What's on this vocal please anyone

[Raoul23]

Originally Posted by Carl Kolchak

I'm not hearing anything particularly wide, or out of the ordinary.

There is a lead vocal, with a mostly 2 part harmony, and some double tracking (any where from 4 to 10 vocal tracks).

They're all very tight in terms of timing, tuned, and compressed. Additionally, there may be some exciting / high frequency parallel compression going on with the highest harmony part.

Maybe its the harmony that is making the vocals sound so good to me.

You you have a Lead voxs then high harmony and double track the harmony/lead vox????

When ever I try high harmonies they just don't work like this they sound very out of place not as subtle and effective like this :)

[Southsidemusic]

Hey Raoul

When we work and want that "Thick wide" vocals we do about 6 takes. Pan one track left and one track right. Bus those two tracks to an aux. Them we do the same with the other takes in pairs and we eq and compress differently on all of them. Then copy the lead aux and run it thru Melodyne Edit and also put some H3000 doubler effect on the other two auxes. Usually after we fiddled around with all 3 auxes and when we like the phatness we do one more pass on the vocals with the artist and make that a "whisper/rasp" take. Track that twice and pan around a bit so the whisper/rasp voice is just right. Run a copy in melodyne for a "chourus effect" and then put that aux as low as possible. We turn that fader down until we barely hear that whisper track. That techniqe makes the whole vocal package sound like it has been treated more than it has.

There are soo many ways to get that vocal sound but deffinately not by using widener plugins or chorus effects. It just thins out the vocals so lots of layers and different eq, comp, sat, melodyne tweaks and whisper tracks

Sorry for the long post but when we have done productions for big A-list radio hits in both the US and Europe, this is how we have done it, exacly like this.

Best Regards
Christopher

[Raoul23]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

Hey Raoul

When we work and want that "Thick wide" vocals we do about 6 takes. Pan one track left and one track right. Bus those two tracks to an aux. Them we do the same with the other takes in pairs and we eq and compress differently on all of them. Then copy the lead aux and run it thru Melodyne Edit and also put some H3000 doubler effect on the other two auxes. Usually after we fiddled around with all 3 auxes and when we like the phatness we do one more pass on the vocals with the artist and make that a "whisper/rasp" take. Track that twice and pan around a bit so the whisper/rasp voice is just right. Run a copy in melodyne for a "chourus effect" and then put that aux as low as possible. We turn that fader down until we barely hear that whisper track. That techniqe makes the whole vocal package sound like it has been treated more than it has.

There are soo many ways to get that vocal sound but deffinately not by using widener plugins or chorus effects. It just thins out the vocals so lots of layers and different eq, comp, sat, melodyne tweaks and whisper tracks

Sorry for the long post but when we have done productions for big A-list radio hits in both the US and Europe, this is how we have done it, exacly like this.

Best Regards
Christopher

Wow Chris!!! Thank you :) how do you get the vocals so tight with so many take is that done in melodyne or a plugin like Vocalign :)

[Southsidemusic]

We torture the artist until the double takes / dub takes are PERFECT! They have to be perfect or you can use vocalign and other aligning software BUT preferably do the takes as good as possible and you wont have to process the tracks to breaking point

Just do one Great take - Then dub that take - Then dub it again and again until you have a few harmony takes low and high and inbetween, then do the whisper/raspy smoke sounding takes and start fooling around with panning, eq, comp, saturations, melodyne, doubler effects and delays and last of all we do use our Bricasti M7 for that shimmer reverb, you don't have to buy a 10-12K bricasti verb but you need a great reverb with settings like reflection settings that actually do early reflection good otherwise it just becomes a mess.

Bus the takes to different auxes and make sure you experiment with eq, comp etc and that you have several harmony takes dubbed before you start messing with Melodyne. And do the whisper takes reaally good as they will be very very helpful in phattening up the sound

[Raoul23]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

We torture the artist until the double takes / dub takes are PERFECT! They have to be perfect or you can use vocalign and other aligning software BUT preferably do the takes as good as possible and you wont have to process the tracks to breaking point

Just do one Great take - Then dub that take - Then dub it again and again until you have a few harmony takes low and high and inbetween, then do the whisper/raspy smoke sounding takes and start fooling around with panning, eq, comp, saturations, melodyne, doubler effects and delays and last of all we do use our Bricasti M7 for that shimmer reverb, you don't have to buy a 10-12K bricasti verb but you need a great reverb with settings like reflection settings that actually do early reflection good otherwise it just becomes a mess.

Bus the takes to different auxes and make sure you experiment with eq, comp etc and that you have several harmony takes dubbed before you start messing with Melodyne. And do the whisper takes reaally good as they will be very very helpful in phattening up the sound

Thanks Chris love learning all this stuff as they say "Everyday is a school day" ill try putting some of this to the test in the next couple of weeks with some sessions I've got coming up :)

Talking of reverb I have Revibe is that a good enough verb :)

[Southsidemusic]

Originally Posted by Raoul23

Thanks Chris love learning all this stuff as they say "Everyday is a school day" ill try putting some of this to the test in the next couple of weeks with some sessions I've got coming up :)

Talking of reverb I have Revibe is that a good enough verb :)

Revibe will work great

Remember to experiment with "Early Reflections" and use the internet to figure out the math to fit your tempo and vocals

Best of Luck and pleaee let us know how you get on with this.

Christopher

[Raoul23]

Reverb and maths to fit the tempo of the song????

I've never heard of this before I've heard of delay and working out tempos

I'm on this right now :)

[Southsidemusic]

Originally Posted by Raoul23

Reverb and maths to fit the tempo of the song????

I've never heard of this before I've heard of delay and working out tempos

I'm on this right now :)

I was refering to the early reflections in the reverb. It has a math equation that you devide the tempo with X and so on. If you google that you will get it right away. Or just use your ears, thats what most people do but still good to know all that stuff for future productions

Best Of Luck.

Chris

[Raoul23]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

I was refering to the early reflections in the reverb. It has a math equation that you devide the tempo with X and so on. If you google that you will get it right away. Or just use your ears, thats what most people do but still good to know all that stuff for future productions

Best Of Luck.

Chris

OK I've found the reverb calculator on the net :) Im in Revibe its got early reflection pre delay and reverb pre delay which one do I set with the tempo both or just the ER pre delay

[Southsidemusic]

Originally Posted by Raoul23

OK I've found the reverb calculator on the net :) Im in Revibe its got early reflection pre delay and reverb pre delay which one do I set with the tempo both or just the ER pre delay

Start with the Early reflections and then fiddle around with pre delay and see which sounds best, it is from song to song so you will hear what sounds best,

I rarely use Pre delay on reverbs as it tend to get quite messy and too much different things happening, we set the early reflections to our liking and then use a good delay instead like Echoboy, UA etc. We Only use reverb for that clean reverb tails and some nice goodies and let the delays do the delay work.

You need to try out all these things and see what works for you and the song you are working with, we use lots of different settings and orders of them depending on which music style we are working on

Christopher