Taking a razor blade to the track’s vocal hook

51:00It’s time to get the vocal working in the track, and with a few appropriate phrases already placed, the boys try out different sections to see which will sound right coming out of the drop. Steve’s got a good ear for the timing of the vocal, picking up on syllables that come slightly early or late, and with Drew piloting Logic 9 like some kind of studio Han Solo, the two get to work chopping, swapping and stretching the audio regions.

Instead of simply slicing parts of the vocal and moving them around the timeline, Drew makes sure to use timestretching to prevent gaps or overlaps between the audio regions. “When we’re chopping, and we’re moving this ‘You’ section back to the left, instead of just leaving [the region currently to its left] as it was, we timestretch it back in, and then you get the whole phrase.”

The pair take some time to get the vocal sounding right, but they’re aware that they’re working against the clock, so certain problems are left to be fixed further down the road.