How do you get those massive stereo vocals?

JonWormwood

Member
Jun 16, 2007
3,885
0
36
Jax, Fl
They don't sound like separate takes because they sound so perfect (unless they are tweaked to perfection) but they don't sound phasey as if you moved one of the tracks a few ms.

Probably been over a bajillion times.
 
I guess the thing to keep in mind - excluding the big stereo voices, of course - is that you have anywhere between 15 and 30 ms to comfortably fudge the timing - there's a good chance that something in that range won't result in a 'phasey' sound, and only gifted bastards who know what to look for will be able to tell with any reliability what is going on. Between that, adjusting EQ to fit the surroundings (center vocals are usually the important ones, so duck some mids from the side vocals and so on), randomly changing the compressor on the sides until something works (since phase cancellation occurs when two waves have components with very similar frequencies offset, compression can be useful for at least reducing that effect), and multitracking appropriately, you should be set.

Honestly, whenever I notice this effect, it bothers me. Multitracking vocals in general also throws me off sometimes - I guess Ozzy ruined it for me - but, since I don't really like dealing with plugins that automate stuff I should already know how to do, I can't say much about the plugins recommended. Since what you're looking for is just enough 'weird' to make the left and right channels don't sound identical, but not enough that they are noticeably different to the casual observer, just look for little changes to make and hope for the best.

Keep in mind that you're just taking advantage of the fact that we reassemble sound in funny ways when there are slight changes in timing and volume - since it helps to know where noises are coming from when fighting off the bears, but reverberation getting in the way of positioning removes those advantages, we have a threshold for properly recognizing 'offset' instances of very similar sounds, and it happens to be somewhere in the ballpark of 20-40ms (depending on familiarity and expectations)... take advantage of people whose ears aren't already spoiled by knowing what's supposed to be going on, too, or you'll go fucking bonkers. No fun.

Jeff
 
Honestly, I think the best way to do it is...double track two good performances, VocAlign, then tune (draw tuning lines based on one performance for both performances).
 
I agree... you just need to use both sets of vocals chords and sing in stereo while harmonizing with yourself.

That's not the only way, singers with their heads up their asses have third and fourth options. I prefer to sing one note and just think the other one so loud that it materializes out of thin air.

Jeff