Tips for Smoothing Vocals/Voice?

[DrewWoodside]

Hey, I record vocals and acoustic guitar and I have a fairly decent to good singing voice. However every once in a while it will sound a little wanting at the wrong time in a track. I've been using the "Chorus" and Reverb effects. And I think they add a little strength to the recordings. Are there any other methods for strengthening the sound/quality of one's voice with ableton? Should I be recording duplicates of vocal tracks? I'm sure there are some tricks that could aid with it. Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Meef Chaloin]

well its quite a deep subject, depending on what you want to do....there's loads of tricks out there. Generally a little reverb, some EQ (shelve or high pass to get rid of any boom or excessive or unneeded low freqs) and compression are the standard tools. Anything from that (chorus, double tracking, distortion etc) are all just add ons really.

If you want to thicken a vocal I would record the singing twice, possible pan left and right, this way you get a thick sound but with slight differences in pitch, timing etc which will really add something to the overall sound.

If you want a clean and smooth sound I would concentrate on eq and compression first, then reverb to set it back and give it the depth against other tracks in the mix

[see the light]

Experiment with mic placement and record a great take! There's not much point treating poorly recorded vocals...if your not happy with them dry, you'll be less happy with them treated.

If you are happy with the take, try some light compression, plate/studio reverb and some solid EQing - worked for me in the past.

[Meef Chaloin]

I don't know if this is a universal thing or not but the singer I work with generally benefits from a cut in the 280-350hz region.