I’ve had issues with unisons in all my vocal arrangements. There’s a squeal or phasing sound whenever voices sing in unison. It’s never an issue with harmonies, however. Anyone have this issue or know how to fix it? It’s frustrating telling your musicians that the track has glitches in it.
I should note that I’m using all HALion Sonic (in the box) voice samples.
Welcome to the forum, @cmacgillivray. Is the squealing sound reproduced when you export audio from your project? If so, can you export an MP3 and attach it here, so we can hear what you’re hearing?
Sure. Here’s an example of a track that was exported today. Listen at 00:14 and 00:32, for example. It happens many more times in the track, but only every during unisons. I have other tracks in which it happens the same way.
![Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her (excerpt)|audio]
(upload://IUbWHePzHA3MoouBP2VyDqSGTQ.mp3)
Hope you can access this. If not I can maybe create a YouTube link?
Hi @cmacgillivray, your mp3 was not loaded correctly. Can you try again?
It would also be interesting to have the Dorico file, to check the audio directly in it. Can you load an excerpt?
It sounds like you are using identical samples in some or perhaps all of your vocal parts. Unison notes in different parts that are written to play simultaneously do not trigger/start at exactly the same time in the player. A slight difference in the start of identical samples will give the effect you hear. A test would be to start and hold a note in one part, then start a note with the same pitch in another part at a later time. If the samples are recorded from actual singers, the correlation between them after a time delay will be virtually nil, and this effect should go away.
Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her.dorico (1.1 MB)
Will definitely try this now. Stand by!
Wild Mountain Thyme.dorico (1002.4 KB)
Same issue in bar 10 of this piece
So, I tried the test as you suggested. I created a file with 2 identical tenor singing parts and had the first one hold a note for 4 bars and second start singing and sustaining the same note on the second bar. No issues at all. However, when I lined them up and had them start at the same time, it didn’t trigger the issue that I’ve been having, strangely…
I can’t hear any problem, I’m afraid, Ciarán, but I do have a suggestion for you: in Wild Mountain Thyme I think the rhythm on “lassie” looks better if you set this option on the Note Grouping page of Notation Options:
For the playback issue, perhaps try assigning different sounds? When I’m working on choral/vocal pieces, I tend to use woodwind sounds rather than the vocal sounds, for their different timbres.
You can’t hear a little squeal on bar 10 of Wild Mountain Thyme? That’s so strange. I hear it even when I export the audio and listen on iTunes. It’s more prominent in Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her, however.
I’ve made the change as you suggested to the notation. Good catch.
