I have been singing advertising jingles for over 20 years and there is one type of jingle I love to record more than any other… I’m talking about a cappella barbershop style jingles – jingles made up of just vocals without musical instrumentation and full of rich double tracking and lovely close harmonies.
To produce them well takes quite some time and patience in the studio to get everything recorded spot on, but these days it’s certainly easier with the help you can get from things like Logic Pro’s flex time and flex pitch.
Here’s a recent example of an a cappella jingle – ok there is a tiny bit of electric piano but it’s predominately made up of about 14 tracks of vocals. Have a listen…
Or how about an a cappella jingle for a pine shop…
If you’re interested in having a jingle recorded for your business or client, you can contact Jono on 07738 470011 – or use the contact form here.
I’ve spent the past 20 years singing jingles for radio and TV adverts. Part of the trick to getting that rich full sound is to stack the same vocal line over and over. It’s often called ‘double tracking’ , and although you need to match the previous recording pretty darn close – those tiny differences in performance create that thick creamy sound.
A jingle can often be sung by just one singer, but in the ‘vocal stack’ there might be three or more lead vocals, and then each harmony line would be at least double tracked – so pretty soon you can have a stack of easily 8 or 9 tracks – sometimes many more.
For me the best double tracker ever was Karen Carpenter. So flawlessly done you can hardly tell the lead vocal is ‘multi-tracked.’
As for recording technique when you’re stacking vocals, it can really help to close one ear off with your finger to make it easier to hear yourself whilst at the same time hearing the previous take on the other side of the headphones. Also stepping gradually further from the mic as you double track a vocal line, can help create a sense of space and texture. See the video of Michael Jackson working with Quincy Jones for an inspiring demonstration.
How to download quality British production music for free. No sync fees, no MCPS licences required.
Sounds Visual Music offer free production music and sound effects to editors and producers working on broadcast productions. The library is a BBC approved music production library for BBC in-house editors and producers, and offers a nice choice of quality British production music all pre-cleared for use on broadcast productions. No sync fees are required, no MCPS or PPL licences are needed. You need to join the site as a member, and once approved you will be able to access the library and download WAV files of the music. Apply here – free.
Below is a screenshot from a section of the Sounds Visual Music Library.
A section of the Sounds Visual Music Production Music Library
The company also offer a service whereby if you let them know the type of programme you are working on and the sort of music tracks you are looking for they will prepare a selection of music for you to audition. To find out more contact Sounds Visual Music here.
Just before Christmas 2014, at the last minute, Equity published a new rate card for voiceover rates for radio commercials, in-store commercials and Spotify. This didn’t give much time to implement the suggested increase without warning so I continued charging the old rates during January. From February 2015 these new rates apply and you can see all the details below:
Last year I started working as a Logic Trainer for MacProVideo. My first explainer video course comprised 27 videos on recording, editing and producing voiceovers in Logic Pro.
Recording the video with screenflow Producing the course involved getting pretty familiar with a screen recording software package called ‘Screenflow’, which enables you to produce incredibly polished and professional explainer videos by firstly recording your screen plus audio in real time, and then by allowing you to manipulate and edit the recorded video, add more audio, more video, zoom in, add captions, pictures, sound effects – in fact you can do pretty much anything to turn your plain old screen recording into an engaging and informative explainer video. It’s an amazing piece of software. Get a free trial of Screenflow here.
Using Screenflow to record an explainer video about Logic Pro
Voiceover Workflow
My workflow for recording the voiceovers for the course was to record the screencast with Screenflow BUT at the same time record the voiceover into Logic. The voice recordings were made with a Neumann u87 microphone powered by a RME Fireface 400.
Then once finished I would be able to add a little compression and EQ and edit the voiceover quickly and easily in Logic (maintaining the timing references). Once completed I could then import the audio file into Screenflow, and I would have a nicely edited, processed & de-breathed voiceover all ready to work with.
Get in touch if you would like to have a professionally recorded voiceover for your screencast or a promotional screencast or explainer video produced for your business.
I have been recording, editing and producing voiceovers for nearly 25 years, and although I worked on the Windows platform for many years this post is aimed at the Apple Mac user, and looks at some of my go-to software for recording voiceovers.
