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Hey guys,

I play in a Queen tribute. We've been struggling with the operatic middle section of Bohemian Rhapsody. I found a vocal only recording of it on You Tube. I began to wonder if I could somehow trigger certain parts from my Kronos as we sing over the top.

Important to note at this point, we play everything a semitone lower to help the singer out.

I imported it into my DAW (Reason), transposed it down and it sounds rubbish....distortion, pops, glitches.....only on the parts where there are multiple voices, the very parts I need.

Is there a workaround for this? Would I be better off importing it straight into the Kronos?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

jeddy 3 wrote:Hey guys,

I play in a Queen tribute. We've been struggling with the operatic middle section of Bohemian Rhapsody. I found a vocal only recording of it on You Tube. I began to wonder if I could somehow trigger certain parts from my Kronos as we sing over the top.

Important to note at this point, we play everything a semitone lower to help the singer out.

I imported it into my DAW (Reason), transposed it down and it sounds rubbish....distortion, pops, glitches.....only on the parts where there are multiple voices, the very parts I need.

Is there a workaround for this? Would I be better off importing it straight into the Kronos?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

You don;t say what mode you play your Kronos in.

You could post the YT so we can better analyze the quality of that recording.

#1 you have to confirm you have a clean track to work with.

After that, you can import the YT audio file into Audacity and alter the pitch, then export it as a new WAV

And in Audacity, you can ' cut ' or chop off the part of the audio you don't need.

I mentioned ' mode '. Because I only use WAV files in SEQ mode. From there
you might be able to coordinate a ' play along '. To do that, your band has to keep strict tempo and ' hear ' the WAV file- assuming you solved any up front audio quality problems

And in SEQ mode, if you have the full original recording, you can use 'erase measures ' ( track edit) to remove the audio (WAV file) you don't need

jeddy 3 wrote:Hey guys,

I play in a Queen tribute. We've been struggling with the operatic middle section of Bohemian Rhapsody. I found a vocal only recording of it on You Tube. I began to wonder if I could somehow trigger certain parts from my Kronos as we sing over the top.

Important to note at this point, we play everything a semitone lower to help the singer out.

I imported it into my DAW (Reason), transposed it down and it sounds rubbish....distortion, pops, glitches.....only on the parts where there are multiple voices, the very parts I need.

Is there a workaround for this? Would I be better off importing it straight into the Kronos?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

do you have ableton? even the lite version that comes with may devices would do.
Use that to pitch-shift/transpose the audio

Hi,

How did you do the pitch shifting/correction?

Most DAWs can pitch shift without any issues these days, and a semitone shift should not be be an issue. E.g. the feature in Cubase to look at would be "Vari Audio". Other DAWs will have their equivalents of what Melodyne kicked off all those years ago.

Hi,

Thanks for the responses, I have just realized that the YouTube vocal-only clip is not vocal-only. There is very quiet piano and drums (perhaps bleed?).
I wonder if this is the source of distortion once transposed.

Derek, You're right, any modern DAW should be able to handle this and I'm sure I've done this sort of thing before without these issues, so can only assume it's the above explanation.

jeddy 3 wrote:Hi,

Thanks for the responses, I have just realized that the YouTube vocal-only clip is not vocal-only. There is very quiet piano and drums (perhaps bleed?).
I wonder if this is the source of distortion once transposed.

.

I see that on YT, too. Once the vocals share the same frequency (in the center channel for example) with piano/drums, its nearly impossible to filter out those instruments.

You can try turning the wave file into a program, then route that into an IFX Pitch Shifter, at 100% Wet, in Fast mode. I didn't try those vocals, but it worked on another file that I tried.

GregC wrote:

jeddy 3 wrote:Hi,

Thanks for the responses, I have just realized that the YouTube vocal-only clip is not vocal-only. There is very quiet piano and drums (perhaps bleed?).
I wonder if this is the source of distortion once transposed.

.

I see that on YT, too. Once the vocals share the same frequency (in the center channel for example) with piano/drums, its nearly impossible to filter out those instruments.

You can try a program like Audionamix which gets good writes up and you can use on a monthly subscription basis for as long as you need it if your needs for doing this was sporadic, and don;t justify the full purchase price. I was going to use it for a project where I needed to do this, but the project fell through, so I only had an initial play with it.

A few years ago I used the following with reasonable results to lift the French vocals from "Fade To Grey". There were still artefacts, but you could not hear them if you sat the vocal in the mix correctly (but I did not have the need to correct the pitch)

http://www.elevayta.net/product13.htm

Another think to check in a DAW is the time stretch algorithm in use. E.g. Cubase does not automatically go for the "Elastique" option which gives you the best results (might be due to a config setting I have not set!).

Hey guys,

Thanks a lot for your time and effort to respond.

I have found a workaround to this; a different clip from youtube that is not actually Queen but a really great recording which has none of the artifacts mentioned above.

All I have to do now is learn how to put them in a Combi, then learn how to trigger them with one hand whilst playing Piano with the other and singing over the top of them!!!

Still, nobody said it would be easy eh?

http://www.karaoke-version.com/customba ... -edit.html

Try this maybe as well. You can transpose before you buy. You can also individually extract the tracks and mix them in a Kronos sequence. I find many of their tracks useful

Seconded. I have used some of their Pink Floyd files to do some backing tracks very quickly to augment what we had done.

When I need something a half-step down, I go to sequencing mode and load it as a wave file

1) I separate the parts I need and add 500,000 of silence at the end

2) Use the loop function at -99 pitch (a helf-step)

3) Re-record the part as a wav file

4) edit the new sample to remove any blank space at the beginning

5) save the new sample as a new .wav file

There's probably an easier way, but it works well for me. I record a lot of covers for fun and use the originals as guides They or often not at A-440. For example, A lot of Dokken songs are about a quarter tone off. So, I just adjust it rather than change the tuning of all of my instruments.

AdDeRoo wrote:http://www.karaoke-version.com/customba ... -edit.html

Try this maybe as well. You can transpose before you buy. You can also individually extract the tracks and mix them in a Kronos sequence. I find many of their tracks useful

Hey, this worked a treat but not in my Kronos....it seems way too complicated to store things, had to do it on my other board