Tips on processing Vocals

[dboy1612]

I'm currently working with some Stems I found of Attack Attack's The Wretched and have started tracking clean vocals though I'm not sure what route I should take for processing to come close the processing done on that album. So far I've thrown on JST Gain Reduction to see what it can do and it's a great start, but I'm a bit lost on my next step.

What do you guys do with clean vocals? Or have ideas on getting this sound? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Tune where needed, some verb and maybe a little delay. Doesn't sound like anything crazy to me.

 

[dboy1612]

Tune where needed, some verb and maybe a little delay. Doesn't sound like anything crazy to me.

Thanks for that! Any advice on doubles? Been trying something like Nectar 2 Harmony and haven't seem to be able to get it to fit just right.

 

[exoslime]

i havnt listend to your example yet /no youtube acces right now
but getting that very polished and flawless vocals sound does indeed take some serious amount of work.
if you are willing to learn i suggest you to purchase those both online courses from creativelive.com , they cover really alot of important stuff that can help you out and inspire you in a great way
https://www.creativelive.com/courses/flawless-vocals-recording-editing-mixing-kris-crummett
https://www.creativelive.com/courses/recording-rock-guitars-andrew-wade

Basically, get it right at the source, so get awesome vocal takes to start with, and finetune it with melodyne, make the support vocal takes perfectly align and use vocalign for that.. it works amazing!

But please aware, if the performance itself is not good, it wont deliver, not matter what you are going to do with postprocessing.

izotope nectar is a nice programm but it harmonizing sounds pretty "synthetic" imho. what you can do is to yield more natural harmony is this:
when you have 3 tracks of main vocals tuned at original pitch
dont just use the 2 tracks of them to create harmonies, you need to use takes that you not have in your mix already, and pitch those up/down with melodyne.. that way it sounds way more natural and not as synthetic.

so then you basically need to record 5 great takes of those parts.. or even 7 takes if you want to have more harmonies, so your vocal group is going to consist of this:
1x Main Lead Vocal, panned Center
2x Main Lead Support Vocals, same pitch as lead vocal, pannend hard left and right or 80/80
2x or 4x harmony vocal tracks panned left and right to taste, pitch up or down with melodyne

compression and eq is another story.. gently reverb and delay also helps to sit them in the mix
tape saturation also works great sometimes..
i try not to overcompress, but sometimes lots of compression also does sound good.. so it depends, its always about to suit the recorded performance.
i really like to compress the support-lead vocal tracks alot so that they will not jump around as much and being more constant in volume.

and also i put a compressor with a fairly low compress rate on the vocal group-bus

i have the reverb and delays on aux send channels and set to 100% wet and not part of the vocal chain, so that i can always mix them to taste and dont need to care about other settings in the vocal chain, like compression..
hope that helps you at least to get an idea of it

 

[guy in latvia]

Out of curiosity, how do you guys normally pan vocals? Say there are 3 layers of the same main performance and then there are 2-4 harmony layers?

 

[exoslime]

sometimes hard pan left and right, and sometimes a little bit less like 80/80 or 85/85. depending on the song,.. sometimes it can be irritating if the support-vocal tracks are too wide and hit you in the face too much, especially when you come from a narrowed mono vocal prechorus or verse.
i also mix those support leadvocal tracks pretty low in volume, as i just want to fatten up the lead vocal track, instead of having it sound like a choir!
here is also a nice article and general overview for pannings in general

 

[dboy1612]

i havnt listend to your example yet /no youtube acces right now
but getting that very polished and flawless vocals sound does indeed take some serious amount of work.
if you are willing to learn i suggest you to purchase those both online courses from creativelive.com , they cover really alot of important stuff that can help you out and inspire you in a great way
https://www.creativelive.com/courses/flawless-vocals-recording-editing-mixing-kris-crummett
https://www.creativelive.com/courses/recording-rock-guitars-andrew-wade

Basically, get it right at the source, so get awesome vocal takes to start with, and finetune it with melodyne, make the support vocal takes perfectly align and use vocalign for that.. it works amazing!

But please aware, if the performance itself is not good, it wont deliver, not matter what you are going to do with postprocessing.

izotope nectar is a nice programm but it harmonizing sounds pretty "synthetic" imho. what you can do is to yield more natural harmony is this:
when you have 3 tracks of main vocals tuned at original pitch
dont just use the 2 tracks of them to create harmonies, you need to use takes that you not have in your mix already, and pitch those up/down with melodyne.. that way it sounds way more natural and not as synthetic.

so then you basically need to record 5 great takes of those parts.. or even 7 takes if you want to have more harmonies, so your vocal group is going to consist of this:
1x Main Lead Vocal, panned Center
2x Main Lead Support Vocals, same pitch as lead vocal, pannend hard left and right or 80/80
2x or 4x harmony vocal tracks panned left and right to taste, pitch up or down with melodyne

compression and eq is another story.. gently reverb and delay also helps to sit them in the mix
tape saturation also works great sometimes..
i try not to overcompress, but sometimes lots of compression also does sound good.. so it depends, its always about to suit the recorded performance.
i really like to compress the support-lead vocal tracks alot so that they will not jump around as much and being more constant in volume.

and also i put a compressor with a fairly low compress rate on the vocal group-bus

i have the reverb and delays on aux send channels and set to 100% wet and not part of the vocal chain, so that i can always mix them to taste and dont need to care about other settings in the vocal chain, like compression..
hope that helps you at least to get an idea of it

Thanks so much for that, really insightful! Going to give it all a shot sometime in the next few days, will hopefully report back with something nice.

 

[Line666]

Echo the melodyne/vocalign comments - insanely useful for stacking modern stuff cleanly. There's lots of double takes and harmonies of the main take straight down the centre here mostly with the synth creating a lot of width at the chorus (sometimes you'll want to have a lot more stacked harmonies to left and right here like exoslime mentioned) Have to disagree with Bryan - there's a lot processing/automation/stacking going on here - it's not really all that simple.

To get this modern sound theres usually lots of staged compression, a bit of saturation, surgical/creative eq, plugins to create additional width/dimensionality to the main take like a stereo doubler (this is a cool trick if you don't want the mids on the vocal to seem too focused but it's hard to dial in as a beginner without causing havoc to your vocal image) and automated delay throws - they're usually at the end of lines or for emphasis (1:10-1:11 and also 1:32 for example). All the takes will be tuned and time aligned and there's a lot of creative automation for effect like at the bridge where things are spaced out with heavier delay and reverb.

People underestimate the amount of work that goes into a good vocal process as its all preening and doubling and it shouldn't appear obvious as it just sounds good and, I dunno if subtle is really the word, but to the casual listener it creates dimensionality without really being actively perceived as anything but a single take.

 

[Line666]

Also when it comes to harmonies - synthesising them is never really an alternative to getting the vocalist to work them out and perform them themselves.