I use Apple’s Logic Pro as my main DAW to record voiceovers, edit voiceovers, mix and produce voiceovers and master the finished voice recordings out to audio files. (wav, mp3 etc).
Working to Picture in Logic Pro X
Because I also work as a professional composer writing music for TV, Logic Pro is an obvious choice for me because of it’s primary focus on music production.
However although using Logic Pro just for recording voiceovers might be considered overkill, bear in mind Logic is very competitive on price – just £139.99 from the Apple App Store – moreover the audio editor is excellent, the workflow super fast, the audio processing effects are first class, and you can work to picture (handy for tv commercials and programmes) and get creative with the huge library of free sound effects and royalty free music it ships with.
Also there is widespread support for learning Logic – there’s even a Mac Pro Video course dedicated to recording voiceovers in Logic Pro.
‘Audacity® is free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds.’ If you are looking for a free DAW to record voiceovers then Audacity is a brilliant option. It’s extremely handy for saving audio to a variety of lesser known audio-file types; for example things like creating U-Law CCITT files for phone systems.
If you’ve ever had a load of audio files (or any type of file) which need the file name changing, ‘Name Mangler from Many Tricks’ is a really useful application. You can add text, remove text, add sequential numbers etc.. the possibilities are endless and the time saved…much appreciated.
When I first started recording and editing voiceovers back in the very early 1990s it was on a 4 track cassette deck, comping together voiceover and singing parts for a book about learning to sing. After that frustrating experience I purchased a 2 track 1/4″ Tascam 32 reel to reel recorder, a chinagraph pencil, editing block and a stash of razor blades.
Late 1980s with a Korg M1 keyboard, Tascam 32 1/4″ reel to reel, a Yamaha 4 track cassette multitracker and a Seck mixing desk.
To enable the mixing of music and effects with voiceovers I added another tape machine, this time a Tascam TSR8 8 track multrtracker using 1/2″ tape, a fantastic workhorse on which I mixed hundreds and hundreds of radio and TV ads, which were mastered out onto the 2 channel Tascam 32.
Going digital…with SADiE
In November 1993 a friend from GWR radio in Bristol drove over to my studio in Devizes with the latest in digital audio editing…it went by the intriguing name of SADiE. SADiE was cutting edge digital audio technology in the form of editing software and audio hardware manufactured by British company Studio Audio in Cambridge. Having set up the PC host computer in the studio and connected the chunky breakout cables, I was given a whirlwind tour of what it could do and well…it was amazing. Never had I seen a digital editor so powerful, fast and accurate. I knew straight away I had to have one – the only hurdle being the price – a mere £7,073.50!
A SADiE 24/96 system with balanced breakout box, CD writer, exabyte backup tape drive and 2 x scisi removable drives
Being able to chop voiceovers and audio up, copy, paste, refine more and move edits around endlessly without having to worry about quality issues or slicing the end of your finger off in the edit, was infectious. It would open up new tantalising possibilities with sound production and save masses of time. The BBC had already installed several SADiE workstations for radio production and I was hooked.
These days we take the flexibility of digital editing for granted and now could easily (well sort of…) perform those same editing tasks I was doing on SADiE back in 1993 on an iPhone App, on the Tube, with a double macchiato in our free hand. How times have changed…
At the time it felt as though SADiE was miles ahead in the world of audio editing, and I stayed with it as my my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for many years adding an 8 track version, the 24/96 in 1995. After using Cool Edit for a while, which became the hugely successful Adobe Audition, I settled on Apple’s Logic Pro, much because it was my DAW of choice for music production and it made sense to stick to one application. Also the audio editing and picture sync on Logic are excellent and the workflow is extremely fast.
If you would like to record and edit voiceovers on Logic Pro…there’s a very good video course for doing just that…
How to record and edit voiceovers in Logic Pro. MacProVideo Course
Update as of 2022: I am now mostly using Reaper for voiceover editing. Whilst Logic is a great DAW, Reaper is faster for dialogue editing. Voiceover course on Reaper coming soon.
