"Glee"... how do they effect produce the vocals?

[cboyer1951]

Forgive me if this is the incorrect forum, but I couldn't locate one for general production help.

What is the technique made up of for the effects they use 'heavily' on vocals in the t.v. series "Glee"?

To me, it is a horrible effect in the end run. You can't really hear they natural voice because their vocal is over produced. Are these examples of over compression alone? Or what? If I can have some help in establishing what the probable components are then I can probably isolate the single effects and ensure that I don't over produce on those particular ones.

I'm really, really sorry if someone here is the production engineer who creates these. Well, I'm glad for you, you have a good paying day job! :) Sorry if you take it personally, you shouldn't, it's all criticism and personal taste as in all of the arts.

Thanks for any replies and guesses.

Charles

[nst7]

The most obvious one is heavy use of Autotune. I think some of those kids need it more than others.

[ondruspat]

Yep, that show is a great example of the glorious overuse of vocal tuning!! Between that and all those Disney teen pop stars...

It would be interesting to know which vocal tuning programs are used though (probably all of them!!!!).

[cboyer1951]

Vocal programs, ... ahhh vocalign, and other vocal programs, antares avox, waves vocal bundle, some part vocoder too? Ahhh, got cha.

Also this could be done with sidechaining into compression, only letting the heavy compression hit the high range for instance, things like that also?

Wanting to learn here, so thanks for the suggestions.

Charles

[cboyer1951]

Ok

I just did a quick session with midi import of bass, rythym, lead and drums, and I laid a quick vocal track that I made up in the moment. ("learning something, something, something, ... learning something, something to growwwwww") grins.

I routed the vocal track to an aux1 track with EQ/high pass, low cut

Then a second rout of that aux1 track out through aux2 track that had ExpGate, D-Verb and short Delay, out to vocal track 2.

Then a third aux3 with bass only and treble cut off with Air Chorus and ExpGate3 on the aux3, and out to another vocal 3 track.

Then I played all 3 vocal tracks together and I can get the over processed sound by varying the gain of the three vocal audio tracks.

Ah-hahhhh. :)

-Charles