How PROs Use Vocal Delay & Reverb

what is up welcome to the vocal delay and reverb master class this is jake codeweiss with musician on a mission and here's what you're gonna learn in this lesson how to get the vocal to sit well in the mix how to create a sense of width how to fix a washed out vocal so it sounds clearer in the mix and how to add obvious creative effects with vocal delay and reverb let's jump in [Music] first why might you want to use delay and reverb on your vocals in the first place couple main reasons one to create a more subtle sense of space or depth to get the vocal to really kind of sit nicely in the mix and two to add more obvious creative effects for things like filling space in the mix getting a specific vibe and so on we're going to talk about all these things as we move through the lesson and in this master class we're going to be bussing our delays and reverbs rather than inserting them directly on the track so why might you want to do that basically because it allows for more flexibility when it comes to tone shaping and further techniques you're going to learn about today so let's start with how to get the vocal to sit well in the mix and the problem is that you might feel like your vocal is isolated like it doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the instrumentation almost like it sits on top of the mix or maybe it feels like it sits way out in front of everything else like it's not a part of the band or it's not a part of the backing track so let's talk about solutions what are some ways you can fix this issue and get that vocal to really sink in and feel like it's more of a part of the track first you could rebalance the vocal ask yourself can you simply turn the volume of your vocal up or down so it sits better in the mix i like to start with the simplest solution first and sometimes that just means tweaking a fader a little bit so just something to think about next you could use a short reverb to give the listener the impression that the vocal is sitting in a physical space so let's open up the daw i want to show you an example of what this might look like let's go to this here all right we've just got a couple stems here instruments and then the dry lead only let's take a listen [Music] forever is it just dry vocal isolated from the rest of the mix so let's add a short reverb here to get it to kind of sit a little bit better and a sense of space here i'm gonna go ahead i'm gonna create a new bus i'm going to name it short verb and i'm going to pick my favorite reverb plugin and i'm going to bring up just a basic short reverb that i like to use on vocals uh let's see here let's do small box now that's a pretty obvious effect right so we just kind of want to blend this in so it's really more felt than heard okay so let's do that now [Music] [Music] do you love me right just kind of adding a sense of width and a sense that that vocal is actually sitting in a space and i'll solo the vocal so you can really kind of hear what's going on here ah you mine is it all in my mind versus do you love me forever is it just a matter of time right now let's listen to context [Music] [Music] so a couple things to keep in mind here when i say a short reverb i generally mean anything really kind of lower than one second decay time right so here you can see we've got 700 milliseconds you're just going to have to really kind of experiment with decay time to see how it kind of like bounces with the track we can actually probably bring this down a little bit but it's really just a matter of preference right it's a it's a matter of how it kind of moves and breathes with [Music] i'm gonna bring it up so i can really kind of hear what's going on then i'll blend it back in so what i'm kind of listening for here is the decay the reverb disappearing during r u mine right r u mine so i want it to decay all the way before the word you right after the word are and before the word you kind of just feeling that little bit of a space that's how i'm thinking about this reverb in a more musical way right and you can hear that we've got that it just it just decays all pretty much all the way in between those lyrics obviously this is going to be different from song to song it really kind of depends on what's going on in the mix so there's no real kind of one size fits all here but just as a general rule of thumb think about short reverb as being anything below one second decay time and time it to the tempo of the of the track so it's breathing and pumping with the track let's blend that in [Music] do we need to rewind [Music] all right and how subtle you are with this technique again it's just kind of based on preference right just keep in mind that this is one of those techniques that create depth and a little bit of width just so the vocal sits nicely in the mix this is one of those subtle techniques more felt than heard that's really kind of the key phrase here next way you can get that vocal to kind of really sit well in the mix you could use a short delay to accomplish the same thing give the listener the impression that the vocal is sitting in a physical space and the main difference here is that delay just sounds a little bit different it can be cleaner and it can sit better in a more dense arrangement but again and you're going to kind of see this as a consistent theme here i encourage you to experiment experiment with both short reverbs and short delays just to see what you like better and what kind of fits best in the mix let's take a look at what a short delay might look like create a new aux track i'm going to say short delay i'm going to bring up a delay