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effects on the lead vocal i'm

i i never i almost never want to notice

the effects on the lead vocal

i remember my first experience is hiring

other great engineers like chris lord

algae or spike stent or michael brower

or serbian

when we when we were working on a mix if

they would hit stop

i would notice all this like

reaver and delays and stuff on the vocal

that i would hear when they stopped the

track in the middle of the track but i

wasn't hearing it in the track at all

not at all didn't notice it at all and i

kept noticing that again and again and

again and again and again

and i so i started asking people like

chris about it like how why is that

you know and then i saw the benefit of

doing it myself like just things that

kind of like hug and

hold and support the lead vocal which is

absolutely the most important thing in a

track if you have a singer

um

so

i'm a big fan of kind of tape delay on a

vocal because it's not very accurate on

top or bottom it's all sort of mid-range

just like weird kind of dreamy

reflex echo reflections um

i like a little bit of modulation on

that delay just a bit so it swims a

little bit with the slow rate not a fast

rate

kind of dreamy

same with reverbs i like reverbs to be

sort of dead on top and

my favorite reverb is the capital

chambers

the live chambers that they have 30 feet

under the floor down in the machine room

a capital

that stuff just sounds amazing it sounds

really old-fashioned but it just sounds

musical

and incredible i hate really simple and

accurate reverbs it sounds goofy to me

um and

to me the best effect on a vocal is the

right kind of compression

and

the right combination of compressors

and how they react to each other

it is really incredible

how compression

affects so much more than volume you

know because really i think compressors

were invented to just like you know

there's a reason the stay level is

called stay level this is all old

military technology people were out

fighting a war with insane noise around

them and radio communication one guy

would be 40 db louder than the other guy

and people's ears were getting

hammered so they had to control and

compress

the level of the communication so things

were consistent and no one was going to

go deaf from like the wrong guy on a mic

too loud

now in fact all this stuff is all

trickle-down military technology

no one is more

no one's going to give you a better

answer than michael brower about how

compressors really are big tone machines

and i love how he

uses them to create different colors and

different vibes and even if he's not

even really engaging the gain reduction

in the compressor he'll just route

things through different compressors

um

and uh

i was

i was recently in new york at the aes

show and we we got to hang out i've

i've worked with him before as a mixer

but i'd never actually met him in person

and we really got into talking about it

and

it's just you know it's fascinating and

so

i also

love chris lord algae had taught me that

compression can really make a vocal

it can add energy to a vocal and chris

chris is you know quite a big fan of

using gain reduction

uh pretty aggressively like even more

than you would ever think

um possible

he will limit something and then

compress

the limiter after

you know like limiting is like there's a

ceiling you wouldn't think it could be

compressed more but he he wants to hear

how that reacts

to a compressor because it sort of it

adds this other crazy energy to it

um

and i think that's

far more important than

reverb or whatever you know um a little

bit of kind of a doubler effect is nice

if it doesn't sound fazey if it doesn't

sound like like a chorus thing

um

and

i just want to feel like

because i am an instrumentalist and

because i really do love hearing the

band

and i think i was guilty of under mixing

vocals for a long time when i was

younger because i was so obsessed with

what the hi-hat was doing you know like

um i want to hear lots of data coming

from the instruments and i i like a lot

of information coming at me sometimes

you know well quite often actually

and

i want the vocal to not be lost

but i want the vocal to not get in the

way of the accompaniment either like i

really like

the depth of

all that stuff coming at the speakers

and

compression and

the right sort of spatial stuff that you

might not even notice in the mix like a

ping pong kind of rolled off delay

or that sometimes i'll do that with

another mono delay behind it just to add

some sort of a weird depth

perception thing

i want the vocal to kind of jump out of

the speakers a little bit

but not like a frank sinatra record

where it's all vocal and you know nelson

riddle or count base you're way in the

background conducting the band i like

everyone to kind of be on the same stage

and i find that

subtle vocal effects

will do that you know if you have a

raging rock track

a little bit of doubling on the vocal

just does a thing where you don't have

to turn the vocal up and you don't

really want to hear the doubler either

but you want it to get i want it to get

to where if you take the doubler out

it's like where what happened why

doesn't it sound as good it just does a

thing where it

you know again you're dealing with a

really unnatural thing of just two

speakers and you have no visual you're

not seeing these people performing you

don't have any energy exchange between

audience and performer it's just crazy

the weird stuff you got to do to make

the music just sound natural

doubling on the vocal is one of those

things i never want to hear it

same with tuning on a vocal i never want

to hear tuning on a vocal i tune vocals

all the time

because it

sounds better but i don't want to hear

any artifacts or any unnatural thing of

tuning there's a way to use the tuning

plugins