How to make vocal cut ups sound good?

[malabuandcoki]

Yo, i make future garage/house type stuff/whatever you wana call it. and some dubstep.

iv been download acapellas and searching them for good samples
I use audacity to cut them up and rearrange. and then NXTT on reason to put them into the track.
i find it very hit and miss. difficult to make something catchy
People like Joy Orb and Deadboy make is seem so easy. although im sure many hours is put into it

anyone got any tips, cheers

[drake89]

well you will probably find slicing to midi much easier than working with straight audio. i believe dr. rex or recycle is what you would use in reason, though you could do it in a pain in the arse way with nn-xt/19. in ableton you can just import an audio clip and right click+slice to midi. gotta get your bpm and time sig right, though...

[-[2]DAY_-]

unless its a short file (under 40 seconds or so), i prefer working with audio manually then loading each into its own zone on your preferred sampler. If it's short enough, recycle is great for auto-slicing, and manipulating the slice samples. You can also load the entire .rx2 as an nnxt patch for more sampler flexibility than the dr. rex offers.

If you're making your own cuts, put on a click track, find a tempo that works to your ears and play back the phrases .. isolate the phrases you like the most, maybe it's single words/notes, maybe more.. and cut some out, line them up to a downbeat on your grid... maybe revisit the tempo to see what kind of groove you can develop out of the samples. maybe over a beat but maybe just the click track. Tap along, play it back til you nicked what you wanted to, you can always time-scale before bringing into the sampler. Then get your stuff into the sampler, play the beat and have fun punching in samples. tweak the pitch knobs, adsr, reverse, etc

[Comfi]

What daw are you using?

I'd recommend what drake said.

Get your audio sample and chop it up. Chop right where consonant sounds occur.

I like to do this and then repeat with a reversed sample. After this, load each slice into a sampler like slicex in FL, or equivalent in whatever DAW you use, and just jam the fuck out!

[oWLinDaylight]

They way I used to cut vocal samples in reason I found on a tutorial video, I dont remember what it was but if you search vocal chop reason it should come up. Basically you would start with your larger vocal sample on one note in the sampler, set up a loop where its triggered every 8th or 16th beat depending on how choppy you want it. Then you just change the start position of the sample till you have a good sounding vocal chop. Then for each note you repeat the process so they all trigger at different starting points. This also gives you control of the sample length every time its triggered so you can go from stuttering chops to the full vocal track easily.

[-[2]DAY_-]

^ true, the sample-start knob has been my savior in the past.

[DrastikMeazures]

I like to trigger the samples with a Matrix pattern sequencer, and then from there automate the sample start knob. Maybe split the audio with a spider and have one dry channel and one with a short delay 50/50 wet/dry to scream, tweak.

[mikeyp]

I load them into my daw and cut them up right in the playlist (not sure about other daws but in fl this is easy as pie)
I put major words right on beat, & use some reverb or stretch out the last syllable or breath sound if there's a significant gap between words to make it gel

it's tedious work but so worth it in the end

[sargentpilcher]

I've been trying to get this to sound good as well, however I do not own reason. Are there any other suggestions you guys have for tools in order to acheive these techniques? Anything in Ableton or FL Studio?

[Cubicle]

I finally bought Reason 6.
I load them up in Reason itself, then routing the audio track to my mixer so I have more control.
I then start to slice up in 1/64 (yes this is a fucking pain in the ass but pays off) and timestretch them to taste.
Little preverb on them, and if necessary a very little amount of fade in, fade out and I'm close to done

[Warwolt]

Is probably a good idea to cut it by the syllables so that each cut is a usable building block, then try to come up with a rhythm and or melody, and AFTER that recreate that rhythm or melody with the voxloop

[oWLinDaylight]

I've been trying to get this to sound good as well, however I do not own reason. Are there any other suggestions you guys have for tools in order to acheive these techniques? Anything in Ableton or FL Studio?

Ableton has a very nice slice to midi function. But the way I like to do it in Ableton is to drop the sample into the arrangement view and set the grid to 8ths or 16ths or whatever you want. Then listen through till you find a part you like then zoom in on the wave form and find some nice places where you can see the syllables peaking. Highlight a syllable and copy that into a drum machine. Then just keep grabbing snippets. You can do this with grid snap enable or disable but its easier to start off with it enabled.

Once the cuts are in your drum rack you can really start to experiment. I like to pitch the samples and move them around the drum rack so they match up with the key I'm working in. Then I can slap an arpeggiator on the track or draw some notes in myself.

[hudson]

Play a catchy melody with a synth or something first before starting with the vocals. When you have a melody you're happy with, cut up and tune the vocals to fit it, then take out the synth. Bam.