AUDIO AQUATICS

British summertime… doesn’t it make you proud? August 2008 and I am battling down the street with my winter jacket zipped up and my umbrella struggling to stay intact - rather than sporting a summery little outfit, I more resemble an Eskimo trying to launch into the first ever umbrella-aided flight.

However, all the rain has meant more time indoors to play around in my studio, and inspired me to pay some special attention to the washed out and watery sound of reverbs. After some long listening sessions, I was actually surprised to learn how many of my favourite tracks had quite a large reverb on the main vocals. This then lead me to think about vocal processing in general.

These days it is rare to hear a vocal that hasn’t been heavily processed and our modern ears have become accustomed to almost synthesised sounding main vocals, especially in modern pop, dance and R&B records.

This month, I am going to talk about some of the tricks producers and engineers use to get this very processed vocal sound.

One essential piece of kit if you are working with vocals, is what I call the ‘talent editor’ also known as pitch correction. My favourite piece of software to do this with is Melodyne. This tool basically allows you to draw or play in the melody that you want, it can automatically correct any notes that are a few tones out and it is very easy to drag notes around to create variations and harmonies. You can use this to snap your lead vocal into the correct pitch and also create some nicely layered thick backing vocals for the chorus.

The correct harmonies for a song will always vary but as a starting point try using thirds and fifths above or below from the root note.

Once you have your perfectly pitched lead and newly created BV’s, it is time for some compression.

When Madonna’s pop-dance ‘Ray of Light’ album came out, many were surprised at how heavily compressed her vocals were on the album, to the point where the vocal was so upfront she almost had her head on your lap (a figure of speech gentlemen). It is little wonder then that since this, nearly every dance and pop record released features a vocal sitting on top of the mix - with its dynamics squeezed as tight as Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s favorite PVC pants.

If you like the ‘pumping’ sound of the compressor on some dance tracks you can re-create this by setting your compressor to a relatively high ratio with a fast attack and a fast release. Move the threshold down until you are getting a significant amount of signal being compressed and then use your make up gain to level match your compressed vocal with the original. The process of the compressor being activated to such an extreme level will create the pumping effect as it kicks in and out quickly and to an extreme setting. For a smoother compressed vocal, change your release to be a bit slower and try using a soft knee.

Now you have your perfectly pitched, dynamically monophonic vocal, it is time for some frequency manipulation!

An exciter is a great tool for this. Although I am not a fan of using them on entire mixes, running individual instruments through one can be advantageous, especially with vocals. The best place to use them in my mind is on the backing vocals, go for a really ‘airy’ sound to give BV’s a spacey sound and help separate them from the lead vocal. If you use an exciter on the main vocal too, have something a little less obvious or use less of the processed sound in the mix.

As an exciter is basically an EQ that boosts several frequencies, so if you have already used a channel EQ it may be worth going back and checking if anything needs adjusting, alternatively, you may need to insert an EQ after the exciter in the chain to allow you to cut any problematic frequencies that the exciter has boosted.

Another popular tool in dance and R&B is a vocoder. Whether you use a software or hardware based vocoder, you need to play in the melody that you want to use to activate the effect. A lot of records have the vocal track doubled with one of them being manipulated in this way to create an artificial chorus effect and tuneful / rhythmic drone.

To finish off your vocal it is time to choose a reverb. This is very important and you should play around with a few settings until you are happy with what you hear. Always listen with the vocal soloed and in the mix, as what works on its own might sound awful when everything is playing at the same time.

Something I like to do is use 2 reverbs on my lead vocal. Firstly I will use a warm plate reverb with a relatively short reverberation time, just to add some depth; then for my second reverb I will use a larger hall style reverb with a little pre delay and a longer trail. The combination of these two tends to add depth and space and it is easy to control the mix using the effects / aux returns. If your vocal sounds too washy or you are loosing intelligibility, try decreasing the reverb time, or send less signal to the unit or keep the return lower in the mix.

If you combine all these methods together you will soon have a polished to perfection vocal that would make even Rodney Jerkins proud.

So when the weather is washing out your BBQ plans, stay in and be awash with effects processors instead, and satisfy your audio appetite.