Post
by roby » Fri May 16, 2008 9:20 pm
cool man, i hope you start recording vocals more to your liking. but yeah like it was mentioned before, don't use gate effects on vocals. they are really hard to set to make them sound natural. like it was mentioned before, the best thing is to draw volume envelopes to manage the silent and noisy parts, pops, etc. it's a time consuming process, but it is so well worth it.
that's what i've been doing with great success. once i record a good vocal take, and have adjusted envelopes to sound good, then i add a very mild compressor at around a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio just to tame and even things out a bit more. i follow that with an EQ, and EQ8 is really good at that. i try my hardest to record the best vocals possible so that i don't have to mess around with EQing it to death. but i do like cutting the low end frequencies, usually with a highpass filter. i should start using highpass shelf as suggested above. i like cutting frequencies at about 12khz too and lowering frequencies between 500hz and 2khz, depending on the mix, but very very lightly. i like cutting above 12khz to get a more "retro" (IMO, hehehe) feel to the vocals. in general, i'm learning that cutting or lowering frequencies is better than boosting...
as far as effects, i'm sort of tired of adding reverb to vocals. i come from the 90s shoegaze wall of reverb school, and so now i have a bit of a backlash against reverb or vocals. not that i dont use it, i just avoided, or should i say, it is not my standard effect to add to vocals. but what i do, as suggested above, again, is to record two takes of the same vocal line, and then pan them slightly left and right respectively. it's a neat effect. a good variation of that is to set both takes to the same panning value, let's say center, set the volume for the first take so it sits well on the mix, then slowly raise the volume of the second take until you start to hear the vocals thicken up. ideally i set for example take 1 to volume of 0.0db and take 2 to like 6 or 9 dbs lower than the first.
you could also add a chorus effect with a slow speed and low depth.
a slapback delay is my favorite effect. that's just a very short delay with no feedback...
