edit: sorry, by "vocal/sample" I mean a vocal sample cd. Not a vocal OR sample cd, thanks.

I'm trying to figure out if this is my problem, or if anyone else shares the same thoughts.

Vengeance samples are like the gold standard for sample cds. I know theres other crap out there that sounds a lot better, but when people ask for good samples, "vengeance" is the name a lot of people say. So great, whatever.

For vocals, I ALWAYS need to try finding them first on torrent, cause every single vocal sample pack I've heard, has been a pathetic fuckn joke.
Do these producers go pay some $10 crackwhore to sing into a mic for a few hours?

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Kate Lesing!! She has the most nasal irritating voice I've ever heard. I can't understand how people actually pay for her voice. I would pay just to NOT have to listen to her vocals.

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Mutekki Media did their thing. They found a *DECENT* singer (nothing spectacular) but WTF is the deal with the lyrics? They all sound like Nursery Rhymes.
There no real rythm or pace like:
"We - are - run - ing - out - of - time - and - one - day - I - know - you - will - be - mine"
thats how its paced, EVERY SINGLE syllable is right on beat. The places where she does use some vocal range the lyrics are just a joke.

"Stand up for love there is nothing more to say,
stand up for me, what can I say"

And she does an akward pause (it sounds horrible) on the second line to make it longer, OMG! Not to mention the lyrics don't even fall under cheesy, so many of them make NO SENSE at all. I don't get it.

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Dan Rather & Sather Blather Vox Collection 2
I don't wanna include this pack cause I'm mainly talking about sung phrases, not one shots.
For one shot vocals, the pack is ok.
But I have no fucking clue how anyone expects you to right a track when EVERY SAMPLE is one short phrase or word.

Am I suppose to just loop that phrase forever? Do I take other one shot vocals and piece together words so it sounds like a full sentence is being sung?
Wtf, I never personally understood why these packs are released.

When the mood from one sample changes to another, you really can't put more then one of these in a track w/out making it sound like shit.

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Best Service Diamond Vocals
Ok first this pack was NOT designed for trance. Its for house and club mainly.
And second it does the same thing the Dan Rather pack does. The longest vocal riff is like 3 fuckn words long.

What makes it WORSE then Dan Rathers, is they change the singer so many times there is NO chance of getting any of them to really work.
And it has a lot of those house sounding vocals with that screaming black lady voice and the gay hi pitched guy screaming "dance, yeee hah".

I hear that raspy black lady voice and gay hi pitched man voice in a lot of other fly by night releases. TERRIBLE for trance.

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I hear this girl at work who walks by me all day singing, and SHE has a nicer voice then anyone in these packs. I've asked her, screamed at her, begged her to record some lyrics and she keeps saying "no, I'll get nervous and fuck it up".

We really need some packs designed for trance where it looks like the writer has some degree of skills, and the singer doesn't sound like a robot or chipmunk.

I know a lot of you will prob be like "make your own and just look more", "if there that bad then do better", but gzzz, it really is a joke. Fucking Above and Beyond has tracks where the singer doesn't even sing a word, just humms and it sounds better.

-rant over

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Last edited by DJ Robby Rox on Jul-17-2009 at 21:46

you really expect to find quality vocals like, as in someone singing a song on those things?

Grab an acapella and do a remix instead, those vocal packs are useless for anything than very short snippets.

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http://soundcloud.com/subtara

For the price of of a couple of those CDs, you can buy a decent mic. Then add some of these (free)...







...and you can get the original results you're looking for, rather than being stuck with some cheesy samples or remixing the same old songs.


(Yes, those are the singers I work with)

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quote:

Originally posted by Joss Weatherby you really expect to find quality vocals like, as in someone singing a song on those things?

Yeh lol, I expect basically what they advertise. "Highly acclaimed vocalists".. "professionally recorded" .. they just leave out things like "nonprofessional written".. "floor bangers for your pet chipmunk"

I guess I just really need to find my own vocalist.
The hunt begins..

___________________
Sequencers: FL Studio 9XXL & Reason 3.
Main Synth Bass GTs - Pro-53, V-Station, Sytrus, Subtractor, Trilian, Blue, Sylenth & Z3ta.
Main Synth Lead/Pad GTs - Z3ta, Sytrus, Sylenth, Vangard, Albino & Nexus.
Main FXs GTs - Waves Plugins, Soundtoys, Volcano, FL Native FX.
Hardware - Truths, Echo Audiofire, Virus Snow, & Novation Xio Midi-Synth.

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik For the price of of a couple of those CDs, you can buy a decent mic. Then add some of these (free)... ...and you can get the original results you're looking for, rather than being stuck with some cheesy samples or remixing the same old songs. (Yes, those are the singers I work with)

"Free"? I thought you had to pay those women to sing for you.
Or be some sort of established producer.

See you can say something like "I have 20 years experience in music theory & production, 4 years schooling, 10 released tracks". (not saying those are your stats but I know the're up there)
And I suppose that gives them incentive to actually record for you.
But I don't have close to the credibility you do in the field, do you think they'd still do it?
Also, I thought those girls sung with you in your studio, do you just write the lyrics and they record them seperately then send them to you?

