording of a girl later this week and am unsure of the best way to do it with my iphone, Audiobus and other apps. I know there isnt a vocal app (yet) on bus but do any of you have a workaround? Will you track your song through ab to say loopy, harmonic dog or auria, then record vocals directly to daw?

any thoughts and opinions greatly welcomed. thanks

PhilW

Yes i would capture the vocals directly into a DAW of your choice in as high a quality as you have. You can always add any processing and effects later. Vocalive has some good vocal effects and you can always use copy and paste. As you seem to have Auria, that is probably your best bet.

[Deleted User]

What Phil said....no need for AB.
Go straight into daw.(any)
If you have a mic and pre amp something like how they did it..

And how they did it below

gjcyrus

Thanks. I actually don't have Auria but was just using it as example. I only have Harmonicdog and Loopy, vocallive (free version) and Improvox.

What about compression before hitting the DAW? How do you guys deal with that? Once a vocal app gets on bus, I'd like to use Remaster for their compression but until then, no clue on what to do.

gjcyrus

Oh hey, just noticed that Magellan also has a compressor so all we need now is a good vocal app on the bus.

Ryan

The way I look at it is the only reason anyone would need a vocal app is for the auto tune plug. All the other effects can be found elsewhere. So unless you need auto tune just record into whatever you want dry and add effects with AB afterwards till you get what you need. :-)

jgipadmusic

I usually record vocals directly into a DAW, I personally use Auria for vocals as the filters are fab.

gjcyrus

My personal experience having worked with at least 30 female singers is if you think women are a pain in the butt when you date them, they're even more difficult when they are your singer as you gotta be ultra sensitive to their mood to elicit the best performance. And I've found 99 percent of the time, they've all preferred to sing with some level of reverb on so while i could record the vocals dry and add reverb later, the performance itself might not be as exciting as if there was atleast some reverb in the recording. In some cases, singers will play off of the reverb tails or other nuances so for me, having even slight compression and reverb is a must.

gjcyrus

Hmmm... i was gonna buy the vocalive pro version to get the compressor but there were some really bad recent reviews. For a $20 app, I at least want it to work

@philw - have you had success with vocalive?

JMSexton

I think VocaLive is great...sounds really good! What were the bad reviews complaining about?

Ian

@gjcyrus you might find the same to be true for dating. And I don't mean about the compression/reverb thing!

PhilW

I haven't used Vocalive extensively, just to record my own "guide" vocals, but my experiences have been good. When recording you can hear the effects applied but the recorded signal is dry, so you can set a nice reverb for the singer to hear, but then remove or adjust this later to fit your mix. With the multitrack, you can only use one effects chain at once, but you have the option to "bake" them into your recording so you could have as many as eight tracks all with different effects applied. This is true of many DAWs too of course. If your DAW offers compression, EQ, reverb and echo, then you already have the most commonly applied vocal effects. Vocalive adds things like autotune and "choir" effects and has an easy to use interface for recording vocals. Whether you need it will depend on your requirements but I don't think you will regret getting it if you take the plunge.

Simon

.

gjcyrus

@Ian "drum hit!"
@jmsexton - cant remember exactly but there were several of them with lack of any recent positive ones. The best reviews have been from this forum who I trust and will try based on that.
@Philw - thanks as well to you for feedback. I'll try it out
@simon - YES! We need it even more haha. I only mentioned women because im planning on recording female vocals fairly soon

girlvsworld

@gjcyrus hey! There are women singers on this forum too!

Evangelos

Vocalive is great, check this if you like,

i used it there.
I hope it gets audiobus support soon.

gjcyrus

@girlvsworld - Hi Welcome! So tell these guys I'm correct, right?

gjcyrus

@Evangelos - Hey great song! I dig the melody and guitar! Just curious what your setup is, daw, workflow?

also, do you do subtractive eq and sweeping the frequency range for each track? the reason i ask is on my sony headphones, the hi-hat seemed to be competing for space with the guitar and vocals at times. im sure most people will not care but i think if you carved out space for each of those tracks, it would help your vocals cut through better but yes, vocalive works pretty good. did you use their irig mic?

Evangelos

@gjcyrus
Thank you
My workflow on this one went like this:
Recorded the backbone (chords, tempo, rhythm) on Chordbot to Multitrack Daw via Audiobus.I then transferred it to Garageband to add the drums and most of the guitars.I did the vocals there too and then pasted them to Vocalive for the Harmony effect.After all that , i pasted everything to MTDaw and added the final part of the guitar from Jamup Pro via Audiobus again.
Now for the sound, i only try little things on MtDaw , just to have an acceptable sound.
I only used the iPad's internal mic, but i m saving up for the Apogee Mic.

MuddyWaters49

this doesn't necessarily synch with audiob but i just found this app called wurrly. I can sing to a ton of different songs within the song bank, genre's from blues to pop, and edit the song to make it sound my own. Its also fun to put some effort into the video during recording. Record in the woods or from a rooftop and share it with your community.

Jes

Voice Rack:FX is on the bus , has good quality fx and is great value. No control over parameters but presets are good and very useable.

Jes

Just realised this is an old thread reignited .

djjuniorpops

IK VocalLive is a good alternative.

JeffChasteen

@gjcyrus said:
My personal experience having worked with at least 30 female singers is if you think women are a pain in the butt when you date them, they're even more difficult when they are your singer as you gotta be ultra sensitive to their mood to elicit the best performance. And I've found 99 percent of the time, they've all preferred to sing with some level of reverb on so while i could record the vocals dry and add reverb later, the performance itself might not be as exciting as if there was atleast some reverb in the recording. In some cases, singers will play off of the reverb tails or other nuances so for me, having even slight compression and reverb is a must.

^^^This^^^
I also have a lot of experience with female musicians and the reverb factor is spot on.