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Julieann Rohde
In my a capella group in college, I did some arranging and picking "vocables" as we called them, was a frequently overlooked (by me) detail. I think we mostly tried to mimic the instruments that were being arranged, for instance distorted guitar could be "wah" or "bow", bass was frequently "dum", etc.
In hindsight though, those syllables would rarely sound cohesive or good together and sometimes they could contribute to pitch being perceived differently ("ee" can sound higher in pitch than "uh" even if they're the same note because of the different balance of overtones).
Because of this challenge, some other ideas for what to do might be using words that everyone sang together or all on one syllable. These blend well, but words may distract from the main singer, so space them out (a word every whole note or half note). All singing "ah" or another pure vowel sounds very choral and pretty, but that may or may not be the effect you're going for.
My biggest piece of advice would be to listen to professional arrangements (maybe King's Singers or Swingle Singers) or very high quality collegiate recordings (like those on the BOCA or CASA albums) for ideas and to listen for what sounds best to your ear.
No experience with that type of composing myself, but each syllable has up to two parts: the vowel and the consonant. In general, the more open the vowel and the more percussive the consonant, the louder the effect will be, e.g. moo moo moo will be much less dramatic than da da da. Voiced consonants will also be more noticeable than their unvoiced counterparts, e.g. ka ka ka is quieter than ga ga ga.
I'm assuming your question is about arranging the non leading voice parts. If you don't know even where to start I suggest a 4 part harmony homophonic approach in the classic way. Whole volumes have been written on this subject only, but a simple basic approach is not so hard if you know your way around basic chords and scales.
If the chord is a tetrachord (normally in classic harmony, a seventh chord) and the additional note (normally a 7th above the chord root) is not the lead melody note, discard the 5th degree ("3rd note") of the chord and insert the additional 7th degree note instead.
In the above process one should look for voice leading, i.e., the assignment of notes to the different voices is such that each voice has minimum movement (sometimes reamining in the same note) between steps of the melody.
Now these simple principles are the tip of the iceberg, they will not overcome all possible harmonization situations that you may encounter and will not get you very far in terms of variety and creativity. But they may suffice to get you started and achieve some interesting results on your own (what your band mates may think of it, that's another matter :-)
You may want to go somewhere where no one can hear you before doing this. But you may have noticed that it feels like you're going back and forth along a spectrum, from the deep and wide "muu" sounds up to the tight and narrow "iiiiii" sounds, and back down again. This is because the vowel spectrum is changing your resonating cavities to change the volume of the overtones (aka partials, harmonics) relative to the fundamental frequency of your voice.
The same harmonics are present in everyone's voices, but their relative volume is what allows one to tell vowels apart, and vice versa. The deep "u" or "ooo" sound has quieter high partials when compared to a more nasal "ah" or "eeeee" sound, which has louder high frequency content. But enough of the acoustic theory and phonetics; how does one use background syllables?
When I arrange, as far as vowels go, I like to use the deeper syllables (like "ooh", "oh", or humming as well) for moments where the background vocals should be in the background, and when the background vocals need to momentarily jump into the foreground of the arrangement, that's the time to go for the bright and high-energy "oh", "whoa", "ah", and other syllables. If you use energetic syllables during a moment where the background vocals aren't being highlighted, you run the risk of stepping on the soloist's toes and muddying up the sound. If you use laid-back syllables when the background parts are doing something interesting, your arrangement may feel a bit dimmer than you want it to feel.
Consonants are also important. "Wa" and "doot" feel very different from "bap" or "hoo". There are a lot of different consonants that can be used in singing background parts, and you'll have to play around and see what's most comfortable for you and what sounds best. And don't be afraid to give the bass singer different syllables than the rest of the group! In fact, they may prefer to come up with their own syllables, so they may know better than you do what the song needs in their part's syllables.
