How To Record That Foo Fighters (Dave Grohl) Vocal Sound - RecordingRevolution.com

hey friend Graham here from recording revolution calm today I want to do something fun I want to show you how to get that Dave Grohl Foo Fighters doubled vocal effect now if you don't know what I'm talking about just go and listen to just about every single Foo Fighters song since 1995 [Music] [Applause] [Music] starting from that very first debut self-titled record where Dave played every instrument and was the entire band as it were he's always had that signature double vocal sound now he didn't invent this this has been going on for decades and he's not the only one these days using it but growing up in the 90's and listening to grunge I listened to a lot of Foo Fighters and I got real used to that sound and it's a very useful technique and it's so simple to do but the reason I'm doing this video is twofold one there's a mistake that people make they assume you can do this in post-production and you kind of can with some plugins and you kind of can fake it with some manipulation which I've done in the past year and I've shown you that but you can't just copy and double a vocal inside of your da W it won't sound bigger it'll just sound like the same thing only louder you need an actual double you need to actually re-record the part on a separate take so let me show you what that looks like I'm gonna sing the vocal on one of my songs one time through so you can take a listen to what it sounds like then I'm gonna perform the double so you can hear them together and then I'm gonna show you inside of Pro Tools how to treat the double to clean it up a little bit in a couple of options we have to get that massive really cool Foo Fighters Dave Grohl sound [Music] it's me it's gotta break this spell on me till the story's all broken [Applause] now I'm going to rerecord all that on a separate track inside of my software so I'll be listening to my original and basically re performing the exact same thing with the goal of trying to follow along as closely as possible gotta break this story's all broken [Music] day all right so here are my two takes gram box and gram box double so again two separate tracks two separate performances and here's what they sound like together as is right so now when you're in the software you have a lot of choices of how prominent you want this effect to be do you want it to be a super obvious double like it is with all of Dave girls stuff and Foo Fighters or do you want it to be a little more subtle so that's all going to be a play with level pick your main vocal in this case I'm going to say Vox one and put it at an appropriate level and then take your double and tuck it underneath a little bit so here's let's say seven DB down [Music] take it away the double nose [Music] so now you've got the effect even when it's tucked down you know 7 DB or so so here's a couple of tips for you to make this even more effective depending on how good you are at doubling yourself or the vocalist is it might be worth tightening up some consonants so what I mean is you're not gonna perfectly line up nor do you need to that's why it sounds cool because it's slightly off but you don't want to have any distractions and so certain consonants like the end of phrases like if you end on a P or a K or a T that final sound is obvious when it's missing and so let's see if we can find any in this example I get no sleep from these whispers in my in my victory is Christian mob leading and I know it's me if you wanted to be picky this is clenched is clenched the second one comes in later than the first one is Christian so you could tighten this up if you want you know that sounds fine I'm gonna leave it keep listen it's gonna break this spell on me it's gonna break it it's kind of braked it that's fine I won't be free until the story's all broken in all pretty good there let's get to the hook something's gone wrong these days cuz coming out swinging these blades Trump so right here the S is blaze I come in later on my s on the second take that I'm doing the first one so literally this is what I do I'll break it let's zoom in here and I'll just move the S over because this is not a vocalization this is just a consonant in these days trying to prove solves the problem ace trying to prove it's for honor something's gone wrong these days cuz the card outs what what's still fine Mike a comes in a little earlier so you could always I'm just showing you could be more picky could just break it here and slide this up drop in a crossfade if you really want to be correct cuz the card I'll swing in these blades trying to prove same thing the S is here and what you notice is I'm basically deferring to the first take you got to pick one take to be the correct it doesn't matter so if the first one's the best performance make that correct and slide the continents consonants excuse me on the other ones to that blades trying to prove its fall so that was a really clean performance and I'm not Tooting my own horn I sometimes don't get it and sometimes it's the lyrics if the lyrics have a lot more consonants I'm ending on a K or T or P it's harder to time that perfectly so I will go through and just tighten up a couple of those ones that are distractions and I do this primarily while listening to it in context I just so load here so that you could get a taste of what I'm trying to do and pay attention but I don't edit just for editing I just if something's like oh that's distracting I'll get rid of the distraction that way I keep the double effect without the distraction