There is nothing more beautiful than the sound.

Right now I am in a hotel in Illinois relaxing and working on music. I am playing a bit with the Center Channel Extractor in Adobe Audition. I like to do this to songs I like since it lets me hear more background vocal flourishes, some guitar and percussion overdubs, and how producers and engineers build layers in hit songs.

The song I am analyzing right now is a great song by Jimmy Eat World called "Let It Happen". I can hear a female voice singing in upper register at the chorus. It reminds me of a song by the Promise Ring where Jim Adkins sang in the same style. Its a well worn signature of their music and gives it drive and personality that makes their music really enjoyable to rock out to.

Here is the Original





Here is the Edited version with just background vocals.

So this is how I gather up ideas and inspiration for creating my own music. I listen to other creators and work my magic with tools I have to listen to what they are doing and maybe I can even figure out how. I used to do this same hack with my old Sony Walkman and the headphone jack and a pair of cans. I would place the headphones plug in halfway and it would either throw the song out of phase or cancel out the center channel.

In this example, I used Auditions Panning and Expanding tool to cut out the vocal, and the FFT filter to isolate the frequencies where I was hearing the female voice.

What are some creative ideas you can come up with based on this example? For me it means I can try experimenting with stretching my voice and tuning it to emulate this background vox, or even find someone whose voice fits well over mine in the mix. This also opens up opportunities to hear different modes of singing harmony, which is always useful. When I sing in the car, 80% of my singing is in harmony with a lead vocal.

email me and let me know if you come up with any ideas: dblackburn@gmail.com