Dealing with lots of "essses" in group vox

[Star Ark]

I'm working on a song with maybe a dozen different vocal takes all playing at once. The final word of one line constantly repeated is "Sunrise" and I'm finding it very hard to get the final esss sound to work in the mix. Up until that point it sounds like a fairly tight vocal sound but this one bit is really bothering me. Is there a common or preferred way of dealing with this that isn't desssers? It isn't the tone it's the timing. I've been trying to edit it by nudging the syllables into place but it has only got me so far. Is this what vocal align the plug in does? Can I sort these sorts of problems with plugins or do I have to re record? Re recording will be a major problem, almost impossible I think. Cheers

 

[Sloan]

Fade out the backing vocals on plosives and esses

 

[sbwakfk1]

If they are relatively close and this is a true group vocal, I would just edit or time stretch until all the "esses" end up in time. As long as you dont have to move them too far, you should be able to accomplish this. You can fade out the esses if you want but if it is at all clear in the mix, you will be able to hear what is going on.

 

[tgs]

Little trick I use sometimes that I picked up from a short interview with some girls who did backing vocals for Britney Spears (must be handled during tracking though): Have the people doing backing vox to skip the consonants. It sounds retarded and people will need to re-learn the lines, but it works great in context. A bit off topic, sorry.

 

[Sloan]

Little trick I use sometimes that I picked up from a short interview with some girls who did backing vocals for Britney Spears (must be handled during tracking though): Have the people doing backing vox to skip the consonants. It sounds retarded and people will need to re-learn the lines, but it works great in context. A bit off topic, sorry.

yes yes yes.
you really only want the meat of the vocal, not the ends

 

[jeid]

I accidently discovered the "don't say the esses" trick when I was recording vocals once.. especially at the end of lines. Nightmare to sort that shit out

 

[Star Ark]

Thanks for the help guys. I faded out a few of the major offenders and it helped quite a lot in this instance. The idea of just not singing the essses in the first place sounds like a great idea too.

 

[crillemannen]

Vocalign to tighten the tracks up, If not you can fade the last word into a reverb going from 0% wet to whatever sounds good. Or use a multiband compressor to tame the highs.

 

[amarshism]

The esses are normally seperated from the core vocal. Just split and line em up.