vocal tracks tips & tricks

[djrez]

Here are some great tips I found in a newsgroup. I love these tricks (for my little bedroom studio, of course). Please add more or elaborate, for everyone. I use an AKG C414 UBLS if anyone has some specific ideas. Or, add your favorite plug-ins and/or settings for great vocal tracks.

Another thread suggested building a little "booth" out of blankets and recording from inside. I used this technique for a radio commercial before. It worked great. - Tony


From a newsgroup:

you need at first a multiband -compressor like waves C4 and of course reverb
and delay effects (also in Waves). Then you need to double the voice softly
by just copy the voice onto several tracks and delay some of them and change
the pitch a little, you can also use a pitch-shifter or harmonizer for that.
another thing is Autotune ( better is Melodyne ) for correcting and gambling
with intonation. Just experiment and LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN. ( Waves Effects
seem to be best for you )

-Wurstsack

-----------------------------------------
Hey

Wurst has some great Ideas, and Waves are really great plugs for
making vocals sound good.

Here's a couple other tricks that might work cool for you too.

Re-sing the choruses (and verses if you like) and use both tracks, it
will thicken the track even more, and the slight differences in
performance will yield a more interesting track.

Autotune is the life saver for artists with the I Can't Stay On Pitch
disease. Another killer Antares tool is the Mic Modeler. This plug
will very convincingly turn your $100 Sm-58 into a U-47 or Manley
Reference Mike.

Bump your vocalist's eq at the 10 K + Range. This brings out the
sparkeling air and breathyness in your voice timbre.

Use a High-pass filter to lose the frequencies below 100 Hz. Unless
you are going for that boomy vocal sound, it usually helps make the
vocal track more intellegible, especially in a busy track.

Finally, a great deal of compression will "squash" the vocal, and make
it sound unrea. Rock and especially pop/dance tracks are very fond of
this effect. This is where Wurst's reccomendation of the Waves Plugs
comes in. The C compressors, or better yet, the Renaissance
compressors rival most outboard gear. What's more, most Waves
installs will include "pre-sets" of some useful settings, leaving you
more time to create, and less time setting up.

Hope this helps
-Pee

[xstatic]

Carefulll if you are manually delaying several copies of tracks. You can end up with some very serious phasing problems. I am a huge fan however of having a singer double and even triple their own vocal lines. A very tight double can sound like an incredible single track, but that is not always why I have them do it. For one, autotune is not the be all end all of bad pitch. Nothing will replace a well sung first track. The other reason I like having a double, is that I really like using doubles just to reinforce certain words sometimes, and son=metimes even whole passages. You can use the double to over compress one voice, and then reinsert some dynamics to the track with the double. Another obvious advantage of a physically redone double is the obvious advantage of being able to piece the two tracks together into one amazing track.

One other wierd vocal effect that I am fond of, is recoring certain vocal parts into the back of a large diaphragm mic instead of the front. It adds an eerie phased presence to the whole vocal track. Another thing I like to do occasionally is run a backing vocal panned off to one side a little and then run it through an instrument plug in such as the Hammond B4 plug in and pan the hammond sound to the other side a little. Creates an almost surreal backround vox sound out of one voice. Have fun:)

[djrez]

"You can use the double to over compress one voice, and then reinsert some dynamics to the track with the double."

Could you explain what you mean by that? How do you make the double track "over compress" the first one?

Then, what do you mean reinsert some dynamics with the double? Use another instance of it, on top of the doubled track somehow?

Thanks,
Tony

[xstatic]

First you create a digital duplicate of the original voice. You can then highly compress the first track and make that your main track. Then you can use the second track also with no compression, but at a lighter volume. If done properly this can add some dynamics back to the track because when the compressor is clamping down on the first track, the double won't be being compressed and will give the impression of dynamics without losing the power and smoothness of the compressed lead. You can also do this the other way around and use the compression with a very high ratio on the second voice and create vocal effects. Or do it the first way and fade the double track in and out where you want more power.

[guitarjoe]

Very cool trick - try it on stereo sampled drum loops - It really fills out the sound.