5 Effects To Make Your Vocals More Interesting- RecordingRevolution.com

a friend Graham here from recording revolution comm today let's talk about your vocals let me give you five effects that you can use to make your vocals sound more interesting if you know you've been in this situation perhaps where you've recorded your own music and you've recorded your vocals and maybe the vocals were recorded well maybe they were performed well or maybe you were given tracks to mix from a client and the vocals are fine and they're not there's nothing wrong with them but they just sound a little boring they just don't sound as exciting as they could what do you do what are you supposed to do well there's a lot of solutions to this problem today I'm gonna give you five effects that you already have in your software that you can use to try out on your vocal now not all five of these are gonna work and it's gonna depend on the vocal and the day and the song and it's just gonna vary depending on what you need but you need to know these five effects so you can reach for them and try them out to see if they give your vocal a little bit more something special because vocals are important they're the center of our song so let me give an example this song really well recorded really well presented and the mix is coming together very easily and I like everything including the vocal it's just a little flat a little you know needing something so take a listen to it you'll know what I'm saying well zero in on the vocal and then I'll walk through five effects you can use to make your vocals more interesting [Music] [Applause] the sea turtle she forgot to mention but you show those way [Music] I'd love to see the sadness fear [Music] all right the vocals fine just kind of flat evidently older you should be much stronger now [Music] well recorded well performed it just needs something so let me walk through these five effects and you can try them out on your vocals anytime and see which one works effect number one is distortion distortion of all things screwing up your vocal can actually make it sound more interesting so if you have your software in front of you grab your favorite or your stock distortion plug and the most software comes with some for example in Pro Tools there's a couple but there's one I like called the air distortion plug-in and I like this because it has one important knob the mix knob you ideally want a distortion plug-in that has a mix knob or a blend knob or a wet/dry knob because what we want to do is apply distortion but then blend it with the clean vocal so it's not completely distorted it's just like a hint of distortion and if you don't have a mix knob on any of your distortion plugins you can do this in parallel I'll show you later on in the video how to do that but in essence I've got a distortion setting a little bit of Drive and I've just mixed it about 50/50 so take a listen to what this sounds like in solo before and then I'll turn it on if it didn't the older you should be much stronger [Music] Oh bittersweet attention you forgot to mention anyone but yourself subtle a little more interesting so let's listen to it in the mix you should be much stronger be the sweet attention he forgot to mention but you show I'd love to see this atmosphere those ways [Applause] right it's just a little more interesting that it comes forward a little bit with the mid-range it's got a little more sizzle up top it just sounds more interesting than a super clean squeaky clean vocal is this appropriate for every vocal no is this appropriate for every vocal every part of the song no you might want to kick in the distortion only on the chorus you might want to kick it in only on verse 2 you can do whatever but this is one of the effects you should definitely reach for blend some distortion and because if I take this fully to 100% you can hear what this is doing everything you should be much stronger and that's super affected so I'm just blending it in half way evident the older you should be much stronger nah [Music] bittersweet attention you forgot to mention anyone but you so I'd love to see this cool distortion is trick number one let's take that off now another effect you can use is the classic double effect this is where ideally you have a second recording of the same vocal pass to basically become a double a copy of it but it's not a digital copy you don't digitally copy this because that won't create any kind of doubling effect it'll just make your vocal louder but ideally you've rerecorded the same part twice on a separate track and you blend them together and they sound like this cool chorus effect in this case the client sent to track so there is a built-in double in the hook in the chorus so if we get to the chorus here you can hear it come in e1 but you so I'd love to see the sadness behind those wasted eyes right II won but yourself I'd love to see the sadness behind one those wasted eyes you got two of them it sounds like that cool chorus the effect that's a true double now if you're doing your own music you can simply rerecord this and make your own double there's no effect that you need there are plugins that can create a double effect but you don't need them just get your microphone out and record the same pass again as close to the original as you can and it's the slight imperfections that give you that double sound now if you don't have the ability to do this meaning it's not your song that you were given this to mix and you want to create a double you can do the old copy and paste from elsewhere trick so let's say I didn't have this double here let's say it does not exist so we'll make it inactive here's the hook let's just see the sadness behind those wasted eyes many things it again I'd love to see the sadness behind those waste he changes the ending there so we can go to the next hook here I'd love to see the sadness behind and what I'm gonna do is take chorus