"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.