VoicePlay: Inside "Moana Medley" with Layne Stein - INTERVIEW

welcome back to the charismatic voice and i hope that all of you are welcome with me lane stein from voice play say hello hello fans of elizabeth so we just finished premiering another video on this channel which was first time reaction and analysis of the moana medley that voice plate did with rachel potter it was incredible and lane was awesome enough to offer a deep dive session in to the actual production project of the moana medley so we're going to be taking a look at that thank you so much again elaine for for offering this this is just really awesome for me and for the fans this is exciting i'm glad i can share all right so here we are in pro tools and this is the daw that lane uses lyn can you talk to me a little bit about what the production process looks like do you guys record into pro tools do you ship things there later do you mix and master in pro tools what does that look like for you that's a good question we all actually have different setups at home so i have pro tools but a few of the other guys have logic and i think uh one of the person has pro tools so it's just like a mismatch of mishmash of all the different daws and then basically once it's all done whoever's editing it and for this one this was mine so um i'll edit it into pro tools and then the process is after i'm done editing then i'll send it off to our mix engineer who is super good that's awesome um do you do you guys usually record in different places or do you often record together we often record at our own houses unless we're doing a live video and you know it's weird a lot of people say you get better results if you're kind of all in the same room kind of vibing off each other and we've we definitely have done that before in the past but i think we've kind of gotten to a point where we all know what we're thinking we've been doing this for so long and you can already kind of hear the critique from the other guys while you're doing it you know what i mean so uh it all um inevitably there ends up being notes that go back and forth too so you know if i'm doing this session then if i get apart from ellie or from jeff i'll write them up an email with time stamps and kind of this is what i need you to do differently or completely scrap your solo it's crap was just ridiculous and amazing but okay we'll get to that i'm sure i'm so glad you liked it so did my daughter oh perfect yeah i think i rolled back in my chair just of laughter at that moment it was it was really really great i was like oh god this is this is laughable it was lethal yeah it was fun um so that's interesting too so then um if you have everybody in different booths i'm guessing you just all have like a certain distance you're all singing from the microphone or like certain expectations there do you guys use similar microphones or do you worry about any of that sort of continuity absolutely um a few of us use the same microphone we didn't always and we it's always more of a challenge if if you're using like a smorgasbord of different mics um and it's it's it really depends because some people's voices sound better on different mics so you got that to you have to consider that as well but all in all i think we use either uh sure ksm32 which is what this is or uh neumann 103 or something like that i don't really remember but i think that's what we use between the three of us that's awesome or five times yeah yeah and then uh for something like this when rachel's involved uh she'll usually come in a night or two before and record um in person she doesn't live here yeah she lives in nashville right she lives in nashville and the rest of us live in orlando got it got it so i was also curious um had from a lot of people covet has really changed how they work but it sounds like because you're recording at home for the most part it hasn't actually affected your process as a group that much well to an extent like it's affected our live shows tremendously um you already know that um but as far as recording um getting together is still a little bit of a struggle because covid um but as far as the recording process and getting music made it's about the same i'm glad that i'm glad that that is still working at the least definitely okay so i'm i'm looking over this project here do you want to kind of guide me through what this uh skeleton layout how you've laid it out here in pro tools uh sure yeah um so basically on this one all of us did a single track all the way through um and i think there might be a couple of double moments which is kind of where you go in and sing along with yourself and that has a tendency to kind of thicken up the sound um i don't think we did that or if we did it it was like not a lot on this one a very um singular track and that was kind of like that's kind of what i had in mind for this one is that i wanted to feel like it was very live uh obviously it wasn't but um i just wanted that i don't know not a lot of tricks happening just us yeah uh because the movie really felt just pure and true so i wanted to kind of emphasize that in the arrangement so this was your arrangement too right yes yeah that's awesome it was really really really good i loved um i loved your really fast transitions between songs that was super impressive and i liked the did you send out a tempo guide track to people too when they recorded okay that's a great question um yes but even more than that basically what happens is whoever's arranging records all of the parts first can we hear your base um you know what's funny is with the bass a lot of times i'll just use an instrument which is just kind of midi plucking out a sound like a bass guitar or something like that and if there's a part that i'm very specific with i'll sing down his part uh and sometimes i'll even like pitch shift it so it sounds a little bit like beefier so it gives him something to like compete against kind of so he's like oh i gotta outdo lane um that's hilarious um but yeah uh after that uh after everyone kind of approves the arrangement like oh i really like this session i don't like this