How would you do this? (chopping and reassembling clips to tempo)

I posted another thread this morning that touched on this a bit, but I thought I'd start a separate one that was focused on this. I'm very interested to hear how other Sonar users would do this. It seems that there are a few ways to pull it off, but I'm not experienced enough to have developed an actual workflow and there may be an easier way to do it.

As a kind of learning project, I decided to take Imogen Heap's song Hide And Seek  and make a techno remix of it sort of like DJ Tiesto's version. In order to pull this off, the original a capella track has to be chopped up and reassembled to match whatever tempo I've selected.

I've tried three methods, so far:

METHOD ONE

My first attempt, I chopped up a few of the first lines into clips, one clip for each word. I chopped off extra stuff that wasn't necessary and then tried to place each word into the right spot. That worked, pretty much, but was tedious and I'm not making use of the tools Sonar has available.

METHOD TWO

I tried using V-Vocal in Time mode on individual phrases. This worked, but distorted the audio. I think this is because the original track is not just a vocal. It's actually her voice mixed in with a vocoder, I think, so I don't think V-Vocal knows what to do with that.

METHOD THREE

This is the one I had the most success with, but it's still time-consuming. I chopped up the main track into phrases, then I shrunk the phrases by varying amounts using Process>Length in polyphonic mode. That left me with clips that more closely matched the tempo without having to chop up the clips too much. Then I used Audiosnap here and there to adjust words so that they'd land on the right beats. This works, but Audiosnap is not without its glitches and it's a bit tricky to make it sound good on this. However, it is working and I'm fairly happy with the results.

I had one really decent track going but then X1 crashed when I nudged a clip during playback. I lost a lot of my work because I didn't save often enough. My second attempt just doesn't have as good of a feel as my first attempt (using Method Three).

So, I ask you, if you were tasked with doing this, how might you go about it using the tools that come with Sonar X1? And if you'd really rather do this with third-party tools, what would you use?

I'm more interested in how you'd do with with Sonar X1 and the tools it comes with, though.

Any thoughts?

neiby


I forgot to add that as a workflow, I'm doing one phrase at a time. Once I get the phrase length set where I like and then get the individual word timings tweaked with Audiosnap, I bounce to clip to save every thing on that clip as it is, then I lock the clip data and position and move on to the next clip. I'm keeping every clip in the same track for now. I suspect that later if I need to make changes to any clips, I'll copy and paste them into a new track and make the changes to that one. That way I'll always have one full track with all the clips in case I need to go back to them.

The Tiesto/Imogen Heap version of Hide and Seek is one of my all time favorite tracks.
 
I think you might have been better off creating some tempo reference track -- maybe a hihat track or kick track - to use as the tempo guide for Audio Snap (though you could just do it to the project tempo itself) and create one long track of the vocal without first chopping it up.
 
You may have to bounce it to avoid the problem you mention about the vocoder, but if the vocal track follows the project tempo that may not matter.
 
The problem there might be that it's hard to match it up due to the lack of clear transients in the vocal track, though.  
 
So another approach might be to break up the vocals into phrases (or not) and use Sonar's fit to time function.
 
 

neiby


I did start out with a kick track as a reference. I later discovered the "Fit to time" feature, but I haven't tried it yet. I'll try that instead of the Length processing feature next time I work on that project. That may work better with less guesswork since I'll know how long I want the phrase to ultimately be.

The issue of transients did make working with Audiosnap a little more difficult on a vocal track with a vocoder, but it's doable. It usually finds way too many, so I try to move the threshold to where I only have a few transients showing, but that sometimes leaves out the important ones I'm trying to get, so it's kind of tricky.

Thanks for the tips! I agree that Hide and Seek is a great track, both the original and the Tiesto version. Tiesto does some amazing remixes. He's extremely creative and it's hard to match that sort of skill, particularly his drum programming.

Yeah -- while a little off topic, I've always liked Tiesto in the past.  I think he's hit a bit of a slump creatively though.  He last album or two didn't rock my boat that much.  I know he's quite talented, but I think he needs a creative break to re-balance himself.  He's been out there on top a long time, that's gotta have a tiring effect on a creative spirit after awhile.
 
There are some good videos on YouTube for remixing and stretching vocals -- although they are not "Sonar" based, you might get some good ideas from them.
 
 

neiby


Yeah, I agree about Tiesto's last couple of albums. They weren't that interesting. But some of his older stuff is extremely creative. He makes it sound so easy! Then I try it and find out it's freaking hard and I give up.  lol

Well, then just find what works well for you - and be that / go with that ;)
 
But first you gotta get the vocals working ;)
 
 

neiby


I love stuff like his version of Just Be, Beautiful Things and In Your Eyes (not the Peter Gabriel song). I can only dream of putting together songs that well. But I thought it might make a fun project to try my hand at one. However, perhaps I should have picked a song that is already in the tempo and I want. I'm sure I could pick up some vocal stems from some remix site. Cutting up and tweaking the vocals for Hide And Seek is a daunting task all by itself considering my (lack of) skills.

I actually think taking a project that is more difficult is a better way to learn Sonar and improve your chops overall.
 
Some of it may be daunting, but may also result in a world of new skills/knowledge.
 
And, I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but I find keeping the PDF version of the Sonar Reference Guide handy is ... well .... handy ;)