Addison Road

I just came up with a brilliant solution to a nagging problem!

I’m trying to record vocal demos of an acapella choral piece. In order to get all of the parts to line up with each other, I had been relying on one of two methods. First, I can just map out a click for the entire song, and chase it on each of the parts. This method pays a pretty hefty cost in musicality, though, especially for a piece that is going to rely heavily on a conductor’s sense of phrasing. The second option is to record one part, free of click, and then stack the rest of the parts on top of that trying to listen to and remember the timing of that first part. This works OK if the choral parts are all roughly the same, but is disastrous if you’re doing counterpoint, or any sort of aggressive part writing.

What I really need is a conductor who is capable of conducting exactly the same thing every time I go back and lay in a new track.

The solution? I shot video of me conducting through the song, loaded the video into logic, and now I’m stacking all of the other parts to the video of me conducting! The video tracks with the timeline of the song, so that I’m always following the same phrasing, same timing, but I don’t have to create a complex click map to get there.

The added bonus is that can package this whole thing up, send the project to another singer to do the high tenor parts, and they can track to the same conducting, deliver the same phrasing, same timing. I think that’s a pretty cool solution!