section can you change this that but um then the parts get sent out and either i'll send out the entire session and it's labeled with everyone's part and what they're supposed to do or we'll send out part dominance which is where you hear like an mp3 where your part would be on the left side and you're when you're listening to headphones and everyone else would be on the right side you can obviously flip fluff it however you want and then if you want to practice along and really get it before you record it you you would only listen to one ear at a time um and learn with your practice part and then you would take it off to see if you got it or not that's amazing i absolutely will use that sometime that's such an amazing idea oh really cool yeah it's fun we've been doing that for a long time well yeah i i think like oh i record with one uh one year on anyhow and then if i think it's true like i'll shift it around kind of depending on where things have been panned i've just never thought about doing guide tracks with that sort of panning that's great that's really great uh so many things already so am i being too long-winded am i talking too much no okay no i well i love it and i think that i think subscribers subscribers will also love that they uh i mean this community really loves the in-depth information so you're great okay cool um okay um let's see so let's go back to you've got rachel on top it looks like and then and then you have earl underneath oh how have you divided this this is fascinating i'm looking at the groupings on the sides oh yeah i think you're you're um here i don't know why this is kind of like this um you're probably looking at rachel uh subdivided into several sections right here and that's sloppy editing first um and second of all i think you're seeing the track being treated differently for when she's singing backup versus when she's singing a trio versus when she's singing solo oh my goodness okay that was one of the things when i was listening i when there were the trio harmonies they were tight they were great and they were just so clean so that and then i listen and you can definitely tell back up versus lead i hadn't realized you actually treated the trio differently as well for sure yeah and basically everything gets recorded kind of just all the way through first so it's not like oh i need to record this on a separate track it gets broken down afterwards um so that you can kind of treat it that way wow that's that's really awesome um so how much how much do people self-balance in the recording uh for those like lead versus backup or trio movements okay that's a that's a really good question because i used to think that it could all be kind of fixed later in post know what i mean fix it in post it's not true you need people to sing it as close as possible to how you want it to sound and the more authentic and organic it is the more that comes through in the final recording um obviously you can always add volume fades to certain things where um higher in my register is going to be louder and lower is going to be super soft you can obviously balance those things out but as far as intensities you really want to match those as much as you can while you're recording yeah when would you think about mic distances too would you be closer on on certain parts or does that absolutely okay um that's not a huge part um you obviously want to have a pop filter and you want to be a few inches away from the microphone but also if you're going to be screaming your head off you want to be a little bit further away from the microphone so it doesn't explode and when you're recording something super intimate and it's so soft in your voice and you just wanna uh everyone to hear every single detail that's going on in your voice you just get super close to it yep yep okay um that's perfect that was already awesome okay talk to me a little bit more about uh this structure of i see how many tracks that do you have over here on the left um okay a lot a lot it looks like so you have you separated each singer out into definitely lead backing and trio harmony do you separate singers out um beyond that like i was really curious especially if you would treat um would you separate eli's voice differently when he's singing high versus low um perhaps maybe not a lot of that in in this one um that's something more to do um sometimes that's more in the mix side of things and that can be handled with something that's called um multi-band compression which kind of um are you familiar yeah a fab i think i use oh no that's the eq i use but yes i uh yes multi-band compression yes so if that multi-band compression is where the compress okay let's talk about compression really quick so compression is kind of where uh if you sing something really loud it kind of clamps it down and if you sing something very soft it doesn't do anything so basically it brings up the perceived volume of the track by kind of squishing it all down into one contained thing now multi-band compression takes that and it splits up the frequencies into let's just say four bands like the really low stuff the medium low high and the super high stuff and that has a tendency to take care of the if i'm singing something really high versus i'm seeing something super low it kind of evens it out yeah [Music] so that's just it's a tool that's used uh kind of in the mixing part of it that helps balance it all together and it's very important i would say in almost any style of music that you record makes a range right what whatever part you're doing so i might be getting ahead a little bit here but do you do you put any sort of multi-band compression on people or on tracks i should say before you would send it off to your mixer um let's at our mixer's ed boyer and we love him you're amazing ed thank you ed um and he's such a nice guy and the other thing about ed is that he just gets it like he understands acapella he's been doing it for so long and he's been doing it for um i think he does it for the pentatonix he did it for the sing-off he does it for probably a hundred other groups um wow so he lives and breathes