How to make a Background Vocal Synth

In week three, I attended an optional Ableton Workshop with facilitator Peter. What a good call it was to attend. The session was really up to students to direct and Peter would answer questions as best he could. So best believe I put my hand up first for help in identifying a particular synth in our reference track haha.

Identifying key elements via Critical Listening is a big weapon to have in a producers arsenal. It allows them to break down every single sound in a mix. In one of my critical listening sessions, I came across a vocal sound that I could not put my finger on. It is a vowel like 'oooooo' moving in line with the acoustic guitar, like a background choir. After quizzing Peter on this, I got my answer; ' A vocal background synth'.

The following steps were used to create this harmonic vowel 'oooooo' sound:

1). Either record or locate a sample vocal of the desired sound. The particular sample used in this workshop was taken from freesounds.org. Download and save to your desktop.

2). Create a new Midi-Track in Ableton. Shortcut is Shift+Command+T

3) Go to Categories Section of the DAW, select Instruments and then select 'Simpler' from the Browser Content Pane.

4) Drag the sample vocal from your desk top straight into Simpler.

5) Loop a segment of the vocal that you like with a clear start and end point.

6) Make sure warp is turned off in Simpler, this is so I can then fade the source to the desired effect. Make sure Fade is on 100%, this will help to smooth the Vox and continuously fade in and out.

7)I can now play this sample on my Midi Keyboard/Computer keyboard and try to match the notes to my reference track

8) Try adding a bit of Reverb to the sample to give it some depth as it is a background synth.

And that was it. The synth was ready to go in just a few pretty simple steps. And this is the exact process I will now be using with my group to develop our background vocal synth for project one. Big ups to Peter for this one!