Professional Vocals for Electronic Music - Free Tutorial

― Preface ―

There are few of us who make electronic music with complete vocals other than a few downloaded files.
It's a matter of taste, but also of necessity.

My label, for example, produces underground, pro, emerging, and experimental artists, but we also have to make a minimum number of hits each year. Otherwise, you make music for passion, but you need a mother to support you: it's a waste of time, which I no longer have. On the contrary, I invest heavily in equipment, production, training, and the selection of new talent: I don't stop until my annual expenses are covered.

As long as your parents support you, you can even consider wasting your time and not even getting the audience you hoped for.

If music is your job, you have to rack up sales, streams, vinyl, and dates.
Sung and/or melodic tracks, regardless of genre, sell more easily, so I commit to producing a minimum number of them to make money.

A record that perhaps features the coolest experimental frequencies created by man, however, is NOT. It needs to be understood, and sound design isn't for everyone, just like sensitivity to color or the perception of sound and flavor.

Today I'm talking to you about electronics merging with classical music, when extreme technical demands can become incredibly simple operations, a workflow for editing professional vocals.

The first take will be terrible. By the third, you'll have created a chart-topping song.

If you sing or someone else sings for you, all you need is a microphone connected to your DAW.
If you want to do a remix, the situation is more complicated due to legal issues.

A. An artist isn't necessarily going to let you remix their song, and it would be really easy if some random guy released a Queen remix. You can ask the rights holders for permission. If a major label responds, they can charge you thousands of euros just to use a famous name.

B. You, an unknown, are devaluing their repertoire. They, now famous, don't need your music: you're penalizing them if you release crap and sign it as Freddy Mercury.

C. The legal solution is called a cover. Just don't use the original material, let alone the artist's name, and then pay a mechanical license, ranging from 10 to 100 euros maximum: today we don't even pay that, so be careful. Either you sing the song again or you change the timbre of your voice so that it sounds like a different person, like I do.

Your song won't be called

John Lennon - Imagine [Your Name Remix]

You'll produce it as

Your Name - Imagine,

filling in any metadata crediting the composer, writer, and producer of the original album.

Unless you're provided with stems, you'll need to use software to rip the vocals.

There are many programs that extract audio from a song, and many even work online.
I use izotope RX, which is by far the best program I've ever used.

https://www.izotope.com/en/products/rx.html

I had a thing about remixing Show - Informer. Only old physical copies exist. So I bought a remix on Bandcamp, which is of decent quality.

You can find the feature at Music Rebalance > Acapella

This is the audio I managed to extract: the entire song. You can listen to a preview.

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1. Access and Select the Instrument

Choose the Instrument: The main option for changing the timbre is AI Voice Conversion or, if you want to create a voice from scratch with specific parameters, the Voice Designer.

2. Choose the AI Voice Model

Browse the Voice Library: Kits.AI offers a vast library of AI voice models (often royalty-free) that you can use to transform your voice.

Select the Desired Timbre: Choose the voice model that has the timbre (pitch, intonation, style) you want to apply to your recording (e.g., a "male rock" or "female pop" voice, etc.).

3. Upload and Convert Audio

Upload Your Voice: Upload an audio file (e.g., your vocal track) that you want to convert. You can also record directly from the platform.

Helpful Tip: For best results, your vocal track should be clean (acapella, without background music), without effects (such as reverb or delay), and in mono.

Configure Settings (Optional): You can adjust parameters such as:

Conversion Strength: How much the AI vocal will affect the original audio.

Pitch: Adjust the pitch to better match the model or song.

Other advanced settings (filters, noise reduction, etc.) to refine the result.

Start Conversion: Click the button to convert the audio. The AI will process your track, applying the characteristics of the chosen vocal model.

4. Review and Download

Listen to the Result: Once the conversion is complete, play the audio to check if the timbre has been changed as desired.

Download: If you're satisfied, you can download the new converted vocal track.

Other Important Features

Custom Voice Creation: If you don't find a model you like, Kits.AI also allows you to train an AI model with your own vocal data (vocal cloning) or create a custom voice with the Voice Designer (adjusting attributes like gender, pitch, power, etc.).

AI Harmonies: You can also use the tool to generate vocal harmonies based on the converted track.

I recommend visiting the official Kits.AI website and watching the video tutorials to see the process in action, as the interface and features may evolve over time.

Be careful, they want 30 euros a month to let you download files... and I filled my fridge with that cash.

Open an account with any Google profile. Use a virtual disposable account to sign up for the trial.

But they'll insist that without 30 bags you can't download: at this point I opened Audacity and rendered the PC audio.

On a Mac, you can do it with Quicktime, also free. I downloaded my vocal, sung by an Afro-American woman, pop, with a warm timbre.

All in all, besides completely changing my vocal timbre, it also repaired it.

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WARPING

I'm loading my new audio into Ableton
Warping a vocal requires a lot of attention to keep it in time, but you can do it too.

MIDI ARRANGEMENT

I want my singer to follow my MIDI arrangement. This channel will be muted.
Load an Ableton utility called External Instruments: it will act as a bridge, sending the score to any other audio channel. In our case, obviously, the vocal.
Using External Instruments, also select any plugin that should receive the MIDI input.

VOCODERS OR AUTOTUNES

Today I used Antares' Autodist, one of my favorites. Remember to tell it to wait for MIDI inputs, which will be your newly created score.

Other excellent plugins, with different sounds, are:

I'll leave you with a minute's preview of the album, mixed just today. I'm pressing it on vinyl this 2026, and it will also be released on the standard digital distribution, without paying royalties or asking for permission. Worst case scenario, if the original is credited as the source, I'll pay the mechanical license. ;)

DDOS ATTACK - INFORMER [ PREVIEW ]

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For phase control, not only on vocals, but also on sidechain copies on various tracks and buses.

NoiseWorks:
Dyn Assist

https://noiseworksaudio.com/products/dynassist/

The Fastest Way to Edit Vocals & Dialogue

Levels the gain over your entire vocals
Detects breaths and sibilances and shows them at a glance
Removes unwanted pauses with the content-aware Vox Gate
Seamless integration with ARA and no latency

For dynamic mixing of vocal channels, keeping the LUFS level at a minimum, improving dynamics and equalization with very few steps.

Master the Mix: ì
Fuser

https://www.masteringthemix.com/products/fuser

Layers fighting for space can bury your kick, crowd your vocals, and muddy your mix. FUSER finds and fixes frequency clashes fast, so every element sounds clear, balanced, and professional.

Professional Vocals for Electronic Music - Free Tutorial

― Preface ―

BASICS

SHOULD WE CHANGE THE SINGER? LET'S TRY A.I.

NOW LET'S GET SERIOUS: HERE WE MAKE THE DIFFERENCE

WARPING

MIDI ARRANGEMENT

VOCODERS OR AUTOTUNES

Premaster Tips: Recommended Plugins

NoiseWorks:Dyn Assist

Master the Mix: ìFuser

NoiseWorks:
Dyn Assist

Master the Mix: ì
Fuser