his stuff and he just knows what to do uh he's technically savvy and he's also musically savvy and he's also a cappella savvy he's got like all those things he must be so fast he's like such a nerd like you just just kidding um it's great because i i actually used to do all of our mixing um and it got to a point where i really needed some help and i needed somebody with somebody else with an ear that understood it and that's who ed is so now i've taken the role of kind of compiling everything and getting it to sound as best that i can so yes the answer is of course i try to get it to sound exactly how i want it to sound and then i say take it further oh that's awesome because you probably know what you want more than anybody as an artist so being able to communicate that as clearly as possible is very important well said communication okay life lesson right there that's great okay so let's see um wait i have a question can i ask you a question yeah you can ask me a question did you love moana in the movie i did there were a couple of key moments that i really really loved in that movie um one of them was the moment when we discovered that hey hey and not the pig was gonna be the lead animal sidekick that i that choice was amazing yes uh loved maui especially i have a friend that actually sang that entire song before i'd seen the movie to me uh on in a car in traffic in l.a and that's always stuck with me it was amazing uh jason uh now he's famous um and then the end when there was that understanding that empathy uh was the thing that really helped overcome conflict i thought that that was such an amazing moral and uh just a lesson to everyone to have so i loved love love love love loved that moment what about you so great oh my gosh you know what's funny about it is that i my my daughter doris had just turned one and she was obsessed with watching this whole movie where like what one-year-old watches an entire movie all the way through so she wanted to watch this movie every night and i'm a huge fan of lin-manuel so i was already like okay um sign me up so every night we watch this and i'm just like this is a masterpiece every every night i was like oh this is so good and finally i was like you know what guys i brought it to the group i was like let's do a moana medley and they're like this never happens there's always some kind of argument or like i want to do this but i want to do that and i want like everyone has their own opinion and that's wonderful but everyone was like okay and i was like really and they're all like yeah let's do it so that's when i you know started compiling it all together and that was the beginning that's awesome but yeah we it's got such it's incredible writing and just such clever moments and just it has so much heart and soul you can just anyway enough no okay so we have to thank your daughter then doris absolutely doris okay doris who is now four she's four okay thank you doris all right let's fight back uh let's dive back into this session now there's tons of tracks here so this is really interesting to me to see how differently you treat different parts of each vocal and when you were first scrolling through i noticed it looks like you treat different parts of your beat boxing very differently did you do you have a kick throat you have your tom like whoa whoa well this is yes wow crazy right yeah but look at all the drum tracks i'm just gonna expand it down look at all these beautiful drum tracks the drums get the most tracks and that's because um that's because i'm the drummer amazing but the i you're covering a ton of different frequencies and the sounds have to be super super tight in a way that's a little bit different they also have to be really consistent too right absolutely and i'm just gonna i'll just go through it real quick okay so so basically when i record the drums um i think for this one in particular i did a one take all the way through um so that means um i'll record all the way through and it won't be necessarily all at once you know punch little sections and i get the the outline like this is what i want it to sound like these are the things that i want to do in these sections and then after that there might be a few little embellishments where you'll hear a few like overlapping sounds um but i don't do that the entirety because um once again for this arrangement i wanted it to feel like we're it was all like you get to make one sound at a time and that's it um which is a nice little kind of like box to give yourself it's always good to give yourself guidelines now the thing that kind of enhances the sound is breaking each sound up and treating them differently but what's so important is that you don't want to chop it all like when you're looking down here you're seeing a lot of the sounds kind of all chopped up what you don't want to do is only do chopped up sounds that's in addition to it's adding to the organic sound so the organic sound is getting all the love and all of the um chopped up bits are just an added bonus got it so that was that's like that thickening of the sound that you were talking about sort of when you would double yourself exactly okay um so that's where you can kind of separate out the kick or the snare or the hi-hat and give them their own eq curve or their own compression uh and honestly you can take it as far as you would like or as little as you would like but since you're the percussion you get really specific with it that's right i do but um i like i said it's so important to keep it organic no matter how far you take it yeah that's true it needs to be human yeah it needs to sound like me and it needs to be human but it needs to be the best possible version of that yeah it makes sense so how many different sounds did you come up with for this [Music] what kind of oh my gosh i might have said that i thought i heard at least 50 sounds at one point but i have no idea i i wasn't actually you know it's yeah i have no idea i don't count um but i'm sure it's probably more than that and you had so you did this one where you flicked your i do that's better on the actual video yeah that was