Sweet Harmony | Media

Cubase Tips & Techniques

Technique : Cubase Notes



John Walden



The following audio examples accompany John Walden's Cubase workshop 'Sweet Harmony'.

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Cubase-Example1



This example uses a vowel-based vocal sample as its starting point. The vocals have been left deliberately exposed with no other instrumentation so that the harmony parts can be heard more clearly, although in a full mix these 'fake' harmonies would obviously be less exposed. The example is split into four parts: (a) the original backing vocal line; (b) the original vocal plus a four-part harmony generated automatically but without using a Chord Track to guide the harmonies (not very musical!); (c) the original vocal plus a four part harmony that follows chord changes within the Chord Track but with no further editing; d) as with (c) but with some additional editing within the Sample Editor. This included replacing the bass harmony with a second soprano harmony and applying a small amount of audio quantize to the various harmony parts.



Cubase-Example2



This example is based short vocal sample that uses a sung lyric. The vocals have been left deliberately exposed with, in this case, just a simple acoustic guitar accompaniment, so that the harmony parts can be heard more clearly although, in a full mix, these 'fake' harmonies would obviously be less exposed. The example is split into three parts; a) the original lead vocal; (b) the lead vocal plus a single harmony voice pitched above the lead but slightly lower in the mix. The intervals used are mainly a third above the lead but a few notes used different intervals where this seemed to work better than sticking rigidly to fixed interval; (c) similar to (c) but with two different harmony parts and only generating harmonies for certain words to add emphasis.    

Published in SOS July 2013