Often, your choice of background syllable will be limited by the lyrics of the song. If the soloist is holding out a particular vowel, you may want to match that in your background parts. As any choir director will tell you, vowel blending is really important, so pay attention to how the background parts and regular lyrics interact. And hey, none of this matters when your background parts have their own specific lyrics, like echoing the soloist, obviously. If you don't already do this, try having the background parts sing some real words at times for some interest. It's a great way to get the background into the foreground, and it also keeps your background singers happier and more invested in the piece, I find - who wants to spend two and a half minutes just saying "doo"?
If you haven't seen it already, I recommend giving this video by Deke Sharon a run. He's done a lot of really big-time acapella arranging, and I found his video to be helpful to me back when I was asking myself the same question you are.
Hear me out! The acapella culture at 5C is exciting, supportive, welcoming, and a weirdly great getting-to-know-you activity. Here are some details on the different acapella groups that you can join at the 5Cs!
The After School Specials, also known by their slightly less polite acronym, are a fun-loving and very competitive acapella group. The After School Specials have released several EPs of their recorded songs, and often go to acapella competitions such as the ICCAs (which they have won in the past!). Their color is green, so be sure to look out for their signature appearances!
The Claremont Shades are another one of the most iconic groups at the 5Cs, having a cool and elusive vibe in comparison to the other acapella groups. The Claremont Shades are the oldest coed acapella group at the 5Cs, and have numerous albums they have published, and host SCAMfest each year, the acapella festival hosted at our colleges. Their color is maroon, so watch out for them!
One Night Stanza is a recently renamed group that has an incredibly friendly and sweet atmosphere. They focus on performing crowd-pleasing numbers, often featuring the most popular songs of the year in their performances. They are one of the newer acapella groups. Their colors are pink and denim!
Midnight Echo is another crowd-pleasing acapella group, and their group most often focuses on arranging musical theatre and Disney numbers. Midnight Echo has a very energetic and welcoming vibe that makes it easy to get to know them! Their colors are grayscale, most often white and black!
It looks like the only way I could figure this out was to use a "sample" track and just trigger the sample without recording a midi note (in a pattern). Then the track plays until its over. However you cannot "stop" the track from playing or mute it (you have to actually use the mixer to turn down the audio until it has no more audible volume).
I would LOVE to be able to use the actual audio track so I can take advantage of the time stretching and just "trigger" it to start playing. However doesn't look like its possible. Is there a way to put it into a clip then "trigger" the clip to start or something like that?
Im actually really surprised that I couldn't find any answers to this. It seems like most of the internet isn't using Maschine + standalone for performance and def not using it with long form audio (full songs or acapellas). Im guessing because it seems to barf after only a few tracks or efx in standalone mode lol.
you can mute the track, you just have to set it to audio mute, standard is midi mute within maschine software. Audio track will not work the way you want, audio will just play and you can mute or midi gate it. Audio mute is under "track setting\output\audio".
No prob. It's as 6xes said, it's tricky because there's really no specific function designed for it, and you will also need to prepare the acapella, like for example making sure it starts on the downbeat, this usually requires external editing.
If your project is simple, you can work around it, for example, if you can work with having all Sections having the same length then you can use a Clip with an Audio-Plug to hold the acapella and just set up a bunch of temporary Sections over it, this means working in sort of a linear way:
As long as you always replace Sections instead of inserting new ones you should be fine, but if you change the length then it will split the Clip. Using the "Unique" function will be helpful as stuff like Section "Duplicate" also breaks up the Clip.
Another option is to split your acapella into smaller bits, like chorus, bridge, verse1-A, verse1-B, verse1-C, etc... so they fit inside your Scenes/Sections using the sampler or in a Group with a bunch of Audio Modules. There's other ways but it really depends a lot on how you build up your projects.
I have a hand full of options for using "other equipment" to run acapellas, but so far none of the equipment I want to "include" as I was hoping Maschine plus would provide a better solution. Meaning, I dont want to include 1 piece of gear just to do one simple thing; but that may end up being what I have to do in the end :(
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