cool yeah it sounds like a little water drop yeah exactly that's and yes yeah it's a little trick i learned in middle school like on a bus or something like that you know some other kid on the bus was like doing it i was like how do you do that okay all of the fans will write in the comments below that i literally said that sounded like a thing that i tried on the bus in middle school oh my god that's amazing that in your video i literally said that yeah no freaking way really yeah okay was that were you the kid that i learned it from [Music] i'm sure it was like my cousin or something right everybody's the cousin yeah but that's amazing maybe this is like maybe we've discovered that it's actually like some part of our culture that you have to learn this on a bus in middle school i think you might be right you're onto something that's awesome okay so that sound was fantastic there was um there was a really interesting part where i didn't see your mouth moving but you're doing like a like a uh like a law or like a tongue flick sort of and some wish in the back did you end up adding some extra layers that was towards the end i specifically wanted to ask you about it happy to pull it up what song oh it was a transition um as you were maybe transition into the final part where you kind of switched very quickly let's see nope was it out of that section maybe um okay it's definitely one of those parts where i added some stuff bubbles you call it bubbles well i will play it for you because so that was me doing like and i just kind of layered it i think i was also layered with the um and i was like what can i add right here because it's so the whole thing is islandy and beachy um and i was like what what would be that and i was like oh of course bubbles because we're kind of approaching the end of the song it's a lift how do we do that and i think the other sound that you were hearing is probably this yes you've got and that has felt more like a wave to me so i was of bubbles and waves water it's what the whole entire movie is about yeah that's fascinating got it so when we say way more than 50 sounds it's exactly exactly true that was like two different waves together interesting really really cool are there other sounds like that that you just came up with because you were inspired by water or other things in the movie [Music] all throughout it it was inspired by sounds from this movie sounds probably from the little mermaid because i was like oh what other disney movies can i kind of pull some ideas from and that's the other one that's just very water based it's underwater it's above water it's on the beach so what kind of sounds did they use on that one and i kind of um pulled from that that's cool oh that's amazing this is this oh yeah thinking about how many different ideas that would be bringing together and how you actually have worked them into the song that's really amazing um this is a funny little piece i always like to talk about this little moment um and you i don't think a lot of people would catch this but they might feel it and not even know uh where it's from how i'm gonna play it for you [Music] [Music] what is that from is that from the little mermaid yeah it's from kiss the girl okay i was like that you mentioned mermaid is like it sounds like yeah that little that the baseline is kind of the same rhythm and that little as directly from kiss the girl and i was like oh what's like a romantic feeling other disney song that would that i could you know borrow some ideas from which is always where my head's at what else can i use as a as a guide for this and um i was like oh for sure kiss the girl that's amazing that's amazing what what a fun little reference right there and i hear that uh that wave going in the background actually yeah that's right that's cool different and a different wave form oh see i called them ocean waves see i actually labeled that one correctly hand and lipsons hands and lip sounds i don't know what that is i'm a little scared but let's check it out [Music] okay so that was a loop that i came up with for this rap section because i was like well we need to keep the beat and i don't really know if anyone else really wants to beat box right here we kind of need like a release from it anyway because we've just been hearing it for two minutes straight so that's when i was like oh let's do hands and claps and bodies hands hitting bodies and stuff like that so that's what that loop was cool very cool uh tell me about the rap how did you i said i'm i'm not going to tell you what i said yet um was there any character that you thought of when you were rapping that like inspired that sort of tone of voice well for sure the rock um but yeah i'm you know not as legit as the rock um and i knew that my version was probably gonna be a little sillier but as far as having an idea of i don't there wasn't much else i think to the rap you sounded like a blend of the rock and hiccup to me from uh from how to train your dragon oh i haven't even seen that oh it's so good um i love that film so much one of my favorite animated films but he has such a distinguished uh distinguishable voices very unique sound it's uh it's youthful and it's fun and silly exactly like what you said that silliness to it i picked up on that and i thought it was so funny it was so funny ah yeah honestly i was the the reason i ended up doing the wrap is because i was going well what part should i we all when we do medleys we try to go well this is you and this part's you so everyone has just at least a little piece so i was like what would i do and i was like i guess i'll be the chicken [Laughter] and i was like i guess i'll do the wrap too so yeah there you go oh uh and you guys handed off the coconut a bunch in the video and i admit i would i tend to get very involved in the sounds of the video and sometimes miss visual things and i didn't notice a coconut until it had been handed to you at this point was it being handed all along to the person who was soloing or lead um i i think we had that coconut for the intro part but there was coconut ography happening [Laughter] where