plugin uh short yeah let's start with 16th note for now and we'll kind of mess around with this i just want the lowest feedback so just a single echo happening here and we'll make sure we're routed correctly let's dial this in let's see what we got you mine is it all mine okay nice and short i think six sixteenth note works fairly well and again we're just gonna kind of dial this in so that it's more felt than heard [Music] [Music] you right so when we have this short delay on really kind of sits the vocal into a space right brings some dimension sits it well in the mix [Music] let's compare that against the short verb [Music] do we need to rewind see so both of these really kind of accomplish the same thing gives the listener a perception of a physical space but they do it in a slightly different way and they have their own kind of slightly different sounds again there's no real kind of right answer or one-size-fits-all answer here you just gotta kind of play around with these to see what kind of sits best and what you prefer for your mix next you could add a longer reverb to kind of smooth out the vocal and create some depth and vibe so i actually like the short reverb for this vocal so i'm going to keep that there and then i'm going to put in a long verb use the same plugin but choose maybe a medium haul a longer decay see we got right so that's obviously an exaggerated example right first i'm going to set a decay time here and i think you can think of longer verbs decay time anyway as anything longer than a second just as a general rule of thumb so here i'm going to dial it in and again just kind of dial in a decay time that kind of breathes with the track that's longer than a second i like that about right there that's fine again you'll just have to experiment with different reverb types now let's blend this into taste and the objective here is to just kind of create kind of this smoothing of the vocal bring in a little bit more depth and create some vibe with [Music] it matter of time [Music] do we need to rewind do you love me [Music] i like that right there let's listen without and then width [Music] [Music] really really nice kind of fills in a lot of the space and it creates that depth creates that vibe that i feel like this song really kind of calls for and it's not in an overly obvious way again this is just kind of a subtle more felt than heard kind of way we might even dial this back a little bit more [Music] see that vocal is clearly isolated there and it's not really kind of sitting well in the track now with our reverbs [Music] [Music] do you love [Music] next solution to really kind of get your vocals to sit well in the mix consider shaping the tone of your wet effects and when i say wet effects it just means reverbs and delays time-based effects like that so you can use eq to dial in your reverbs and delays even further to get everything sitting nicely in the mix and i'll show you what this looks like so let's just take our long reverb for example some reverb plugins have eqs built right into it like this one's got a low band a mid band and high band you kind of shape the tone this way but i like to add an eq after the track or after the insert and shape it with a separate plugin just because it's the way i prefer to do it the way i've always done it and it gives me a little bit more flexibility so how might i shape this reverb in the mix let's take a listen uh i might decide that i don't want any low end coming into this reverb or this reverb really kind of contributing any low end information to the mix so i might just pull in a high pass here just to keep this area clear it's also a little on the bright side for me so maybe i want this vocal to feel a little bit darker well i might roll off some of the high end the shelf or a filter the point is you can use eq to shape the tone of that verb whether it's your short verbs your long verbs any of your wet effects so let's roll off the high end a little bit you mine is it all in my mind do you love me forever is it just a matter of time are you mine do we need to rewind do you love me whatever bodies together entwined so i like that right there just kind of making that reverb a little bit darker gradual roll-off here so that only kind of the mid-range is poking through [Music] do you love me forever is it just a matter of time do we need to rewind right just dialing in the tone of that reverb a little bit more is there anything we would do on our short reverb oh let's check see [Music] i might do the same thing roll off a little bit of the highs here just to make it just a little bit duller and darker [Music] [Music] and if this short reverb is creating any kind of build up in any of the frequency spectrum at all right kind of maybe in the uh 200 to 300 range and this is going to be different depending on what your source material is but you can kind of attack that here in this stage right if when you add your reverbs you start to get a little bit of build up in whichever range right in this case i'm hearing a little bit of build up right here that's kind of amplifying this range of the frequency spectrum well you can cut that out you can shape the tone of that reverb so you don't get that build up but you still get the effect [Music] now i just want to be very clear here that this isn't something that i will do with every single wet effect it's this technique where i'm rolling off the lows and rolling off the highs i know a lot of guys who just do this religiously without thinking about it i like to think about what's actually going on in the mix first and ask myself questions like okay is this long reverb