Best method of recording dryvox?
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Heyo. So, I’m having a hell of a time properly recording dryvox for Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, but it’s entirely my own fault. It’s tricky to rock a rhyme that’s right on time. In particular, the talkie section of dialogue about how she cracked open her head and was bleedin’ all over the place is very hard to record at the right cadence. I know if I don’t do it perfectly, it won’t look right on the lip sync. If you don’t know what section I’m talking about, the link below is queued up to that part of the song:
https://youtu.be/DHEOF_rcND8?t=3m13s
I know I’ll need to redo this take over and over again to get it right. But that’s going to be a huge hassle because the problem, I think, is in the way I’m recording. So that’s where I’m looking for advice. Here’s how I record:
1. Put on headphones.
2. Begin recording with Audacity.
3. Open up Reaper and play the audio, singing along.
If I can do it flawlessly in one take (even if I have to record that one take repeatedly), this works fine. But with Home, there are just so many places to make a mistake and have to splice parts together… which, for this song, simply isn’t feasible.
The problem is, if I have to go back and splice something into my recording, I can only hear myself and not the song as well… causing potentially troublesome sync issues.
How do you record dryvox? Is there a way to do it directly in Reaper? I assume there is and it’s way easier, but I haven’t ever experimented with that yet, hence my arrival here. Advice appreciated!
I record them the exact same way as you do. However I also seem to be missing the magic ingredient when it comes to dryvox because I get virtually the same results from singing it myself, as I do when I just render the vocal chart with an FX plugin. Sometimes I get lucky and I can isolate most of the singers voice in the song using a combination of cancellers and extractor plugins, render that to a dryvox file and get ‘better’ results. Mostly I stopped worrying about it, especially if its only one small section of the song.
Keeping the content Canadian since 2017!
SomeOldGuys: https://db.c3universe.com/songs/all/__user/someoldguys
MrPrezident: https://db.c3universe.com/songs/all/__user/MrPrezidentRecording directly into Reaper is as easy as arming the appropriate dryvox track, and then hitting record instead of play. The arm/disarm button is to the left of the track name.
I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard tell that speaking the lyrics can actually sometimes translate into better lip-syncing than singing them.
Dash’s method is much more convenient. I used to record in Audacity, but I find Reaper to be much better for it. It’s easier to edit the track as well to combine multiple takes.
Euromix is also correct. Just speak the words as clearly as you can, and you can rely on certain phonetic sounds (“oh, ooh, ah, etc.”) on various long, sustained words.
You can reach me on Discord: Fat Halpert#3165
Yeah, I do it directly in Reaper, when I can. Then I can cut together or reuse parts easily. Of course, I would never actually listen to the recording. I just trust it’s good enough and correct the more obviously-wrong parts that show up in-game.
Stay in REAPER. Listen to a section (maybe a couple vocal phrases) twice, then switch to record and sing along. If you didn’t get it right, do over. I normalize each section out of superstition, then render the whole track to a mono dryvox wav.
I’ve now learned how to use the recording option directly in Reaper. Now, for editing, I assume you guys just use the split (S) command, then delete the active take and/or pieces you don’t want?
Thanks for all the advice, everybody… yeah, this is definitely more convenient than using Audacity!
(Aware this is late but leaving this in case of future searches)
I record in another program but I do bring the files back into Reaper to sync up and at that point it’s just like everyone else. By the time I export the final dryvox from Reaper it’s pretty cut up, even if it was a good performance going in. Just the nature of things. Remember it’s all for lip syncing so the edits don’t have to sound nice, they just have to get the important sounds in the right places.
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