like you know the first couple times that we lip-sync through the song we try to figure out how what are we going to do how are we going to interact with each other how are we going to use these props and a lot of times which is awesome and especially with earl there's a lot of ad-libbing happening and that's the best part about it um and i'm sure at one point i know ellie was like trying to juggle we had a few of them and he eventually threw it to me and i was like well what do i do with this and i think that was kind of like the it ended up being like the passing of the torch i think like you were saying but it was all very what do we do with this thing got it and by the way you said ellie instead of eli is that the way i should say his name yes thank you thank you that's important to me okay ellie uh i actually sometimes go by ellie so but eat lly usually so that's extra funny um do you want to continue to dive in any particular direction or do you want me to go off a few more questions that i have over here um open you want me to dive uh do you feel like yeah shh get some nice ways something i'm i'm curious where you would go with a dive i feel like you might be able to continue to guide us through this in a super interesting way so if you feel like you've got a direction and you'd like to go in it then go for it i was the only other thing i think that i'm i can touch on us maybe on the the how the songs connect to each other and um how we pick a length for the whole thing maybe yeah please okay so these medleys are difficult because each song is so good and it's like well how do you pick one song from moana to embody that movie it's tough um so that's why we were like well let's do a medley and and how do you cut it down into like the best parts of each song because each song has so many best parts so um you know when we when i first start kind of compiling the arrangement we start with all the songs in the session and i don't oh let me see if i have it in here no it's not in here we start with the original songs in these and as you can see on the top they're like all tempo mapped um to the songs nice um so we'll use i'll use the tempo of the actual original and put each one in their little section so this one is um linear um with kind of how the movie happens uh-huh yeah so um that's why we started out with where you are and how far i'll go and to you're welcome and then basically after you get everything in there that's when you start chopping each song individually into what embodies what's what's going to make the soloists sound the best what embodies the music the best um what's going to get us down to the time that we need to get to um what's the best key for this song how are we going to transition into the next song so many questions to ask for each one and to think about all at the same time uh and what is the time i think we're like let's keep it right around five minutes and i think that's what we stuck to yeah um and i think you kind of want to give everyone about an equal amount of time um so i think that's kind of how they got chopped up uh and obviously rachel was kind of the feature on this one so yeah i think we tried to give her some extra love on this one so that she had a few more standout moments just because you know during our videos you're going to see us a lot because it's just the five of us so when we add rachel in it's like well let's give her some extra love and some extra screen time because it's not all that often that we actually get to see her and she's so good she's really good she's super good and as good as she is in the studio she's better live really and all those little tricks and riffs and high notes and sweet things that she does those are real those aren't studio tricks i was gonna ask uh when you're arranging this at the end of uh how far i'll go there's a moment that a singer would normally just hold out straight and she decided to actually take that riff up was that her decision or was that something you suggested that is a great question that is a really good question because now we're adding in a new person into the mix and that is hannah giuliano who um takes these arrangements not all of them but when sometimes when we have a girl we need a girl to think like a girl and it's you know obviously i can only do so much um but hannah has such a creative she's she's a super creative person and she'll go through and basically sing all of rachel's parts the way she thinks they should be sung and she adds in a lot of those nuance moments where it's a riff or maybe she takes the rhythm in a slightly different manner or um sings something extra sweet where i wouldn't have thought to so yeah it's just another layer to the arrangement to get a female voice on a female part that's awesome wow wow um that actually does lead me to one of the questions that i have which is how long um from saying yes we're going to do this until it's done meaning that the track is down not necessarily that the music video is done i'm curious how long that process takes and i also uh if you wanted to break that down a little bit more into how long each of those sort of sub processes take as well i'd be super interested in that too yeah um so as far as each section let me just kind of say how kind of the whole process can take anywhere from two weeks to a month i think just for the music um and that can be from the start of the arrangement until the end of the final mix so here's how it gets broken down the arrangement can take a few days to a week the next part is getting everyone to approve it and then singing their parts and getting through the notes section of that so that everyone kind of goes back and forth once twice sometimes three times and that can take another week the next part of the process is kind of editing altogether because you need to make it sound like it all happened in the same room um so that's where some tuning and timing goes into play and i don't know if you've played with melodyne or um melodyne sometimes autotune um or in your daw you can kind of shift notes around or timing around and a lot of that does need to