> Step by step

3. Compiling a lead vocal track

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Now it’s time to piece all of the best bits from all our takes together to create a ‘composite’ lead vocal. Again, we’ll show you how to do this if you are manually assembling takes and also using automatic comping features as in Live 11. Create a new audio track and rename it Comp Lead. This is where best vocal parts will reside, so it’s probably best to put this track above the other parts, just as we’ve done here. 4

This manual method can be a bit laborious but the automatic comping feature in Live 11 and other DAWs makes the process much easier. Here we’ve got multiple Take Lanes recorded in Live 11. You can audition each lane by clicking the speaker icon within each Take Lane.

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Here we’ve gone a bit crazy just to show you how different Take Lanes can be sliced and diced to make a perfect whole. In reality you might have an entire section of a single take that is the best, or even an entire take. 2

If you’ve recorded the whole song in one take, copy and paste your best overall take onto the new track – otherwise, copy and paste the best take of each section onto this track instead. Here we’ve taken the first part of the first take and the second part of the second to compile a ‘best of’. 5

Now you simply draw across the perfect parts on each take lane. This will then comp together these best parts of each Take Lane and they will come together with what is hopefully the perfect comp’d audio take at the top.

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Back to our manual vocal multiple take efforts and we’ve taken sections of three different takes to create our new complete Vocal Lead. 3

It’s worth zooming in to ensure that phrases aren’t accidentally cut in the wrong place. Now listen to the other takes in turn for each of the problem sections, remembering to mute the Comp Lead track whilst doing this.

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Solo this Comp Lead track and listen out for any clicks between audio slices. If you hear one, zoom in on the area and use crossfading to smooth the transition (in fact, it doesn’t hurt to do this on every transition of the track). Either create a Fade (Opt>Cmnd>F) or use the ones automatically suggested between takes by clicking and dragging the pointers.