Some vocal tricks for you

[Mago]

Cool post, + to staging compression, different Verbs & EQ into compression.
Gotta try out to automate the vocals a bit more though...

I might add:
Try out Voxengo Voxformer. It's awesome.
Also delay sent to an verb is awesome on some kind of productions (doestn work with everyone though)

 

[Scottxx]

THanks Ermz to share your knlowledge.

Sorry, I don't understand well "EQ into compression". Can somebody explain me in wich consists this ?

 

[crillemannen]

I always use a doubler when i mix vox to make the vox larger. Nothing secret about that but it is an awesome way to make the vox larger. Just but Waves Doubler or Echoboy Cryztaliser on a send and mix it in with the vox, and you'll hear the vox grows larger.

 

[Emdprodukt]

I always use a doubler when i mix vox to make the vox larger. Nothing secret about that but it is an awesome way to make the vox larger. Just but Waves Doubler or Echoboy Cryztaliser on a send and mix it in with the vox, and you'll hear the vox grows larger.

Most of the times I use this as an effect for choruses and parts I want to be more upfront.

When talking about stage compressing do you mean to use more compressors like rvox in a row instead of one really smashed? What would be the benefit of doing that? I usually have one instance of rvox on every vocal channel smashed to hell and back and I never had problems with vocals in a mix.

 

[Skinny Viking]

THanks Ermz to share your knlowledge.

Sorry, I don't understand well "EQ into compression". Can somebody explain me in wich consists this ?

EQ the vocals 1st in your chain and then run the EQ'd vocals into a compressor

 

[crillemannen]

Most of the times I use this as an effect for choruses and parts I want to be more upfront.

Well if you use it as a send and blend ad moderate volumes then you will only get the "widenening" effect without it sounding strange.

 

[Emdprodukt]

Well if you use it as a send and blend ad moderate volumes then you will only get the "widenening" effect without it sounding strange.

I use all my vocal effects as a send and do loooooots of automation

 

[crillemannen]

I use all my vocal effects as a send and do loooooots of automation

So do I man . But the doubler effect stays on permanent. As i said, it is just to make the vox larger, not an effect per say, such as delay etc. It has a similiar effect such as Ermz are using he's short verb.

 

[Ermz]

Yeah, I omitted the doubler bit. I normally run Stillwell CMX the whole way through on the lead vocal. It's kinda like parallel compression for me... I'll tweak the send level until I can barely tell its there, and when I mute it totally I can feel something is 'missing' from the vocal. Don't like over-using fake stereo/chorus effects like that, but in the right amounts they can be sweet.

 

[Machinated]

Yeah, I omitted the doubler bit. I normally run Stillwell CMX the whole way through on the lead vocal. It's kinda like parallel compression for me... I'll tweak the send level until I can barely tell its there, and when I mute it totally I can feel something is 'missing' from the vocal. Don't like over-using fake stereo/chorus effects like that, but in the right amounts they can be sweet.

+1 on CMX

i use it like this for normal vocals, although it can also be cool for a stereo effect on certain phrases (bendeth does this a lot).

try feeding a CMX with double tracked vocals panned L and R and having it quite wet.

also, it can be cool to send more of the backing vocals to the CMX if they are panned to give more space to the vocals. can make a big chorus HUGE.

 

[Ermz]

I tried doing this yesterday. Found it actually made the vocals sound more narrow *shrug*.

 

[jipchen]

Thanks!
I used automation, distortion and EQ into Comp before, but the other points "sound" nice to me. Gonna try this asap.

 

[kev]

With staged compression, should you be grinding away say 2.5 db per instance until you reach where you wanna be, or do you flat out crush with each? I've never really tried it yet, and some guidelines there would be cool, although ultimately it will be down to experimentation.

 

[AntonioPetrole]

ermz i got this for you

<3

I thought you might want it.

haha in all seriousness thanks for the tips, its always great to see pro dudes posting tips. BTW this thread is prob gonna be bumped for the next month lol

 

[wibi08]

+1 on CMX

i use it like this for normal vocals, although it can also be cool for a stereo effect on certain phrases (bendeth does this a lot).

try feeding a CMX with double tracked vocals panned L and R and having it quite wet.

also, it can be cool to send more of the backing vocals to the CMX if they are panned to give more space to the vocals. can make a big chorus HUGE.

i'm gonna try it also!

 

[mickrich]

One trick I often use is to sidechain compress the vox verb return using the actual vocal track as the sidechain. Doing this lets louder parts of the vocal remain dryer and more upfront. It also lets more verb through at the end of phrases while keeping the actual vocal clear and less washy.
I also often sidechain compress the guitar bus from the vocal track using 1-2db of compression. This creates space for the vocal and the slight level changes in the guitars are pretty much transparent.

 

[Adenosine]

Cheers for taking the time to write this Ermz!
I've got some vocal tracks to play with..

 

[MetalSound]

always great on vocals is the uad roland dimension. it widens them in a very sweet way.
the waves doubler sometimes just sounds too much like a very short delay to me. but i haven´t used it very often. should give it some more tries maybe.

 

[wibi08]

One trick I often use is to sidechain compress the vox verb return using the actual vocal track as the sidechain. Doing this lets louder parts of the vocal remain dryer and more upfront. It also lets more verb through at the end of phrases while keeping the actual vocal clear and less washy.
I also often sidechain compress the guitar bus from the vocal track using 1-2db of compression. This creates space for the vocal and the slight level changes in the guitars are pretty much transparent.

what compressor do you use? because in cubase 5, sidechain is little bit complicated.

So many new tricks in this thread

 

[Scottxx]

Thanks Skinny for the explanation. I thought "EQ into compression" was a special technique, not an eq before the compressor.