happen just to get all of the consonants and all the vowels and the changes to happen seamlessly um for those melodyne nerds out there is there a specific version of melodyne that you like because i know there's a little there is yes version three okay good good that's just for all those people that have opinions on that okay yeah i i can't move on beyond i can't move on to version four i just can't it's impossible it's not the same thank you uh so yeah after that process um that gets approved again and then after that it goes to our mix engineer and i think i totally forgot like where hannah fits into that is where she would um she would fit into the end of the arrangement so after everything's laid out after i've already tried my hardest to sing rachel's part in my falsetto then and it's so awful and you're wondering if this is gonna sound good or not because it doesn't sound good um i'm like trust me it's gonna sound good once there's a check on this so yep hannah gets it so now we're back to the mix process down the road um the mix happens that usually goes through three or four rounds of notes um that usually takes a couple of days um and then we're now starting the video process and that is its own thing and we do that as well so the person that's uh you know doing the clothes like figuring out what we're going to wear to what the set design is going to be to the location rental is all us that's amazing um so yeah that can that's why it takes so long to put out a video because we do it all ourselves um and obviously we don't operate the camera every time but we sometimes operate the camera so we're doing a lot of it and i think that's just because we that's how we know how to do it um i mean that's just so incredible there's so few people that can do all of those things that and you guys are taking care of all of them is mind-blowing we we just love it though and the guys are so good at it and when everyone's firing on all cylinders you you can make some really great art we love it that's why we can't stop doing it good please don't please don't yeah it's so good uh okay and so once once you do the video uh i think you mentioned at one point that you're you're one of the people that does a lot of video editing as well right yeah actually three of us video edit now which is awesome um but yeah um three of three um ellie me and jeff um can all edit a video which is so beautiful so it's like who wants to take this one you great all right on the next one who wants to take this one and a lot of times we'll take our own video just because if you're going to arrange it you kind of already see a vision for how you want it to look and who you want to showcase at what moment so that's kind of just like part of the creative process i guess yeah that's cool so then uh you were you the person that was sort of uh heading off this moana video as well then yes it's fun though like i was like oh i want it to look like a gap commercial so we all like shopped at the gap and it was uh easy it was all online shopping but you know that's what we do well and the i was very amused by the waves that came up at one point yes we actually we had somebody paint the background and that was a hey can we get some waves for the foreground and they're like yeah of course so yeah the scenic company for that one was awesome the background was so beautiful it was good that's amazing ah this is so fun to learn about um okay did you wanna you were on i think you finished the train of thought you were on but was there another one that you had that you wanted to follow um i mean unless you had like specific i'd love to hear these harmonies alone or i don't know i'd love to hear the trio alone okay any particular song um i loved them particularly behind your welcome at one point and actually with your welcome they accompanied the lead at one point so is earl rachel and ellie they sounded so good okay so you want to hear it without drums and without bass right yeah sorry no you're good breathe it in breathe i know it's a lot the hair of the body when you stare ahead what can i say except welcome for the time the sun wow that's so it's so nice and i'm sure you use melodyne to like help sync it up a little bit but i love the the blend two of rachel and ellie there that it's oh that's great and earl just has that laser voice so that is exactly how i describe him yes a laser beam yep laser yes exactly uh you hear that a lot in um this is halloween that was where i was like wow it's a super laser um that's awesome i i'm really curious um do you do you have set uh eq or even like a set chain a processing chain that you would normally use for uh different members of the group i guess they're like sort of a preset that you would even load in if you're saying like okay we know that jeff's face is going to be very rumbly so do you have something that you go to as a starting point um definitely yeah um as i don't know if i have it on this version of this session let me see real quick this is so funny i haven't used this plug-in so long but i think this is the eq that i started off with jeff and you can just see like it's a big old bump right at 90. and then kind of um his high end oh that's so interesting usually with eq i see a lot more um subtraction rather than addition absolutely yeah i think if you're trying to get rid of sounds that you don't like that's where the subtraction goes into play but if you're trying to go now i've i've gotten rid of the bad i want to add in the good that's when you start adding which is why you'll see this and and a lot of times ed won't necessarily keep what i have um with the mix engineer um he might take a look at it and go okay i'm gonna do my own thing um and you could just send him the whole project you wouldn't say individual tracks you'd sit in the project with the plus absolutely everything yep and i know which plugins that he has that i have so i try to use those so that he's not opening up the session and missing a bunch of plugins and now it sounds completely different yeah yep and so he works off at pro tools then as well yes cool very very very cool the other