contributing to a high end build up or is it making the vocal sound brighter than i want it to sound yes only then will i apply my filter on the high end right it's not something i just automatically do so just the practice of mixing with intention and how that's a pretty important thing to do right everything kind of depends on what's going on in context with the rest of the mix it's all about relationships here so the point is the main takeaway here is that you can shape the tone of your reverb to get that vocal to sit better in the mix and to make sure that your reverb isn't creating any buildup in any specific areas you have total control of that by adding an eq after the insert next let's talk about how to create a sense of width and the goal here is just to make the vocal more interesting to listen to by filling in the left to right space of the stereo field using wet effects so what are some ways you can do this first you could use a short reverb to create a sense of space around the vocal without pushing it further back in the mix like a longer reverb might right and we've already kind of gone over how to do this using a short reverb can help get your vocal to sit well in the mix but it also doubles as a way to create a little bit of width next you could use a stereo delay where you dial in slightly different timings on the left and the right channels let's add a new bus and i'm going to call this stereo delay we're going to add delay plugin we're going to start with 16th note [Music] so right now i've just got a 16th note delay going right up the center let's play around with these let's unlink this and i'm going to put a delay on one side on the left side in a slightly different timing on the right side let's go ahead and i'm actually going to put this into milliseconds rather than sync it with the tempo it's just a little bit easier to do so maybe i'll just take down the right side a little bit is [Music] let's just go dry i'm only gonna pop in the stereo delay right now obviously that's an exaggerated example we might just blend that into taste [Music] do you love me forever is it just [Music] and you can be as subtle or obvious with this kind of effect as you want to be you could use this effect to replace your short reverb or you can use this in conjunction it's really up to you experiment see what works for you see what works for the mix and i might sculpt the tone of this a little bit also so inside of this particular delay plug-in there are high-pass filters and low-pass filters you can use it directly in the plugin or you can use a separate eq totally up to you uh this one i'm going to use inside the plugin i'll roll off up to 500 here and then to 4k here let's play with it ah [Music] so you can hear really kind of like that's come in right the sibilance and maybe we want to tame that a little bit maybe i just kind of want to tame the high end and make it a little bit darker [Music] and let's actually bring the feedback down because it's repeating too much for me right let's just do a single feedback [Music] [Music] again more just kind of felt than heard using this in a very kind of subtle way totally up to you on how you want to use this technique just one way to bring in some width and fill out that left to right information next you could use a ping-pong delay to alternate the delay from the left and the right channels so i'm going to use the stereo delay track we set up and dial this in for a ping pong let's do a 16th note and i'll select the ping pong button here let's just see what that sounds like [Music] so you can hear it's kind of cascading from the left channel to the right channel see what happens when we turn up the feedback a little bit [Music] let's blend it in [Music] [Music] do we need to again you can make it as obvious or as subtle as you want i like that right there i think that's cool to have kind of like a short delay so i'm just going to say 16th ping pong and you can make this longer too right play around with the times to kind of see where it sits in the mix this is a dotted sixteenth note right let's try full [Music] let's try eighth note [Music] [Music] i really like how that eighth note kind of moves along with the rhythm and sits that vocal in the mix that sounds good to me so just another option next let's talk about fixing a washed out vocal right and the problem here is usually an imbalance between the dry vocal and the reverb or the delay so there are a few things you can do here first you could try to rebalance your wet effects right simplest solution first can you turn down your reverbs or delays so that the vocal just cuts through the mix a little bit better next you could try a different reverb experiment with different reverb types and pick the one that kind of allows the vocal to cut through the most play with rooms halls plates get a feel for these different types and create your own list of preferences next try shaping the tone of your wet effects it's something we already talked about but use eq to cut frequencies in the reverb or the delay that might be masking the vocal and just a quick tip here keep an eye on the upper mids around the 1k to 6k range because this is where a lot of vocal clarity and presence lives and you may be able to clean up the vocal by cutting this area on your wet fx this isn't all like a one size fits all solution really it depends on your vocal and your reverb and everything else you've got going on in the mix but masking in the upper mids specifically just something to be aware of so for example if you're losing some intelligibility the lead then you might kind of look at this area right here