Thickening vocals - what do you do?

[UstadKhanAli]

How do you thicken vocals? What are your favorite techniques? We had a conversation about this earlier today at my studio, and we all had different ways of thinking about it. But what's your favorite way?

 

This could be everything from what you do in a DAW to how you set up a mic in the first place to hardware to whatever.

 

I've seen some people apply chorus to a vocal. Some people simply double a vocal in their DAW and then move the doubled vocal forward a little bit.

 

How do you do it? What are your favorite techniques?

[Mark L]

Double-tracking

 

Never fails

[blue2blue]

One thing that seems to be gaining a little currency is the use of vocal retuning on a clone of the vocal track and then combining the two. Obviously, the effect depends greatly on the approach, blend, and -- of course -- the vocal retuning settings

[UstadKhanAli]

I used to occasionally be able to borrow my friend's Eventide hardware processor. Okay, rarely, not occasionally. I'd detune the vocal several cents to the left and right. Wow, that sounded great. I don't have access to any such thing any more. What do you use in a DAW to somewhat approximate this? What do you use to detune in general? The regular AudioSuite stuff in Pro Tools doesn't really sound all that great.

[UstadKhanAli]

I love double tracking, of course. Been doing that for a loooong time!!

[the stranger]

As many layers as you can get away with.

 

It's tricky too. I find that as you keep laying tracks, you keep evolving what you're doing and the goal is of course to get that good multi-tracked vocal that isn't obvious. And usually when I start laying a vocal track, I'm improvising. I like to write while I record, but once I find a good flow for a vocal track, then I try to zero in and duplicate it as close as I can.

 

I never bother with the other various tricks, it's too easy to just hit record again.

[boosh]

Double tracking. 2 doubles left ,three in the middle ,2 doubles right. Align with Melodyne.

[offramp]

 

I used to occasionally be able to borrow my friend's Eventide hardware processor. Okay, rarely, not occasionally. I'd detune the vocal several cents to the left and right. Wow, that sounded great. I don't have access to any such thing any more.

 

 

Old Yamaha SPX 90's do that. I have one. I love that sound.

[UstadKhanAli]

Has anyone used the AIR Enhancer in Pro Tools to thicken vocals? I just came across it. It's really not bad at thickening vocals through generating harmonics of some kind. You definitely have to be subtle with this thing, though.

[Beck]

Double tracking. That can mean different things to different people, so just to be clear what I mean is recording the vocal twice... having the singer sing it twice. Auto double tracking with delay based effects (delay and detuning) is the next best thing, but IMO the subtle imperfections of someone singing along with themselves has the most pleasing effect.

 

I normally pan near center for lead vocal... maybe 11 o'clock for one and 1 o'clock for the second, but it depends. Adjust volume of the second vocal track to taste and it doesn't take much for it to produce the desired effect. I may only add reverb to one of the takes and leave the other dry, but again it depends on the song and what feel I'm looking for.

 

I do the same with other instruments, but pan differently of course.

 

[TBush]

 

One thing that seems to be gaining a little currency is the use of vocal retuning on a clone of the vocal track and then combining the two. Obviously, the effect depends greatly on the approach, blend, and -- of course -- the vocal retuning settings

 

 

That's worked for me a few times when I couldn't double-track, or if the singer had such a 'style' that didn't lend itself to doubling.

[Ernest Buckley]

Double-tracking Never fails

 

Yup. Also, I`ll throw a slight delay (11-33ms) on the vocals.

[claveslave]

Get a thick vocalist! Shouldn't be too difficult

[Kerouac]

Call Tom Waits....

[bp]

Ken, I posted this a few days back in Craig's vocal recording thread.

 

Try recording a second mic a foot or so away from the primary vocal mic. Get the best tone you can from the mic. Use it to feed your reverbs, delays and other processing. The different tone will often give a great depth. Add to taste, rinse and repeat.

[Anderton]

 

Ken, I posted this a few days back in Craig's vocal recording thread.

 

 

...but it's a tip that bears repeating!!