but how much is the distraction is up to you and it depends on the style of song so I'll clean it up real quick and then now you've got a couple choices you can use the double the whole song [Music] from these whispers or you could say you know what let's mute it and diverse and just bring it in in the hook till the story's all broken in and then since its louder I might turn up the double so you hear more [Music] [Applause] or what you can do and this has done lots of times is hard pan them left and right if that's the case you're gonna want to make them equal volume and treat it as a different effect so now I've got the lead one on the left the double on the right and you get this [Music] you might not like that but it's in plenty of songs it's a legitimate choice if you want to compromise though and you want it all or can't pick one of the other you can do the old-fashioned triple that's right you don't have to do just a double you can do a triple and I didn't tell you but I recorded one here just in case we wanted to go that direction so what you do is now you get the exact same thing all third time I Reaper formed it a third time so then what I can do is go back to keeping this first one up the middle and normal and then I can pan the double and the triple left and right and get a different vibe here so now we've got a triple something's gone wrong these days cuz the common out swing in these blades trying to prove here that vibe and then here is sort of the s that was see how I held this long no doubt these days so I would edit this a little bit I would just literally chop like delete that break it here and then just kind of move that in and just blend these so it's a little shorter these days cuz the common out swinging these blades trying to prove in that cool so now you've got the option of the triple which is one of my absolute favorites because you get the power of the double but you get the vocal still up the middle and still wide so you kind of get it all you can of course go quadruple you could double the leaf vocal up the middle and still have ones on the left and the right or you can just go gang vocals which is lots and lots of doubles you know six seven eight nine ten twelve twenty all singing the same thing and it just sounded huge and thick and the reason why this works is simply because it's the exact same performance as tight as possible but it's never exactly the same performance because it's impossible to do that as a human and it's a slight variance that create the phasing effect that sounds warm and coracii yet still sounding natural because you're not messing with anything you're just re performing the vocal so there you have it the Dave Grohl Foo Fighters double vocal effect it is the easiest thing to do one of the oldest recording tricks in the book but you got to think about it on a recording day and then just nuance it a little bit inside of the software if you want it to be tighter now two things one leave me a comment let me know do you use this double effect do you actually do this in your own recordings if so let me know yes if not let me know if you're going to use it in your recordings moving forward so leave a comment below the video and - I want to give you something if you want more tips and training on how to get better sounding recordings period in your home studio how to think about production and recording and even songwriting and mixing and mastering all of that if it's overwhelming to you or if you're just dipping your toes in the water or if you're on YouTube land and you're watching this video and then another one and someone else's video in the 13 other videos and you're trying to like put it all together let me give you something that might help I have put together a simple PDF guide called my six steps to a radio ready song this is the guide I wish I had when I was getting into recording before YouTube existed what it does is walk you through the six steps that every single song you've ever heard of whether it's a Foo Fighters song or one of my own or anything that's on the radio every single song goes through these six steps and so what I do is map it out for you so you can see point A to point B and know what the steps are but then I take it a little further I give you some tips and tricks and best practices for all six of those steps and they all affect each other like we just saw today recording is one of the steps effects mixing which is another step and there's only two of the six so this is a super helpful guide easyread it's meant to be a ongoing resource where you download it keep it on your phone print it out put it on your desk or whatever so when you're making music you can reference it and then get from point A to point B and get songs that don't just sound okay but songs I sound so good that they could be on the radio which is the goal so to grab this free guy just go to radio ready guide.com with the link right here somewhere on the screen and down below in the description box so you can just go to radio ready guide com get your free download and then use it please use it it will help you as you're making music so enjoy that as my gift to you have some fun doing some doubles in your next recording project I'll see you another video real soon

Channel: recordingrevolution

Views: 83,629

Keywords: foo fighers, dave grohl, vocal double, vocal effect, recording vocals, how to record vocals, mixing vocals, home studio, recording revolution, recordingrevolution

Id: efEoY6LMkQk

Length: 15min 27sec (927 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 27 2018