Chino's vocals (from the Deftones)

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UberGawkman

UberGawkman

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Has anyone ever heard the effect they often use on Chino from the Deftone's vocals? Specifically on "Change In the House Of Flies". It sounds like there's some distortion or something, and the sibilants sound so damn cool and pronounced... it's as if the "s" sound was lowered down into the midrange. Anybody got any ideas, or read somewhere about what they did exactly?
 
i've always wondered this myself. it doesn't really sound like distortion. on some songs that effect is more prominent like "change..." I hope someone has some insight on this question.
 
I've pondered this same thing...and this is the conclusion I have come to.

They are definitely HEAVILY compressed. The breaths that he takes between singing are just as loud as when he screams something. Heavy, heavy, heavy compression.

As far as the rest, I think they were heavily de-essed, also. Enough to where the 'S' is way quiter than it should be, and then the high end eq'd up quite a bit. This seems to me why the 'ch', 'f', 'p', and 'v' sounds, among others, are very prominent. All of these sounds are characterized by high end, but you can't get stress those sounds withough a de-esser, usually.

Sound close?

Darth
 
Yeah..... yeah, that really does. Every little breathe he takes is so crisply detailed.... it would make sense that you use compression to bring up those very quite subtleties.

It also sounds like in addition to what you are saying, didn't they also give him some delay?
 
chino's vocals always sounded to me like a hard rock version of michael jackson's..... with the breaths and everything.
 
no no no you can compress the vox all you want and you wont get that sound. there's something else going on that has a compressing effect to it (like distortion, but it's not distortion on his voice...or not?)
 
It sounds to me like he's singing through a bunch of guitar pedals. Like he's got a mic preamp running into a mixer, with a guitar compressor and an overdrive pedal like a Tubescreamer or something on the aux bus. You can also get a sound like this using a SansAmp, and Bombfactory also makes a plugin version. It's not overly distorted, but it's definitely there. Also, he has a pretty radical eq on his vocal. Probably cutting the lows with a highpass filter at around 100-120 Hz, then there's a definite boost in the mids and highs. Probably some de-essing in there too to keep the s'es from dominating everything.

This is just his main sound. Sometimes they alter elements of it too, for example, the sound on "elite" is more distorted than most of his other vocals, and it's also got a delay on it. (That delay was probably added during the mix though.) And on "back to school" he has some very straight, uneffected backing vocals. I wouldn't be surprised if he tracked through his effects... it seems like he plays off the sound of them during his performance.

Mike Patton is also pretty well known for doing things like this. I you see him live, you'll see he has a bunch of pedals, 2 or 3 different mics, and a little mackie mixer up there to perform his effects live. I've never seen the Deftones live so I can't really say, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had some pedals for his voice that were running to the auxes of a mixer.
 
Chino has always had cool effects. I like the thought of using "non vocal processors" for processing vocals. Like my POD.
 
I listened to the Deftones closely just now--it appears, that for some songs, he whispers over the singing/screaming, and those whispers are heavily effected.

Try that, maybe.
 
deftones recorded their last album at the studio i work at. i can ask tuesday when i go in if you wish.
 
Vocal distorter (light distortion) double tracked for a kinda almost chorus doubling effect. Good recording in he first place. and some quality reverb
 
i've been wondering too, but about other singers,

one of the things i do:

record clean lead vocals,
record a second vocal track, with bandpass and some distortion
(i use the sansamp or joemeek vc8 for that)
and i compress the shit out of the distorted vocal,
mix it in so you can JUST notice it,
the distorted vocal should Not be louder than the other

of course it depends...blabla...but you mostly overdo it,,so be careful

thats also how i make telephone noises:
a bandpass, distortion, extreme compression

i've had lots of bad results with putting FX on the lead vocals,
i had better and more fun results with FX on a second vocal track,
not just a copy but a 'double tracked track,,,,u know'"

my 2 cents

ps...always mess with using multiple layered vocals,
do it unnoticed, put the extra vocals enough in the back so u can only
hear it a bit....just listen closely to marilyn mansons voice,
try to cound how many takes they mixed on his chorusses...
sometimes it sounds like 5 different voices with a different pitch...
 
Thought I heard something about using a Distressor on Chino. Prolly either some chorus or some layered tracks or some 45ms delay on parts to.
 
ok i asked.

what they did is they used our blue bottle mic, tracked it clean with no eq. then ran it through a distressor for some normal compression, added some presence on the board. then they bounced it to another track, took this, rank it through our other distressor and nuked the fuck out of it, then ran it through an API to add some midrange and those API's sound somewhat brittle, which is the clarity.

then they trhough some plugin effects in protools and mixed the 2 tracks to their liking.

something to that effect. there was something else but i forgot my notepad i took notes on in my car.
 
Sounds like it was double tracked rather than cloned though. Maybe short delays were used like a kinda chorusy effect. I might try using a cloned track and boosting the mids quite considerably and cutting alot of the hi and lo. So the second track will cut through and accent the pronounciation of the vocals While the original track will give it the meat and warmth with a compressor/expander. THe second track will be heavily compressed and mixed so that it is just noticeable. THink that will work quite well.
 
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