Thickening vocals

  • Thread starter Thread starter ecktronic
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ecktronic

ecktronic

Mixing and Mastering.
I heard that you can make a clone of the vocal track and use very short delay to thicken up a vocal. Another one was cloning twice then panning left and right the cloned tracks and pitch shifting one of the cloned tracks up a tiny bit and the other down a tiny bit. I tried both of these and couldnt get a good result. Anyone got any settings that might work to thicken up a vocal?
any feedback would be of a great help cheers.
 
It's better if you do a second take and/or a third and mix them, than to make a clone imho.
 
:D Yo Ektrons:

Well, I applaude the fact that YOU tried, rather than just asked.

You might also consider your mic. Tube mics do have a character.

A good reverb room tweaked to the "voice" involved can also be an aid.

Also, try to keep the voice UP front--sometimes the background music can kind of "thin" the vocal. Listen to some old Sinatra records--of course, Frank had the best of everything, including mics. But today's gear can get you where you want to go if you keep experimenting.

Happy Easter,
Green Hornet :D
 
The only problem with the second take is the timing,is the singer makes a little variation in the phrasing,singing,I would said cloning the takes,and running them on two or more differents tracks,and used the Dithering,Compression,Eq., to get where you want to go, and then the relationship between the singer,background music,would finish the trick.Gerry Zaragemca
 
Doing a tight second take will always sound better than copying. A whisper or spoken track, mixed barely audible, will thicken up vocals. Do a second vocal take, add distortion, heavy compression and blend to taste.
 
As Grinder suggested, doing a tight double tracking of the vocals and carefully mixing the two will probably yield the most natural result. The Beatles and George Martin sometimes used what they called "Auto doubling" which consisted of copying the original take to a new track and delaying it by 20ms. It can be a cool effect.

Other ways to thicken vocals without double tracking would be to add a nice, subtle delay to the track. Compression with a fairly low ratio, slow attack, and fast release can also fatten up a vocal track. A nice reverb would go a long way as well. These things can work together to really help a vocal track. Also, and this may be totally inappropriate for the type of music you're doing, but adding a whisper track way underneath the main vocal can do wonders. Just have the singer get close to the mic, and whisper along with the main vocal, no voicebox. Compress it pretty good and bury it underneath the main vocal.
 
grinder said:
A whisper or spoken track, mixed barely audible, will thicken up vocals. Do a second vocal take, add distortion, heavy compression and blend to taste.
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nice idea, thats one thing I will try on my next recording
 
grinder said:
A whisper or spoken track, mixed barely audible, will thicken up vocals.
Click to expand...
A newbie here, just learning. I once read Jim Morrisson did this with "Riders On The Storm." Does Anyone know if this is true? It sounds like theres a whisper there to me.
 
grinder said:
A whisper or spoken track, mixed barely audible, will thicken up vocals.
Click to expand...

Oops. I didn't read through carefully enough the first time...you had already made that suggestion :)
 
Michael jackson used to do 12 or 15 vocal takes on some songs, some identical takes, some whispered, using different mics, different rooms, facing the wall, back to the wall, holding his boyfriends hand, whatever
 
Bulls Hit said:
Michael jackson used to do 12 or 15 vocal takes on some songs, some identical takes, some whispered, using different mics, different rooms, facing the wall, back to the wall, holding his boyfriends hand, whatever
Click to expand...

He did it for the children, you know.
 
sometimes the background music can kind of "thin" the vocal.

The Green Hornet said:
:D Yo Ektrons:

Well, I applaude the fact that YOU tried, rather than just asked.

You might also consider your mic. Tube mics do have a character.

A good reverb room tweaked to the "voice" involved can also be an aid.



Happy Easter,
Green Hornet :D
Click to expand...

Exellant advice., Nice to see there's a few talented and concerned engineers out there to take the time to share of their wisdoms and experience.
 
M.J. shops at K-MART. They allways have little boy's briefs 1/2 off.
 
Begin at the source

ecktronic said:
I heard that you can make a clone of the vocal track and use very short delay to thicken up a vocal. Another one was cloning twice then panning left and right the cloned tracks and pitch shifting one of the cloned tracks up a tiny bit and the other down a tiny bit. I tried both of these and couldnt get a good result. Anyone got any settings that might work to thicken up a vocal?
any feedback would be of a great help cheers.
Click to expand...

Get your vocalist to try some hot tea, lemon and honey. Always worked fine to loosen up the voice strings and fatten the texture of the voice, aids in control and tastes good too. ;)
 
Woah, nice response all. I tried the short delay, but it ended up sounding fake and kinda chorusy. Am i using too short a delay?

Next mixing session im gonna try putting the original vocal through an amp and micing it up to get some light distortion and then compress to hell and back and eq to boost the mids maybe to get more presence and cut the lo and hi. Ill hide it under the main vox which will be moderate to heavy compressed with a shortish delay maybe and a nice shortish reverb. Hope this will work.
Im trying to get my mixes really thick as i can get a good thickish sound, but i havnt spent enough time trying out tricks to get more thickness. Felt like i was wasting my time, but hopefully ill get what i want after some more practice.
Cheers all.
Check out the web page below for an idea of my mixes.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/seratonescotlandmusic.htm
 
If by short delay, you're referring to the delay around 20ms, then no, you didn't do anything wrong that's just the way that delay time sounds, sort of chorusy.

The other thing that's important when using delay is to not only pay attention to the actual delay but to the level or wetness of the delay. I know it seems kind of obvious, but getting the right blend of delay time and wetness can be a little tricky.
 
EleKtriKaz said:
If by short delay, you're referring to the delay around 20ms, then no, you didn't do anything wrong that's just the way that delay time sounds, sort of chorusy.

The other thing that's important when using delay is to not only pay attention to the actual delay but to the level or wetness of the delay. I know it seems kind of obvious, but getting the right blend of delay time and wetness can be a little tricky.
Click to expand...

I am new to recording as well and don't really have a separate effects processor so i just use the reverb/Delay on my MR-8. I usually tend to clone a track and then add alittle reverb... My question is since the Mr-8 doesn't have numbered knobs, can anyone who has exper. with this effect show me some basic reverb delay settings. For example:

Guitar - 6 0'clock
Vocals - 7 0'clock

I'm not asking for a sure shot, just a starting point. Any help is appreciated.
 
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I'm new to delay FX, but from what I can tell, they can do a whole lot more than just add a second signal delayed by however many ms. First of all, they can blend several signals, delayed by different amounts, and for each one, there's modulation, feedback, panning, flanging, chorusing, and other stuff I don't understand. The end result is that a good delay FX setting can indeed fatten the sound in a different way than reverb.

I've been trying out Cakewalk, Waves and Spin Audio delays. Spin's 3D chorus and 3D delay plugins sound great to me - maybe because the presets are so good.
 
You know I'm surprised noones suggested EQ. A little boost in the midrange usually does the trick.. or like you said as far as copying the vocal track.. but lower the volume.. compress the crap out of it so it doesnt start accentuating anything you dont want accentuated.. and give it some mid range boost too... and just play with the volume till you get a nice tone.
 
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