two and assuming this isn't a complete copy which it might be we can create a new track here and we'll copy and paste this as a double I'd love to see the sadness behind those wasted eyes see we did there we created our own double I'd love to see the sadness behind those wasted eyes as simple as that you go find the hook elsewhere in the song copy it and then paste it alongside the first one and then now we'd have to do the opposite for the second part of the song we take the original take here copy that and then go to course two and paste that on the second track I'd love to see the sadness behind those wasted eyes and then for the the double generally speaking it's copying my automations is off the lead vocal track I'll delete the automation I usually blend it down turn it down a little bit so it's a little bit blended oh I'd love to see the sadness feed [Music] I'd love to see the sadness behind those wasted eyes there you go you create an instant double doubling is your second effect to make the vocal more interesting and it's very common to throw in a double like here in the hook because it makes the vocal pop from the verse but some people like Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters have been using the double effect on all of his vocals for the whole part of the song since their first record in 1995 so the doubling effect could be your a thing on all of it all the time it's it can't be overdone in a sense because Dave Grohl has proved it that it still sounds cool every time he does it but maybe that's just because he's Dave Grohl there you go you got distortion you got doubling now let's move on to the another D word delay delay is such a powerful tool when my favorite effects and I've talked about that in previous videos but I'm gonna quickly show you an example of how a delay can make your vocal more interesting so let's make them active again and let's delete this guy don't need him anymore so what I've done is I have routed this vocal to a track I'm calling delay and this is on an auxiliary track and I'm using right here I'm using echo boy and I've picked just I start with a default setting and tweaked it a little bit so I have a cool sort of telephone affected echo and it can make the vocal sound really cool and have it come on I think here in the chorus let's take a listen but you so I'd love to see the sadness behind those wasted eyes right so it's it's this nice kind of telephone repeat listen to in context with a mix [Music] I'd love to see the sadness we stayed [Music] that's a real subtle way to use delay we could crank it up and make it more obvious there's a lot of different things we can do there but having a little bit of an echo that's affected that's filtered that's one of my favorite things to do is take a delay and then filter it out on the plug-in or just by putting an EQ after the delay can make your vocals a little more interesting so think about ways you can use delay either on the entire song all the way through the vocal or just on the hook now a fourth effect which is a close second to delay its really a cousin or delay is slap slap is a type of delay so technically it's the same effect but has a very different sound it's a super short delay and it really makes the vocal sound like it's in a real room so I've got the same thing happening here I've got to send going to what I'm calling a slap track and I'm using the same plug-in echoboy but I'm using a different preset and this preset which is called dirty slap is sorry I couldn't help myself very very short sixteenth note and it's filtered out a little bit and I'm using that um where is it being used let me see where I've got my slap mute on here in the bridge I believe [Music] - the party is over there in the back of your mind super super cool it's a very short delay like I said so what that short delay does versus the long quarter note delays is it make it sound more realistic like it's in a real room so it's it's gives you the sense of its slapping off the back of a wall slap back the layer slap delay [Music] [Music] [Music] nice is sadness lefty huh and you hear it so there you hit the difference you've got the slap then the dry vocal without the slap it sounds very close in a different space and then you could hear that echo delay coming in so there you go the fourth effect is slap back look for very very short delay times or look for a preset that has the word slap in it and experiment with different sounds cuz they can sound very different they can be mono they can beat the stereo they can be affected they can be clean but either way you get that sense of space like you're in a club you're in a bar you're in a room by yourself which makes the vocal very very interesting and some songs I'll put a slap on the vocal the entire songs it's appropriate for this song in this example I just put it on here in the bridge to make the bridge moment a little more intimate a little more interesting now let me give you a fifth and final effect that's really really fun in more sneaky and that is harmonics so or saturation what you can do here and this is a very helpful thing is to create a new auxilary track that is like a copy of the vocal track and so what i'm gonna do here is i'm gonna send this to my mix buss and i'm gonna create a send and send it to well let me name this track first i'm gonna call this vox arm well box fuzz let's call it that so let me be doing adding a little bit of fuzz a little bit of distortion a little bit of harmonics on the top-end so I'm gonna send a copy of this to Vox fuzz and make it pre fader and full volume and all this is doing is giving me a completely independent vocal here let's get to beginning you should be much stronger so now I've got the copy of the vocal here that's all I've done and what I want to do is add some harmonics to this so if you have something like I'm gonna use Steven slates for this there's two things I want you to think