Good vocal distortion

R

Rabid Pickle

New member
Hey all. I've read many threads on here as I stared up my home mixing studio and want to thank everyone first of all!

Now, one of the first projects I mixed was my friend's metal band. I used Vintage Warmer for some distortion on screaming vocals and loved it. It makes it a bit thicker and adds a really mean edge but at the same time is pretty subtle.
Just wondering about some other ways/plugins to add some good vocal distortion. Not necessarily "subtle" either ;)

Thanks in advance!
 
Tube screamer. There's a pretty good free plugin floating around - I forget the name off the top of my head.
 
guitarplayr82 said:
You could use an amp simulator on the vocal tracks with maybe a little bit of reverb.
Click to expand...

x2. I've used this to pretty good effect on some vocal tracks when I'm looking for that overdriven effect. It helps when you have a really tweakable amp simulator (Amplitube, Guitar Rig) so you can fine tune the effect it has on your voice.
 
Soundtoys Decaptator..they have a Demo...Ive tried the demo and like the plugin...its to expensive though...they sell it in a bundle as well...if you want distortion for vocals you will love the drive button.

http://www.soundtoys.com/products/Decapitator/

Screenshot

soundtoys_decapitator.jpg
 
Blockfish's (Digital Fish Phones) "Saturation" control cranked up can provide some grunge to a sound that some may like. And it's free.

G.
 
I think I just used whatever distortion plugin comes with Reaper, but in order to make it really work, I sent the vocals to another track and put an EQ on there to scoop pretty much everything except the mids (sort of a crappy phone sound) and then put the distortion and a lot of compression on there. Blend to taste. I found that I only wanted a little bit of that. It accentuated the breaths in a cool way and helps add the extra edge to louder, screamy parts. If you're on Facebook (and the music player is working), my band's song "Shells" is the song I did that for.

Edit: it's not working... Well, we're on MySpace, too. www.myspace.com/techniciansband
 
1176...

The 1176 ( it's the BF76 in the Bomb Factory bundle) compressor plug-in will give you a cool, distinct distortion if you use the "all buttons" setting. You can get this by going into the settings menu and clicking on "all buttons". This will give you compression and distortion, and not lose definition, while minimally amplifying any noise. The most distorted setting in the "all buttons" mode is with the attack and release set to their maximums, and then backing off on the attack and/or release to lessen the effect. You can set the distortion to taste by adjusting the attack, release and ratio. This will give you a distortion I haven't been able to get any other way. I learned this from an engineer I worked with years ago with an actual 1176. The plug-in version was smart enough to include this setting.
 
If you should ever go analog, set your preamp and recording levels high so you clip till the cows come home.
 
i'm sure these have all been mentioned, but
1. compress the hell out of it
2. distortion plugin
3. amp simulator
 
Kinda going off the analog suggestion, find a plugin that emulates and analog compressor and clip it in the input stage.

Otherwise, you can boost in the upper midrange to get a little bullhorn effect going.
 
Some of the best vocal distortion is not distortion at all (at least not the traditional saturation/overdrive stuff), but other effects such as:

Ring modulation
FM
Excessive EQ to introduce resonances or limited bandwidth. Telephone effect comes to mind for example.
Granular resynthesis. Kyma and Reaktor are quite capable of this, and the newest version of Guitar Rig has some granular delay/reverb stuff (albeit, they tend to sound more on the smooth side).

If you have a delay unit that allows rapid and large modulation of delay times (preferably with an LFO), try that as well.

Double tracking the same vocal, once sung normally, and then whispered can be a great effect, especially if you heavily compress the whispered version and mixed in under the main vocal.

Any of these effects may have a tendency to obliterate intelligibility so mixing them in with the unaltered vocal (in various amounts, depending on the effect one wants to achieve) can help improve intelligibility.
 
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