male vocal eq

mark skinner

Active member
Hello , Is there any way to make a persons voice sound a lot "deeper" without muddying it up ? Every time I receive a vocal track from a friend , he has his low freq. boosted 8-12 db. and it really doesn't help improve the quality of his voice , but it is obvious he wants it to sound deeper. Thanks .... mark
 
Mark......the answer to your question has a lot to do with subjective opinion.......and we'd need more information in order to help you. "A lot deeper" is subjective in itself. As well.....it seems that your friend sends you tracks that are "boosted". Boosted in what frequencies? Are you sure he wants his voice to sound deeper? Sounds as if you haven't actually asked him. An 8 - 12 db LF boost seems very high. Could it be from his mic or some other factor? I know.....not likely.....but what mic does he use? Maybe when he hears his track in his cans or monitors they're lying to him about the bottom end.

IMO it is possible to "enhance" a vocal track to make it seem as if the voice is deeper......but not always. Each voice and or recorded track is different and as such you need to do some experimenting with a dry track not EQ'd yet. Starting with a dry track you can try small EQ boosts / cuts and maybe some proper compression to give it a deeper feel or sound. There's normally no single remedy but in your case......since you'd always be dealing with your friends voice......there just might be a set series of adjustments you can use over and over.

If you feel like it.......post a track so we can hear it.
 
Singing closer to the microphone to take advantage of the proximity effect of the microphone. That's also dependent on him using good mic technique. Also have him send you tracks without 8-12 dbs boosted. I'm assuming that he doesn't yet know how deep his voice sounds in a mix but boosting that much wont help you if you're the one mixing.
 
Hello , Is there any way to make a persons voice sound a lot "deeper" without muddying it up ? Every time I receive a vocal track from a friend , he has his low freq. boosted 8-12 db. and it really doesn't help improve the quality of his voice , but it is obvious he wants it to sound deeper. Thanks .... mark

If he has a high tenor voice...he's not going to sound like Barry White. ;)

That said...tell him to sing more from his gut and chest, and that will help. Just turning up the low end when there is no low end there to begin with, usually doesn't work.
Also...is he's sending you tracks to mix with music...tell him to leave the vocals alone. He shouldn't be pre-EQing them so much in advance just because he doesn't like the sound of his own voice. TBH...I think most people don't like the sound of their own voice. :D
 
Well, if we're talking pitch then just learn to transpose down to a lower key: if the song is in the key of A try G# then G.

What I really think your talking about is his technique, a lot of singers hold pitch by squeezing their vocal chords and pushing out a nasally tone. (Myself included) Another way to sing is to relax the diaphragm and open your pipes to deepen the tone in a more opera-etic fashion, which takes practice.

From an engineers POV there are saturators / enhancers that can help warm up the tone but it isn't gonna work miracles. Stick to dark reverbs.

Hope that helps.
 
deep punchy low end? Get close to the mic, soft knee compression 6:1 or so, kind of heavy handed a bit with the threshold, and then limiter to even it out overall. Don't use any eq/filters, until you have the track to mix, so you can make the adjustments.
 
"Thanks" to everyone for your advice. I'm helping him with a 10 song album for himself . Mostly originals , He's doing all the bass, keys, and vocals. I'm doing everything else. I'm actually pulling the tracks off of his daw , so .. I can see and remove the eq and reverb before I export to flash drive. When he does get close enough for proximity effect he sings quieter more nasal and wont open up ... Transposing isn't an option. After he is sure of the key , I may have 10 tracks of guitars, mandolins , etc.. before I ever get the first usable vocal track . I'll use all of your suggestions .. keep em coming .. Thanks ... mark
 
"Thanks" to everyone for your advice. I'm helping him with a 10 song album for himself . Mostly originals , He's doing all the bass, keys, and vocals. I'm doing everything else. I'm actually pulling the tracks off of his daw , so .. I can see and remove the eq and reverb before I export to flash drive. When he does get close enough for proximity effect he sings quieter more nasal and wont open up ... Transposing isn't an option. After he is sure of the key , I may have 10 tracks of guitars, mandolins , etc.. before I ever get the first usable vocal track . I'll use all of your suggestions .. keep em coming .. Thanks ... mark

There's a number of ways you can help a voice to sound fuller or deeper (in tone), but with catches.
Any trickery in the daw assumes that there's some low freq content to play with. If you're dealing with a very thin nasal or raspy vocal, it just might not be there.

In that case, if you have the time and inclination, I'd spent a day or two working with the singer describing what you're looking for and how to get it.
Just work with plain vowel sounds singing notes and have him do impressions of extreme voices. Try to go from intentionally very thing and weedy to full and deep, on the same note.
I used to get a pal of mine to sing like Sinatra for a few minutes after his warmup.
I didn't want a Sinatra impression on the tape but I guess it was liberating, or it put his mind in the right place?

EQ is the obvious one.
Using reverb or tight delays that have tailored eq is a little less obvious but sometimes a bit more natural sounding.
How you mic can matter. Mic high pointing down gets the chest, mic low pointing up gets nose/head.

Depending on the genre you can support a weak voice with additional parts. That could be harmonies or some instrument copying his melody.

It'd be great to hear an example, though, if possible.
 
Well, if we're talking pitch then just learn to transpose down to a lower key: if the song is in the key of A try G# then G.

See, I was going to suggest the opposite.
If he can sing the part that way, speed the track up 1-5% while he's tracking the vox.

Then bring everything back down to the original tempo. His voice will be pitch-shifted down in a fairly natural-sounding way, and the track will have more of those low frequencies to work with. You might even mix that take with one done at the regular tempo.
 
Just finished an "almost" final mix. He had done a low harmony track that sounded like it could have been the lead vocal. After an extensive Melodyne session , it worked. I used the track I've had problems with, after your suggestions , as a 3rd harmony and built a 5th off of that . Seems it was just out of his range , and sounding "thin" instead of the problems I have been bringing to you , So I guess it was a combination of pitch and bad technique ... To Steve , I think think your response was a pretty "out of the box" suggestion , You'll be a survivor when AI starts writing the music.. Thanks again ... mark
 
To Steve , I think think your response was a pretty "out of the box" suggestion , You'll be a survivor when AI starts writing the music.. Thanks again ... mark

Ha ha! I'm trying to teach the AI, so I sure hope so!

In all seriousness tho, that's how a lot of great recordings happen. Somebody comes up with something completely off-the-wall, and then you just try it to see if it works!
 
I'd like to suggest something a bit different... Since your friend won't open up to the mic easily, try having him use a monitoring mix with some combo of: voice EQ'd thin 'in the cans' (ie. not in the recorded version), voice 3-6 dB lower 'in the cans', have him sing using 2 mics - 1 dynamic close and 2nd 6-12 inches further away...and feed the close one to the recording mix (to capture boundary effect) and the farther one to the cans mix, or possibly give him an old style mono earbud mix for just one ear, that forces him to open up on the vocal chords just to hear himself in the room.

Obviously all of these ideas are to "trick" your client into singing, without being too afraid of his own voice to give YOU the bottom end you need to work with to make his voice sound right in the final product.
Good luck.?
 
you can use parallel compression to achieve this. Run the main take with "standard" vocal EQ settings and run another in parallel with a small low frequency bump before the compression. Blend in with the original and you should notice a "fuller" vocal tone without sounding too strange like boosting 8db of lows in the vocal eq
 
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