look to see what's going on in this area and maybe you can carve out a little bit of space for your vocal here all right again it i can't tell you that this is going to work every time because it depends on the source material but just wanted to show you an example of what that might look like next you could try using pre-delay on your reverbs to separate the dry signal from the wet signal which can help push the vocals forward a little bit more in the mix for example if you've got a long reverb here see i'm gonna mute our other wet effects and we're just gonna kind of stick with our long reverb and this plug-in has a pre-delay knob a lot of reverbs do you could use this knob to separate the wet signal from the dry signal you mine so i'm going to tell the reverb to wait 80 milliseconds 84.1 milliseconds before it activates uh you mine is it all in my mind let's exaggerate a little bit more uh you mine is right so it's basically a delay it just delays the reverb a little bit so if the vocals getting buried from your reverbs try to play around with the pre-delay times a touch [Music] mine do and then without pre-delay uh you mine and then with you mine right just kind of keeps the vocal a little bit further up front so experiment with this this is a setting that can make a big difference for helping the intelligibility of a vocal next you can try using sidechain compression to automatically duck the volume of your wet effects whenever the vocal is present let's say you've got a longer reverb here and you want it a little bit more obvious just in the gaps of the lyrics rather than kind of washing out the vocal so let's kind of dial that in right darling in just a little bit more obvious and then we're going to add some compression i'm going to side chain this to the vocal our dry lead i'm gonna go fastest attack fastest release for now i'm gonna set that in just a minute and let's set the threshold [Music] so what's going on here is this compressor is automatically ducking the volume of the long reverb when the vocal is present and then in the gaps it releases that reverb so that it comes forward in the mix i'm just going to solo the vocal so you can hear what's going on are you mine is it all in my mind all right and then you can set the timing of the release so that it kind of breathes with the track and moves with the tempo of the song are you mine is it all in my mind do you love me and you can make this effect a little bit more obvious ratio ah you mine is it all in my mind right so the reverb just kind of slowly fades in automatically in the gaps of the lyrics so when the vocal is actually present it's a little bit more intelligible and you're kind of fixing that that washiness just makes it a little clearer i'm proving clarity are you mine is it all in my mind and then without you mine is it all in my mind do you love me forever is it just a matter of time are you mine do we need to rewind [Music] do you love me whatever bodies together entwined are you mine [Music] again you can be as obvious or as subtle with this as you need to be whatever the mix calls for whatever you prefer so next let's talk about adding obvious creative effects with delay and reverb and again the goal here isn't really to fix problems it's more about identifying opportunities where you might be able to make the vocal more interesting so some things you could try you could stack delays and reverbs to create a more ambient effect for example let's dial in a little bit more of a subtle long reverb here that sounds fine and then let's go back to our eighth ping-pong i'm going to increase the rate [Music] right pretty cool i'm gonna make that a little bit more obvious now delay is pretty cool i like that but let's make it a little bit more ambient with some reverb i'm gonna use my favorite reverb plugin and oh i'm just gonna do a medium haul and stack this after the delay let's hear how that sounds [Music] very cool so much more obvious much more ambient kind of ghostly sounding i'll dial in the decay a little bit [Music] and then might just play with the dry wet signal a touch [Music] just delay first [Applause] right really kind of clean delay happening and then we slap some reverb on afterwards is it all in my mind just to push it back give it some wetness just kind of creating a different texture mine is mind do you love me forever is it just a matter of time right and you you can shape the tone of all this too if you wanted to right is it all in my mind do you love me forever is it just a matter of time are you mine do we need to rewind do you love me what everybody's together is [Music] you mine is it all in my mind do you love me forever is it just a matter of time [Music] next you can try using reverb and delay throws to pull the listener's attention during gaps in lyrics gaps in lyrical phrases so rather than having a delay effect that kind of rides all the way through the vocal you would pick and choose individual places to just do a single echo or a single vocal delay right that's a throw delay or a throw verb and there are many different ways you can do this you can automate and insert directly onto the track so it just bypasses and activates as you need it to you can automate a bus to turn on and off just for specific words or specific sections i personally like to create brand new tracks for throw delays right so i'll show you what this looks like so i have a dry vocal here and then i've got i'm going to name this throw delay i'm going to take all my buses off of that throw delay track i don't need them there and basically i'll just copy all the processing over from the dry lead onto the throat