Best effects/processing for vox over heavily distorted guitars...

[UberGawkman]

Okay, I'm just kinda gathering data, and find out as many different tricks to try as possible.

What are some of the best/most common ways make melodic vocals to not get buried under, and be understandable over heavily distorted guitar tracks?

Think Staind, Hoobastank, Incubus... except with meaner guitars.

Reverb seems to suck and become inaudible...

I've often heard a chorusy type of effect.... double tracking? Or maybe copying the track an pitch-shifting a few cents?


Just throw in anything out there... I'm not looking for a "solution", I'm just wanting to hear everybody's ideas and thoughts.

[matty_boy]

Double tracking is pretty common. A variation on this theme is panning two parts to different places. I do this sometimes, but I don't pan them really far apart. Messing with stereo effects (primarily reverb) has worked at times as well.

Matty

[LongWaveStudio]

very quiet chorus can beef up a vocal.

[A1A2]

if you dont want the vocal to get burried under tha guitars, you could boost the mids a bit on the vocal, and cut some mids on the guitars.

Also, you could hard pan the guitar tracks, and keep your vocal centered (or if you decide to double the vocal, pan them slightly off center. So, visually, you will have 2 vocals in the middle and 2 guitars on each end of the stage)

Al

[Boo Boo Foo]

Here's what I find works well.

Double track your main melody vocal. Make sure your enunciation and timing is absolutely spot on. I rarely dial in reverb more than 10% of my vocals in volume. I apply 'medium' levels of compression. The reverb I use is merely meant to act as a true simulation of a room and zero more. Contrary to popular belief, in the presence of competition like gnarly menacing guitars, vocals actually get lost with reverb - dial it back and go for clean clean clean. Sometimes I dial in about %15 of delay which is precisely 1 beat or a half a beat behind in tempo. This is a very useful effect.

The compression is meant to tame your dynamics - it allows you to make your vocal the loudest thing in your mix - which it should be - but it won't leap out at the same time either.

My fave eq settings are as follows - 250Hz up by 3.0db over an octave. 1750Hz down 4.5db over 2 octaves. 5000hz or higher just plain flat.

I often double track my gnarly guitar parts and pan them totally left and right and leave my main vocal down the centre. Backing harmonies I drop by around 3db and pan them totally left and right too. This will give you quite a fiersome wall of sound.

Any other guitars in the middle I tend to give a bit of reverb - sometimes. But your gnarly guitars sound best totally without verb panned as I said above.

Your kick should be pretty loud too and your bass should be around -6db on average of what your kick should be.

Hope that helps. More than happy to give you a listen to some of my stuff to let you know what it sounds like mixed this way but by and large it sounds like a monster Foo Fighters sound if truth be known.