Ozzy Osbourne vocals

bonch

New member
I'm recording my demo, and I'm wondering what effect is used on most of Ozzy's vocals. He has a spectral, chorused type sound to his vocals, especially on his earlier solo albums. Is that just normal chorusing? Is he actually doubling his vocals by singing them twice? I want to know because I have a similar sounding, higher-pitched voice that cuts through, and I want to give it some depth by applying the same effect.
 
I've been playing around with doubling vocal track on some of my stuff. If you play with the panning and effects enough you can do some cool stuff. I don't know which Ozzy song you're speaking of but I know on some of his stuff he sings in octaves. In other words in the same key just an octive higher. I'm sure he does some doubling also. What I've done is sing on two different tracks and pan at about 10 and 2 o'clock, sometimes 9 and 3 o'clock and then add a little chorus or rooms to it. But if you play around with it, it really sounds cool on certain songs.
 
I'll try that technique, thanks. I'm listening to songs like "Over the Mountain" and "Goodbye to Romance" right now, and I think you're right, he's probably doubling up his vocals, so I'll try that.
 
Track Rat hit the nail on the proverbial head. I read an Ozzy interview a few years ago where he complained that they had messed with his voice so much
after he sang ;there was no way he could replicate the songs in concert. He was supposedly going to return to singing/recording using his natural voice.
He sounded the best I have heard (I've seen him or Sabbath on every tour since 1974) on the first few shows of the Reunion tour
with Sabbath.
Sab On!
 
You guys have it all wrong. There are no effects used on the Oz Man's voice - his voice is like that due to his preparation.

In order to obtain that "Ozzy sound" you have to drink vodka for about 20 years, mixed in with some dove and bat blood every so often.
 
A pitch transposer? So they take his vocals, copy them to another track, transpose that track down a tad and have both vocal tracks run together?
 
You can also achieve something close to the "Ozzy Effect" by copying the vocals to another track, delaying the second track by a few milliseconds (experiment here), then panning them out to..
(Left side) 10 o' clock
(Right side) 4 o' clock
.... then EQ the left side for slightly more bass and midrange, and the right side for more mids to highs.
Yes, he uses some pitch de-tune, as Trackrat mentioned. But, sometimes you can EQ the two tracks just good enough to get the right sound.

[This message has been edited by Buck62 (edited 07-27-2000).]
 
You get a much more dramatic effect with the pitch transposer than Panning a short delay. IMHO.
 
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