Hey People Hope you all well and fine!!

Today i come with kind of a weird Question,

Well sometimes when you hear a Vocals in a track you hear some kinda of Effect that i really don't know what is it ? maybe Chorus, Maybe some kind of light Flanger, i really really can't tell, specially with E.D.M Tracks, or Even Rock & sometimes Hip Hop/Rap...

So today i'm asking you what do you usually use on your vocals what FX that you add to make your Vocals Sounds Magical that you don't usually tell people you do, because sometimes Mix engineer don't tell or don't want to share their own Secrets...

so if you are Kind enough to share what do you use on your Vocals, that would be Great!

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i'm Also Thinking of Switching to Reaper for Record, Mix & Mastering Purposes, i'm posting this just to avoid making another thread, so if possible put me in the right direction!

Thanks!

 

Since most of the stuff I do is either pop, rock or country it varies. It starts with a well recorded vocal, the right mic, no clipping, gain staging, etc. Then every vocal will get varying amounts of compression and eq to make it sit in the mix. After that it depends on the song. Some vocal tracks are sent to up to 3 reverb auxes and up to 3 delay auxes...really depends on the song. Most country stuff still gets a little verb and delay but you really don't notice it until you take it away. For small special effects parts, anything goes. Filters, flangers, phasers etc. For most of my mixes less is more when it comes to effect but for you it will depend on the song and genre.

 

On certain rap/pop projects my favorite thing to do is:

- Keep the main vocal dry but send a small amount to the reverb and delay busses just for a more ' live ' feel.
- Pan a 2nd and 3rd take hard left and right --> Mix them to a relative level --> Send to a stereo bus and add some sort of modulation.

The trick is to not allow the stereo bus to become to noticeable, if done properly you can add some nice colors to a dull vocal sound.
Also try tweaking the EQ to emphasis the effect where needed.

It's easy to go overboard though so watch out, remember to reference your mix in mono to make sure you're not creating a problem that was never there.

 

Last edited: Jan 19, 2016

Thank you for these usefull tips and tricks, just to clarify...
under stereo spreading
.3 = duplicate vocal, 1 pan left 1 pan right (20-35%)?
.4 = chorus on the bus? so not as send(Aux effect)?

 

Great thread... always interested to hear peoples different opinions, techniques and workflows for vocals.

 

If you have only 2 tracks, I was saying pan 1 left and 1 right, but instead of panning hard left and right, try panning them 20% to 35% left the same on the right. So Left 20 to 35%, and Right 20 to 35%. You choose how much you want to pan, but the point is to try not panning 100%, so that we can use the mid-side widening and keep the mono-compatibility stronger, while having something that is equally as wide as full 100% left/right, and maybe even seemingly wider.

Chorus effects are typically Aux effects, but if they have a dry-wet function, I'm sure some utilize the plugs directly on tracks and busses, although I don't go the 'direct' route with choruses. I prefer to use them as aux effects.

 

I share a lot of these, but of course it's material related. Here is one for Krizz Kaliko type rap-singing-vocals:

prerequisite requirements:

• moderate volume on all 3 or 5 busses. After recording, leveling only finds place after the plugin chain before it's grouped. Preferably with the fader (yeah fu protools)
• this is for an in the box only situation, of-course low-cutting and compression can be applied beforehand.
• hardware tube-ing helps a lot, but avoid crisp.
• in-tune vocals, especially the lead. Slow re-tuning could be applied there, but that is going to sound fake pretty fast
• A strong dynamic male voice, but one as good as the man himself might be to much to ask

1. Auto tune on the double recorded track busses (in the good key ofc) and pan them 100% (delay will fix this later.)
   
2. Next make sure you cut the low end on every bus after auto-tune, Like u might be used too, I prefer a ssl (typeE?) low-cut, Because not to much thought has to go into the tilt/q and I can just swipe it up..
3. Top all buses with mild ratio, fast releasing 1176 style compression
   
4. This is a good point to turn down all the faders if you haven't already done that, till they hide behind/blend with the lead
   