thing that i do when i get this after i've kind of tuned and timed it is that i'll i'll sit there and without any plug-ins on anything um try to kind of balance it out and make sure that everything sounds as good as possible before any plug-ins happen that's a great tip for anybody out there that's doing production i think it's awesome it's time consuming and it's worth it in the end because you get a very organic sound of how your arrangement sounds in the end dynamics and swells and um i don't even some words you want to pop out more and like oh this part isn't loud enough well you don't always need compression and eq sometimes you just need a little bit of volume so um that also kind of brings me to another idea do you use imaging um like stereo imaging to help uh really draw our attention towards maybe a center lead versus side side backing tracks or that kind of thing absolutely yeah typically what you'll hear in the center of any of our mixes and probably a lot of other mixes that you're listening to are kick snare bass lead line and then everything else might be um anywhere else on the spectrum but those are kind of like the big ones that are typically like dead center and that's to really focus your attention on what's happening this is this makes me giggle because i get so excited when i learn new things and uh i would i've worked with producing vocals plenty of times but not vocal percussion and i've just been starting to learn about that so it's so fascinating to me that you have kick and snare and you said hi hat too right um no tip it will sometimes but most of the times a hi-hat is maybe split more on the sides i would never have thought that some of the vocal percussion would be in the center that's fascinating absolutely yes very cool and where did you uh where did you image the trio in this um it depends on where they're sitting or where you see them in the shot or if they have the solo so if they have a solo straight to the middle if you have a harmony and you don't have the solo it's whatever side you're sitting on okay okay so it kind of makes sense and you can pick people apart and you're like oh that earl's sitting over there so i'm hearing earl and ellie's over here so that's where ellie you know what i mean like that's kind of where you want to hear that stuff that makes sense and that makes sense too then because you always are releasing a video then with tracks that you're doing so that would help with choosing where that imaging is going to go absolutely cool um let's see other questions that i have here i was really curious um i couldn't tell from the video but i was told that ellie switches to bass sometimes when jeff is singing late is that right yes okay that's so impressive i was i when i was listening for that today when i heard jeff singing uh the shiny lead and i heard bass in there i thought ah that might must be that moment and i had no idea that he had such a full sound download as well it was cool yeah absolutely and and a lot of times if jeff has a solo there isn't always a baseline or sometimes he'll sing his baseline and his lead or sometimes one of the other guys will do it and what's funny is ellie and jay both have very low voices oh yes really and jay is super he's a super good bass he's just super bass i think yeah super bass can we actually hear ellie at that moment when josh is singing shiny yeah just to give a little appreciation to that [Music] oh is that actually jeff maybe it is jeff it is jeff yep and i think ellie might have uh just lip-synched it for that moment i don't know it was hard to tell what ellie was uh the camera wasn't on him as much and i thought though that he was singing it but i might i guess i was wrong that's funny you know it's funny because now i'm thinking back to the shoot and i'm going oh i wonder if ellie decided if he was going to take over the baseline before if he was going to sing the backgrounds and a lot of times that's something that we'll figure out day of if there's an overlap where either you have sung a background part where you don't usually sing background parts or you're like a bass line like this um where either ellie has sung it or jeff has sung or whoever is not the bass at that moment sings it so a lot of times that's something we're like um hey i know i sang bass on that but do you want to maybe just lip-sync to it today and he was like sure yeah of course that'll make sense yeah it's fun that's fun yeah well it's really cool to know that that that is a thing that regularly happens within the group definitely and let's see anything else here um i think i mostly have it i i was i i'm sure that you have 10 billion different eq's and you put on all of the focal percussion we talked some about that do you want to hear some of it alone yeah yeah i'd be really interested in that and i'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts on how you produce if there's any uh like groupings that you do of different vocal percussion instruments together i think that was your welcome home let's go back a little bit [Music] i love that drumline um can you can you can you do a little bit of it for us right now [Music] yeah i love that one it's so like i never get to do anything like fun and silly to start off with uh it's usually like a build for each song but somehow for this song i got the intro um because it just made sense and it and it stuck and it i don't know i feel like it it's a way to like kind of grab people in like because the drums are such a i don't know how to describe it but they're so um infectious maybe yeah that's a good word i noticed that too in the video i used i was gonna say gimmicky that was my word mine's better it was a real surprise when we started into it i was like whoa it hits you right away because usually you have much like you're talking about like a draw in with sort of a softer approach so that there's like more of a build in range to go with and you don't have yeah you kind of cut out some of the eq or the frequencies at the beginning so you have somewhere to drop and expand to this one just smacked you in the face and i was like whoa and