How do they get this vocal sound?

A

ajsajs

Member
Hey all,
For all those expert engineers out there, I am trying to understand how to replicate the female vocals that come in panned at 1:19 in the chorus - . They are so luscious(!!) and wash over you but I have no idea what the "special sauce" may be.

My guess is you need a long-tail reverb and probably 10s(?) of vocals blended/stacked on top of each other to create this wall of sound, but if I pick a reverb and try that I do not get close haha. Is it a particular reverb I would need? a good chorus FX? Particular kind of voice? Something else I'm missing?

Thanks in advance,
Ari
 
Multiple voices, close spaced chords - so three sort of melodies stacked. The reverb isn't the feature it's just lots of of oohs and the volume levels tweaked to make the changing note more obvious but the other lines down a bit. I suspect no chorus of ensemble effects, just multiple voices panned and balanced. The held top note splits into two notes a semi-tone apart then one drop a whole tone, with the supporting notes underneath. Nice.
 
There's definitely a long reverb tail on her.

If I were going for this effect, I'd opt for a big stack of vocals (make sure they're tight). Probably HPF all of it. Then send it to a reverb bus turned to a pretty moderate volume.

It helps that she has a very pretty voice in general. I'm couldn't get my voice to do that pretty much whatever I did.
 
When you stack vocals, you end up making it smoother and softer (in texture, not volume) The more vocals you stack, the smoother it ends up.
 
So sounds like you need to stack a *lot* of vocals then to get this level of smooth.... 10? 100? a million?
 
In some of the Carpenters tracks we recorded last year some songs had over 40 Karen’s, plus a few that were probably richard or just more low Karen!
 
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