The Killers vocal effect

Bisson820

New member
Hey guys... i was just wondering if anyone could help me pinpoint the vocal effect that The Killers use pretty frequently..

Im specifically talking about the songs "Somebody told me" and "All these thigns that i've done"

im pretty sure they use the same effect on his voice for most of their songs... but i think they use it the most on these two...

www.myspace.com/thekillers

thanks!
 
I don't know many of The Killers songs (saw them at Reading 08 though, good show) but listening to Somebody Told Me it sounds a variant of a 'telephone voice' or retro speaker kind of effect.

First thing I'd try would simply be some aggressive EQ'ing - roll off everything below 250hz or so, and LPF with quite a sleep slope somewhere between 2khz and 5khz depending on the sound you are going for (sweep it until you find what works for you). Compress hard and see what you get.

If that doesn't quite do it, there are many plugins intended to do the whole retro thing.

iZotope Vinyl springs to mind... free plugin, quite versatile (I've used it for vox and drums before) and can be effective. Don't expect subtlety though - its not intended as an analog emulation type plugin, its designed to be used as an obvious effect.
http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/vinyl/
 
yea i tried playing with the EQ and couldnt "crack the code" to match what they did.


i tried playing around with a dual filter and got it sounding kinda close... but deffinately not the same....

RRRR... there seems to be quite a lot of reverb and delay on his voice aswell.
 
I'm just having a quick experiment. The steep slope seemed like the right idea in my head but it sounds like something around 12db/octave on the LPF is about right.
 
From what I've heard, part of the effect is that Brandon Flowers bounces and quavers a lot as he sings, so some of the wavering probably comes from that.
 
The Killlers Vocals

Hey guys I'm writing / recording a killer-esque song for my friends short film, and when I was roping some ideas together I managed to create the VOCAL effect with a very similar tone to that on 'All these things that I have done'.
Try:
-A Bright Echo/Delay in 1/16's
-A tremolo again in 1/16's (play around)
-A VERY light room Reverb (don't ruin your new edgy sound with a plate!)
-EQ Roll Off below 250 Hz or so, use an analyser and roll off just 20-50 Hz into the lowest frequency of your vocal
-Depending on the vocal, Low Pass Filter on the extreme Highs (5KHz) but may need a slight boost around 2kHz (again play around!)

This is a great starting point, Hope it helps
 
I think this might be one of the very few reasons to resurrect an old thread - to add some info on how to solve the problem in a new/different way, since people might search for it later (even years down the road).
 
I find a bit of Tube distortion can really add to this edgy vocal sound, adding a bit of grit, It sounds to me like there's some on 'Somebody told me', I've been using a free plug in called 'Camel Crusher' (easy to find if anyone's interested) I dial in the tube distortion till it sounds obviously distorted, then back off a notch. I found adding a little presence peak of a decibel or two around 2-3K would enhance the effect a bit more without having to take out more lows.
 
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