5. After that insert pitch-proof (pitcher which maintains transients) -12 with minimal % mix on the lead bus. (also put it in the correct key for what it's worth)
   
6. Now group them all together, insert a delay, this can be a short one 30- 60 ms or a long one (1/4 or 1/8) or you could stack both. just make sure u cut a lot of low and high freq and set it to ping pong or inv stereo and mix them in a little lower then u might want to because after that we:
7. add a LA-2A type compressor. Which makes sure our doubles/adlips blend a little more, and it ducks the delay so it only pops up on the empty spots (let the gr meter work)
8. add a chorus and or some reverb

Good luck

I actually use chorus/eventide style plugin right on the bus, audio discord is one that I like a lot.
Just recently I'm trying the h3000 plugin. Since it introduces some plugin delay it becomes quite the hassle on a aux in fl studio.
so I use it straight on the bus and use its internal mix knob.

 

Try this. Make a return track. Put a reverb on it, or a delay, followed by a flanger effect. Hours of fun right there and some really awesome or subtle effects you could do with this. Creating chains as sends/returns can be one of the best things you can do, works great on just about anything including vocals.

 

indeed good stuff.. nowhere else to have this knowledge just pouring out.. makes my day.. almost every day...

@bigwords @ptpatty and @Nimbuss

 

Eventide 910! Aphex Aural Exciter, I have been using the hardware since the early 80's, The software works and sounds like the original. Use short delay times and let the pitch bounce between 99, 100, 101. You have herd this double effect on many recordings. This is my first step then I apply reverbs rolling off the highs and lows with filters Leaving 600 to 1.5 K Hz. This is just where I begin. Add the Exciter to add top end sheen to the original Vocal.

 

Hello in this thread I talk everything including vocals mixing and vocal mics

https://audiosex.pro/threads/all-kind-of-rock-mix-and-master-tutorial.22958/

for what concerns the recording strip channel... it depends of course... use what you ve got, don t use compressors if you don t have enough time or skills, and proper gain. Check the analog and digital scales.

My fav vocal line is:

Neumann U87ai
Universal Audio 6176 (valve pre, FET 1176LN COMPRESSOR (slow attack, fast release, up to 15 DB of GR)
EMI Curve Bender pre LIMITER eq (negative eq)
EMI Zener Limiter (middle attack, fast release, 4-5 DB of gain reduction)
EMI Curve Bender post Limiter eq (push it!)

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2016

I often record 3 mics at the same time, to have more colors for doubled vocals

and I put basstraps on the rear to low cut the mic and avoid rear resonances

 

try to blend a tubes mic with a transistor pre or viceversa FET mic and tubes pre

tubes+tubes it gets too "tuby" they say

 

@bigwords

What about a video tutorial? It could be useful... (the thread "Show me How2Make" could 'host' it).

 

doesn't that induce all kinds of phase issues?

 

check the tutorial in the link please to further infos

anyway I control the phase in the Vox Bus, some take to find the right position then let s go

the basstraps on the rear do only a good effect
you can see the same tools and technique in Recording Vocals... Groove3 I guess

 

Last edited: Jan 19, 2016

I ALWAYS use 3 vocal lines for the main vocals, one center, 2 panned hard
and many takes tracks for choirs if needed

mid-side tools introduce way more artifacts, especially if you put one on vocals, one on guitars, drums then one on the final master you can say bye bye to the real stereo field. I use an analog summing mixer with pan and true mono to do that, a lot of dual mono tracks for guitars, synths and vocals, and Waves S1 on drums, vocals, guitar buss more or less. I prefer to have control of the stereo field this way.

 

thanx for asking!

 

I do that a lot too. But when I do, I track it in 3 times. problem is that 3 mics at almost the same position is surely going to introduce some phase Issues (at least it did for me.)

these phase issues were very subtle and surfaced late in the mixing stage, so that later on I would regret it doing it that way

I agree with that. Usually I tend to stay away from mid/side eq or stereo enhancers on busses with material where people have a real live expectation with. I rather use Left right eqing instead of mid side