 

I thicken my own vocals in three main ways.

 

1. Proximity effect, singing close to the mic.

2. Doubling but mixing the doubled sound back a bit.

3. EQ.

[ggm1960]

Something I've been doing lately (when working in Sonar anyway) is mixing down all the instruments and all vocals on two different stereo tracks. Then I find what seems to be an EQ sweet spot for the vocal and boost that 6db while putting in an exact opposite 6db notch in the instrument track.

[Lee Knight]

bp's suggestion is good. And the secret weapon of sleight of hand producers is VocalAlign. Double, triple. quadruple track. Vary the distance and mic and singing technique and even a different covert singer(s) underneath.

 

Then VocalAlign.

 

Then minor AT with the center pithch set differently (-10 cents, +10 cents, -5 cents etc.) for each pass.

 

It's a great, albeit very deceptive, technique. You hear it a lot. I first started noticing it on the Matrix/Avril sessions. Now I hear it everywhere.

[Lee Knight]

^

 

Then mix that back and send the main vocal to an Early Refection algo. Then a room of say 1.5. Than a hall of say 2.5. All in little amounts. Then another pitch spread for the main at -7 +7. Then a timed lo fi distorted delay at 8ths or dotted 8ths of whatever floats your boat back into itself and into the hall while automating the sends to control feedback and distortion just under the radar.

 

Any and all of that.

[Hush]

 

Old Yamaha SPX 90's do that. I have one. I love that sound.

 

 

I keep thinking about getting an SPX 90 just for that 1 effect. If I am remembering correctly one of the programs lowers one side a few cents and raises the other side a few cents, but also modulates the amount of detuning.

 

I keep trying to duplicate that in Sonar with varying degrees of success.

[Mudcat007]

Being as lazy as John Lennon when it comes to double-tracking vocals, I usually rely on Vacuumsound's ADT (Artificial Double Tracking) plugin when I want a "thicker" vocal sound.

 

http://www.vacuumsound.de/plugins.html

[Jeff da Weasel]

Proximity effect. Have them eat that mic.

 

I don't have a "big" voice, as Phil will probably tell ya, so I tend to do my lead vocals about 6"-8" away from the mic. If I had a stronger voice, I'd probably back off quite a bit.

[Mark L]

Double tracking. That can mean different things to different people

 

Yep

 

What I do is sing the lead vocal twice and pan 'em 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock. Then I single-track harmony vocals, as required

 

The only exception is a song called 'Danocoustic', where I double-tracked the lead and three lots of harmony vocals. Eight voices in all. Even if I say so myself, I achieved a very powerful vocal sound on that song

[WRGKMC]

For fatter Vocals? Start with a fat voice, Add extra presence or trebble to the headphones so it forces the singer to sing fatter, Put on weight, have a great singer sing the part. Sounds like a joke sure, but actually based on fact.

 

You can also Thin the mix till the vocals blend.

Then use mastering plugins like a multiband and limiter to fatten the entire mix back up as needed.

 

One of the tools I been using for the past year to fatten up the vocals is Voxengo Voxformer. I do alot of rehursal recordings with live vocal mics recorded off the PA inserts. They're plugins tend to sound beefey almost tube like from what I've found.

 

Vocals can sound pretty cruddy recording live. By taking the signal off an insert will record the unprocessed signal. You have to use limiters and comps to smooth out the dynamics quite a bit because the Compps and speakers of the PA smooth dynamics but the direct signal wont have compression, just raw mic and all the proxcimity changes.

 

I found voxformer's combinations of limiters, Presence drive, and DeEsser will work wonders on this kind of recording. Add some various reverbs or echos to the dry vocals and they come up fairly good enough for rock stuff where the vocals are not too up front.

 

Of course If you want big super clean vocals up front then you have to go for separate tracking.

[russrags]

I use a large "Ambient" program, such as what's in The Reverb section in Pro Tools.

 

The trick is to set the early reflections at about 128 ms, I get that set how I want, before adding anything else such as reverb.

 

 

Russ

Nashville