i went back and listened to it a few times but uh it was it's great i like it it was insanely infectious and grabbing and gimmicky [Laughter] can we hear can you actually isolate i think it's like a pitch-bend tom that you do yeah sure [Music] [Music] that's played at half speed so you can kind of pick it apart a little bit better um but yeah that's the [Music] ah really cool yeah they're just like slightly different variations kind of throughout that's fun but what's your what's your favorite fit in here oh man probably i don't know maybe it's the ending [Music] i don't know i just i the ending was so fun and uplifting um and i was like oh we have to go back to how far i'll go because there's 18 reprises in them in the movie so it's like we have to hit one more at the end yeah that yeah i liked that choice too it felt like we knew that it was ending then too i think my favorite part of the song is probably shiny um the drums at least but i'm obviously jeff's part is genius but [Music] a little out of time right there that's okay [Music] like all those little toms i don't know they were just so [Music] um [Music] is [Music] you can hear those fists really happening right there because they're surrounding the melody and there's that big gaping hole because that's where the melody is and i like the way they're coordinating their slide-offs too it's good super in sync it's really fun to listen to that vocal percussion line too and like hear how that added so much in that's awesome when uh when other people are creating their arrangement for you do they beat box as well not typically um they'll they'll have some kind of drum machine or maybe like a loop or maybe a combination of both to kind of lay it out um i think jeff jeff and i are basically the the two main arrangers for the group so when jeff does an arrangement for us that's typically what he'll do or if he has something very specific that he wants me to do he's super good at it so he'll just lay it down that's amazing that's cool yeah yeah uh i think i think that covers most of my uh big questions that i had i have like a off moana question a totally different question that is burning uh i want to know how long did the makeup changes in uh this is halloween tape oh my gosh i've been wondering that for a long time that was a video that took all day and i i definitely saw your review on that and i heard you ask and i went when you were talking about that i went oh god because i i had a flashback back to it and we just sat we had three makeup artists and we just sat in those makeup chairs for like hours in between each thing and it was all very well planned out that was my arrangement but jeff's video which was fun um he had a great vision for it and it truly worked out and everyone loves fat ellie so there's that as the mayor he was awesome he killed that oh my gosh the that makeup it took i'm telling you we started at seven in the morning and probably finished at like 11 p.m wow yeah that was amazing and once you kind of go one step further you can't really go back and do retakes you're right so that's the the shot list was insane for that one it was like an excel spreadsheet from hell wow yeah really a great payoff just saying absolutely we loved it this is such a cool yeah and the little kid is my nephew by the way thank you that was perfect he is so cute but he was he's already like um you know children are difficult to work with with video because i don't know they're here and they're there and he's getting free candy and he's just eating he's on a sugar high and yeah that was a mistake and that was that was tough but we ultimately got it what we needed and he is awesome and that little devilish look that he has in his eye great real but he's awesome his name is jude oh we'll think so thanks dude you you definitely rushed that part yeah it's cool uh well i i feel like i'm definitely gonna have more things that come up at some point um where i'm like oh what about that part of that part but this was such an amazing deep dive into this entire session is there anything else about it that you want to mention no thanks for having me and i can't wait to go see your dive i i really like watching your um analysis um not only for us but for other people and i just i think it's so refreshing to have somebody who thinks the way that you do and talk about music because it's really from a musician's perspective and it's i i love it so thank you thank you yeah well thanks for making the awesome music that we get to really enjoy yeah and i'm sure that other guys would you know probably love to do this at some point too so cool how can i always be more yeah i mean thank you just so much for giving your time and like being willing to actually have us look inside the session with you that's uh it's really open doors it's so awesome to see and i'm sure that everybody's just gonna love this so definitely um to everybody that is uh still here with us please do comment down below if you have other questions um or if you you want to know more about various things and tell us more about um especially tell us what you appreciated about this session today there was any parts that we highlighted where you were like wow i never heard it like that um i'd love to see those comments below as well and everybody please say thank you so much to voice play and tulane for your time thank you thanks uh and uh i will see everybody here soon and uh lane hopefully we'll have you back someday soon as well all right see you soon you

Channel: The Charismatic Voice

Views: 83,109

Keywords: layne stein, a cappella, eli jacobson, geoff castellucci, earl elkins, voice play, rachel potter, layne stein beatbox, layne stein singing, layne stein voiceplay, how to produce a cappella, how to produce vocals, vocal production, a capella production, how to produce a capella, how to produce a song, voiceplay, voiceplay reaction, voiceplay moana, voiceplay disney, moana medley, interview voiceplay, interview layne steind, interview, interview music production

Id: 8KXnB9jWa6I

Length: 65min 37sec (3937 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020