Vocal effects ,, what is she using??

[ajazzie]

As much as I hate to ask or admit, I am recording a project fo a all girl band, which actually is kinda pleasant on the eyes, except the songs disturb me by going away from the usual I am used to.

Vocal wise, the sound they are after is similar to the effects Britney uses on what seem to be all her songs, more specifically the song Toxic.

Any ideas on the effects she is using?

Sory to ask, dont flame me.

AJ

[thenewnoise]

I would say mainly, it's auto tune. Other than that, I would say a lot of creative eq. Doesn't sound like much else.

[ajazzie]

Thanks for the reply,

What type of thing would be done with autotune??

(Or was that a dig?)

Thanks,

AJ

[travisk]

The effect that they use isn't really an effect. All they do is use multiple vocals (different takes of the same pitch) and over lap them all. sounds like as many as four of five takes per pitch. this is really helpful when the singer doesn't have good voice quality or when you would like the vocal to blend in to the music and not stand out alone. another thing i noticed on that song is that she doesn't seem to sing as much as wisper talk and moan out the words . hope this helps.

[ctmartin]

...and for all that layering, make sure you have Vocalign too.

[RobMacki]

I might try an "eeeeeh" & "uuuuh" track squashed w/ sweet spot eq and maybe a little amp farm on it too.
For that track I'd go for close proximity and give the singer some apple juice between takes.
Maybe even a whisper track (depends on the song).

[songman]

Does anyone really want to copy what B. Spears does?

[Tone]

Dont let's turn into bitter old farts that song is a good effort, best pure pop track for a good while.

[scottgreiner]

I don't really hear "vocal effects" other than layered tracks, autotune, compression(lots) and EQ. As with most artists with a unique and sought after quality, it's the artist. She just sounds that way. Kind of like a porno soundtrack - all that sexual moaning and groaning attitude she puts into the performance.

Love her or hate her, you can't deny she's good at what she does. It's her thing.

(apple juice has a lot of added sugar in it and can make more phlem. A bite of a real apple is better for mouth noise)

[Tone]

On this latest album, she had a specialist vocal producer whose job was to bring out that 'breathy bump and grind' tone on her vox on several of the trax. It's far more about the direction given to hear than the gear. However, the above comments I would also agree with, lots of compression, a bit of autotune but not as hammered as some others do (on the bridge section, I would reckon it's something like 1 left and 1 right tightly tuned and the others across the spread not), lots of high end excitement (choice of mics, pre's, the usual gloss FX and eq) and voc align (or manual cuts) to line up some of the layers. ALso don't forget in this track there is a synth lead (in the same freq range) layered with the lead vox in places. That could have possibly been created with Kantos but however it was done, it adds some nice character.