Thats pretty generous if I might say.
I would even throw them some cash, as long as it wasn't like $400 per track (which I believe Lesing does personal requests for) Cause I wouldn't be releasing anything, just doing it for fun/experience.

___________________
Sequencers: FL Studio 9XXL & Reason 3.
Main Synth Bass GTs - Pro-53, V-Station, Sytrus, Subtractor, Trilian, Blue, Sylenth & Z3ta.
Main Synth Lead/Pad GTs - Z3ta, Sytrus, Sylenth, Vangard, Albino & Nexus.
Main FXs GTs - Waves Plugins, Soundtoys, Volcano, FL Native FX.
Hardware - Truths, Echo Audiofire, Virus Snow, & Novation Xio Midi-Synth.

We treat it more like a collaboration. I write the music and melodies, they provide the lyrics and vocals (no, I don't write lyrics at all). Then, we just get together and record the vox in my studio. I found them by just running ads on craigslist. You may be surprised at how many talented singers are out there that have no other musical outlet and would jump at a chance to do some recording. Yeah, having a lot of experience helps, but I've also found that it can intimidate a lot of people as well, so I try not to emphasize that too much when I'm looking for a singer. As long as you can demonstrate that you can get solid results, there are probably people out there willing to give it a try. By far the biggest problem I've found is dealing with flaky/unreliable people.

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You should treat vocal sample packs like any other sample pack. The recordings are not meant to be used wholesale, they're meant to be chopped, spliced, processed, re-processed, pitch-shifted, drowned in reverb, compressed, re-re-processed, and then have the whole cycle repeated again.

There are all kinds of tracks out there based on one or two screwy vocal loops, placed sparsely and heavily edited. And then there are many other tracks with little fraction-of-a-second slices of vocals peppered all over the place. That's what these packs are great for.

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quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut You should treat vocal sample packs like any other sample pack. The recordings are not meant to be used wholesale, they're meant to be chopped, spliced, processed, re-processed, pitch-shifted, drowned in reverb, compressed, re-re-processed, and then have the whole cycle repeated again. There are all kinds of tracks out there based on one or two screwy vocal loops, placed sparsely and heavily edited. And then there are many other tracks with little fraction-of-a-second slices of vocals peppered all over the place. That's what these packs are great for.

+1.

You're not going to get a full song, with verses and choruses, based on one-shots. Trying to do that would be a horrible process.

But I've heard lots of songs where the artist has used a short vocal sample and creatively processed it, and it sounds great. Even if it's chopped up so it's not an actual word anymore, it still adds a different quality than, say, a cymbal effect or synth lead effect.

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik We treat it more like a collaboration. I write the music and melodies, they provide the lyrics and vocals (no, I don't write lyrics at all). Then, we just get together and record the vox in my studio. I found them by just running ads on craigslist. You may be surprised at how many talented singers are out there that have no other musical outlet and would jump at a chance to do some recording. Yeah, having a lot of experience helps, but I've also found that it can intimidate a lot of people as well, so I try not to emphasize that too much when I'm looking for a singer. As long as you can demonstrate that you can get solid results, there are probably people out there willing to give it a try. By far the biggest problem I've found is dealing with flaky/unreliable people.

Have you released any tracks using singers that you've tracked down in this manner? How does that work?

quote:

Originally posted by david.michael Have you released any tracks using singers that you've tracked down in this manner? How does that work?

Releasing tracks is not a priority for me, but we have released one track so far("Essence"), but interestingly, the label folded a few months ago and the song is in the process of being re-released by another label. It was temporarily removed from Beatport in the meantime, but it's still available on iTunes, although I have no idea how it's doing there yet. Anyway, I think you're probably wondering how we go about splitting the profits (???). Our agreement is that we split our share 50/50, although, realistically, I'll probably just give it all to the singer since we probably won't make much and she could use the money much more than I could (I'm old and both my wife and I have good careers).

We have another track ("Telescope") that will be released by Olympik Records in a few weeks/months, along with some excellent remixes from TA members, but those profits are going to charity.

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quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Releasing tracks is not a priority for me, but we have released one track so far("Essence"), but interestingly, the label folded a few months ago and the song is in the process of being re-released by another label. It was temporarily removed from Beatport in the meantime, but it's still available on iTunes, although I have no idea how it's doing there yet. Anyway, I think you're probably wondering how we go about splitting the profits (???). Our agreement is that we split our share 50/50, although, realistically, I'll probably just give it all to the singer since we probably won't make much and she could use the money much more than I could (I'm old and both my wife and I have good careers). We have another track ("Telescope") that will be released by Olympik Records in a few weeks/months, along with some excellent remixes from TA members, but those profits are going to charity.

Thanks for the response. Yeah, the profit sharing was what I was interested in knowing. So, would the label give the money to you and then you just give half to the vocalist? Or, do you have it worked into the label's contract so that profits are divided and sent to you individually?

Just curious, as this is something that had crossed my mind recently.