Using Technology Creatively For Better Vocals - Page 2

Incidentally, you've probably heard this before, but it's always a good idea to record the vocal--even a rough guide vocal--as early possible when recording a song, even it's purely a demo. If you're a one-man-band home recording operation, you'll find that your recordings will sound much more natural if your instruments have at least some interplay with the vocal, rather than trying to add a vocal as the final layer of an otherwise completed recording.

Adding The Ear Candy

Once all those takes are recorded, and comped down to one or two main tracks of vocals, and as the song gets closer to being mixed down, it's time to add "the ear candy". Reverb, echo, electronic vibrato and double tracking are some of the most basic vocal effects, and they date back to at least the days of the Beatles, and have lasted all these years because they work.

Years ago, George Martin observed that the weaker a voice is, the more double tracking--even triple tracking--can strengthen it. The first method is simply repeating a vocal by singing along with what you've already sung. The fact that you'll never quite clone your previous vocal is both the drawback and the plus of this method. Some people swear by it, and others swear at it.

You can also try doubling the voice by singing the second track in a different tone than the first vocal. Lots of Rolling Stones songs get their character from Keith Richards' almost yodel-like vocal timbre doubling Mick's voice, but mixed fairly low behind it to add an unusual color or texture.

Using effects to double a vocal can work well, particularly for those vocalists who don't have the voice, training or patience to accurately double track their own voice.

Running a vocal through a very tight digital delay is a popular effect, and another method of double tracking. This has the advantage of being a precise copy of the vocal, but may lack the character of a newly sung doubled vocal. "When I use delay, I always make it a point to make sure that it is beating in time with the song", Mike Talanca says. Talanca is a producer/engineer and owner of Tune Town Recording in Ohio, who has worked with singers ranging from Billy Idol to Carly Simon. "I don't try to make a delay wash wherever it wants to go, or say, 'oh, that's close enough, that sounds good'", Talanca adds. "I've rarely found that works right. But whenever I put it on tempo, man, it always seams to work to beautifully." While some delay programs have built-in time to beats-per-minute calculators, there are also online delay calculators, such as Guitar Nine Records' JavaScript-powered applet that will perform the same function.

Article Author: Ed Driscoll

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