about adding here one is harmonics something like revival I can creates a lot of top-end harmonics evident the older you should be much stronger by passive evident the older you should be much stronger now so real crispy in the top-end something like that we have harmonics or art or oral excite or something like that to add top end through harmonics then I'm gonna this case I'm going to use the air top in on this plugin it's really really great EQ if you want to add that sizzle so I'm cranking top-end harmonics then what I want to do is I want to see let me roll down where is the trimmer plug-in take the volume down a little bit you should be much stronger and then what you can do is if you want to go one step further is compress it so I'm just gonna put 1176 on here get this on the screen and compress this you should be [Music] bittersweet attention you forgot to mention alright so now it's an awfully sizzle II squeezed squashed vocal track it's this fizzy top and harmonics vocal track let's pull the fader all the way down and now all we want to do is blend this in we're gonna raise it up a little bit just so we start to notice it on the vocal I don't want people to really hear this track I just want to add a texture or harmonics texture to my already clean vocal here see if it makes a difference if it didn't the older you should be much stronger [Music] bittersweet attention you forgot to mention anyone but you so I'd love to see the sadness behind those wasted eyes see what we did here see how it it comes alive when you turn on that vocal fuzz track evident the older you should be much stronger [Music] bittersweet attention you forgot to mention but you show I'd love to see the satisfy there's way and see how it cuts through the mix really nicely this is one of the most powerful tricks you have is a super top-end harmonically driven squashed compressed parallel vocal track that you just tuck in just underneath the lead vocal man so much power here to make your vocal still sound natural but cut through and then you have complete control over it because you've got this bonus fader here that you can turn that up or down automate it so harmonics is a great way you can do it directly on the track but I think you have a lot of control if you have it here on an individual track that you can blend in this is a similar technique you can use for the distortion effect if you don't have a mix knob on your distortion plug-in but adding krispy harmonics on the top and it can be great for your vocal and let me give you one bonus when I know I said five effects but let me give you one sixth and final one reverb just a simple room reverb can give your vocal a sense of width and life that's nice if I get rid of this vocal fuzz thing the vocal by itself even with the mix is kind of boring but I've got a reverb here that I'm using an old version of ozone on and I've got the whole mix going through this room reverb and it acts adds something nice to the lead vocal you should be much stronger right it sounds like it's in a room similar to the slap delay but different it's not it's more smooth it's not as obvious if it didn't the old you should be much you see the turn she forgot to mention [Music] so little room reverb can go a long way to putting your vocals in a more interesting space so there you have it six effects you can use on your vocals to make them more interesting and again pick and choose try one out on your vocal if it's not working try something else out this is just gonna give you six different things that you can try that might help you when your vocal sounds a little lifeless and you need to spice it up a little bit hope that was helpful for you before you go I want to give you something for watching this video all the way through if you're making music and you want it to sound like what you hear on the radio you gotta get my guide at the six steps to a radio ready song guide this is a resource I want you to have if you're making music because it's gonna give you a roadmap of what to do first in the studio what to do second every good song that you've ever heard goes through all six of these steps in the song creation process and a lot of us are skipping two or three of these steps on average and I don't want you to do that it's a huge reason why your songs probably don't sound as good as you want them to sound so in this simple PDF guide you can download it for free at radio-ready guide.com we'll put the link here and in the description box but download it for free read it real quickly print it out put it on your desk when you're making music if you're old-school like me or have it on your phone or your tablet whenever you're sitting down to make music that way you can check through it and make sure you got all the steps covered that way you know your song is gonna sound it's best that all the tricks in the world and all the techniques in the world won't help you if you don't have a plan or system and that's what this radio ready guy is gonna give you so I think it'll really help you so many of my students have downloaded it and just loved it and have referenced it over and over again as they make their own music and that's why I put it together because it really will help make that process faster smoother and make your song sound as good as they possibly can which is what we're all trying to do in our home studios so download my six steps to already already song guide as my free gift to you for watching this video you can get it at radio-ready guide.com that's all i got for you today thanks for watching thanks for subscribing to these videos and I'll see you on another video real soon

Channel: recordingrevolution

Views: 694,985

Keywords: vocal effects, mixing vocals, recording vocals, vocal mixing, producing voccals, vocal plugins, home studio, recording revolution

Id: Z4oJdTC_LCI

Length: 22min 27sec (1347 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 23 2018