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Vocals effect processing best practices

1. Pitch correction 2. Gate or expander effects 3. A compressor 4. A de-esser plugin 5. Vocal effects 6. EQ c 7. Delay if desired 8. Reverb

Vocals effect processing best practices It's best to record dry vocals without any effects. You can always add in and swap out effects later. If you need to hear how an effect will sound for reference while recording (such as when using Autotune or Vocoder), record the dry vocals at the same time as the effected vocals on two separate channels so you end up with access to the dry vocals in addition to any effected vocals. When applying effects on vocals, there's an order that's usually followed. The following order is a suggestion, not a mandatory rule. If you find any of the following terminologies confusing regarding compressing or EQ, revisit Chapter 6, Compression, Sidechaining, Limiting, and Equalization. Here's a suggested order for applying effects to vocals: 1. Pitch correction corrects pitch and adjusts mistimings. 2. Gate or expander effects remove background and unwanted noises. For example, Fruity Limiter can be used as a gate. 3. A compressor balances out the dynamic range of the vocal and reduces the difference between loud and quiet parts of the vocal. The amount of compression used is down to personal taste and depends on the genre of music you are making. You may also consider using parallel compression if you want to preserve vocal transients. 4. A de-esser plugin removes sibilance, makes surgical resonant cuts, and tames and controls harsh frequencies. De-essing is done using a multiband compressor. It compresses common problem-frequencies areas. On the FL Studio Maximus plugin, there is a preset for de-essing that can help you get started. 5. Vocal effects. Examples of special vocal effects are harmony creation, vocoders, and saturation effects, to name a few. We discuss vocoders in Chapter 9, Understanding Vocal Effects. 6. EQ cuts out unwanted frequencies and boosts desired ones. You can add an EQ high pass filter to remove the sub bass frequencies that are not the focus of the vocal. This high pass filter is usually placed around 80 Hz - 120 Hz. You may want to make an EQ boost somewhere around 12 kHz - 16 kHz. If there are unwanted resonances in your vocals, you may want to cut somewhere in the low-mid to high-mid frequencies to remove them. Where and how large the cut or boost is will depend on the vocal you are working with. The following screenshot shows an example of how your EQ curve may look when applied on vocals: Figure 8.14 – EQ on vocals In the preceding screenshot, you can see we've rolled off the low-end frequencies, created an EQ cut around 350 Hz and a boost around 12 kHz. This is not a fixed rule to blindly apply, though. Your vocal EQ curve will look a little different in every situation. 7. Delay if desired adds additional stereo width. Pan out your delay to achieve side delays so that they don't conflict with the lead vocal frequencies in the center. 8. Reverb makes the vocal sound as though it were in a realistic environment. Some mixing engineers like to have minimal pitch correction on the original dry vocal and another hard pitch-corrected version with the speed set to full to use on the vocal reverb.