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5. Making a vocal sample instrument

1

Making your own playable vocal chops, either from your own voice or from an existing sample, is a great way to start thinking about approaching your voice in a more musical and rhythmic context.

2

Zoom into your vocal, and hone in on a section that you think could be worked with. We’ve found a section in ours where we’ve got a little note sustain. Create a loop around a section and trim it out of the track.

3

Next we’ll take this vocal section, and open it in Logic’s Quick Sampler. Here we can choose between assigning the sample in Classic Mode, which spans it across our MIDI keyboard range, or in One Shot mode, where any note will play the whole sample regardless of other notes played.

4

You might notice popping or clicking from where the sample was trimmed out of the original vocal stem. It’s often a good idea to adjust fade in and fade out points to smoothen out this harshness.

5

Using Quick Sampler’s synthesis and sound shaping controls, we can begin to manipulate the tone, filter settings and overall pitch of this now playable sound. An automated LFO, in sync with your project tempo, can really help to give the impression of movement.

6

For more impactful stabs using a saturation plugin, such as Soundtoys Decapitator, can further energise the sound, while extra compression can help this new vocal instrument stick out in your mix. That’s it! We hope we’ve armed you with enough tips and tutorials to help make your vocals work better in your music!