delay track and i will add an insert directly on the throw delay track so let's say got a delay plug-in single feedback at let's just say quarter note for now we're probably going to dial that in and then i will do some editing here [Music] so that my mind my mind my i'm going to turn off our ping-pong delay just for sick of example here so let's say i just want this part to repeat my mind my mind my mind i'll actually grab this and copy it down to my throat delay track and let's hear what that sounds like right that's it i've got this delay on 100 wet i got the mix on 100 wet so when this plays through it's going to repeat [Music] now let's play with the timing a little bit so it sits better with the track try half note [Music] all right maybe up the feedback [Music] let's do a little bit more and then i don't know let's do some ping pong [Music] all right now let's make it a little bit more i don't know let's make it a little bit more ghostly i'll stack a reverb on to that throat track again i want just kind of like a longer haul reverb we'll put the wet dry at 50 see what we got [Music] it's way too obvious to dial that in just going to bring down the volume of the throw delay track [Music] cool right so just having an extra track just for throws this is actually something that i will set up ahead of time and then i don't have to mess with automation or anything like that i can just do a little bit of creative editing when the thought kind of strikes me and just copy down a section of the vocal [Music] right so that's just an example of a throw delay with a little bit of reverb on it you could do the same thing with re reverb effects right maybe you just want a reverb throw where the reverb is a little bit more obvious on a specific word you know rather than this kind of like obvious repeating kind of thing you just kind of want one word or maybe a couple words at the end of a phrase that just kind of ring out let's do that all right let's make it really obvious i'm just gonna jack up the decay time and also make it 100 wet all right so it's just that one word that kind of gets the reflex right maybe not that obvious it really rings out you'd have to experiment with a reverb that works here this one obviously doesn't work very well with the track let's try this large church that's a long reverb right five seconds decay time but it might work see really cool kind of effect right just kind of ringing out on that one word well just another way you can strategically add wet effects to fill in space and make things a little bit more interesting and again you don't have to use this method either where you just create new tracks and add inserts directly onto the tracks you can do this however you want you can use automation to turn buses on and off or affect send levels up and down or you can add an insert directly onto the track and just turn it on and off use automation turning it on and off do it that way totally up to you the point is i want you to come away from this lesson with the strategy to use a throw and how you do it completely up to you whatever makes the most sense for your brain next and we already talked about this a little bit you could use sidechain compression to duck obvious and heavily processed wet effects so earlier on we talked about this in the context of a more subtle use of reverb to create more of a vibe and a smoothness in the track and fix a washed up vocal create a little bit more intelligibility the only difference here would be how obvious the actual effect is so let's just quickly take a look at that in the daw let's add sidechain compression to our ping pong like a longer ping-pong [Applause] [Music] delay let's say i just kind of want this really obvious ping-pong delay to come in during the gaps in the vocals i just add some sidechain compression we'll sidechain it to the dry lead turn off these auto settings fastest attack let's dial this in [Music] do you love [Applause] do you love me forever is it just a matter of time [Music] right just kind of automatically filling in the gaps without sidechain compression [Music] and finally experiment right this is kind of the general theme this is the thing i've been saying over and over and over again in this lesson make sure to just try different types of delays and reverbs stack different plugins and have fun with it the more you do this the more you'll amass a list of your own kind of preferences and your own kind of techniques so i know we covered a lot in this lesson here's a recap of everything that we talked about feel free to pause the video take a screen cap of this little cheat sheet what are some of your favorite vocal delay and reverb tips let me know in the comments obviously there's much more than just vocal reverb and delay to getting your music to sound professional so if you're ready to learn how to go from hobbyist to pro as quickly as possible make sure to join me for the free training by following the link in the description if you liked the video hit the like button subscribe to learn more about mixing and music production thanks for watching and may your next mix be your best mix yet see ya [Music] you

Channel: Mastering․com

Views: 47,017

Keywords: vocal delay & reverb, vocal delay and reverb, vocal delay, vocal reverb and delay, vocal reverb, perfect vocal reverb & delay, mixing vocals using reverb and delay, how to use vocal delay to make your vocals sound pro, musician on a mission, sam smyers, slatedigitalTV, masteryourmix, waves audio, Valentina Bilancieri, wayne.wav

Id: OAS9QaU80nU

Length: 49min 39sec (2979 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 22 2022