Vocal Effects/Recording Techniques

[Unicorn Warrior]

As mentioned in my eventide space thread, I'll be recording this week and next week. I'm interested in some techniques/effects/ideas to make my wife's vocals somewhat shoegazey/atmospheric in a tasteful way. She is primarily soprano and has quite a bit of range, but there will be some more mellow portions of some songs that I feel could be doused with some effects.

I'm very close with the person who will be producing this. He would be very willing to make something cool happen. But I don't really know how to get started.

Any cool ideas? Again, I love but am not limited to slowdive sounds.

[Harmoncj]

just looking for ideas... one of my av tricks is:

stereo panning delay ->
stereo panning tremolo ->
combine the two signals to mono.

it should end up sounding like a normal delay for the musical tone part but all the consonants of the vocal come back oddly scrambled

[Unicorn Warrior]

just looking for ideas... one of my av tricks is:

stereo panning delay ->
stereo panning tremolo ->
combine the two signals to mono.

it should end up sounding like a normal delay for the musical tone part but all the consonants of the vocal come back oddly scrambled

Awesome, any examples for reference?

[Harmoncj]

just try its a whole ton of fun if you can do it with actual knobby pedals though, the delay time and panner rate work together for the scramblyness comes out

[marqueemoon]

I like to use an omni mic for my own vocals and to track with a little compression.

My best piece of advice is experiment with mics. Put up 3 or 4 and see what works best with the music. It's not always the "nicest" one in my experience.

[CorporateDisguise]

I've not tried these, but I feel like a reverse reverb could be really cool on its own track. Like have a dry track and a doubled wet track. I think subtle shimmer could also sound really beautiful and spacey.

I haven't recorded vocals in a few years, but i used to like to do a pretty dry main take, and then do my harmonies through heavy reverb with a high mix and sometimes add phase for some movement.

[electric12]

One thing I do if I feel the vocals are a little thin is to double the main vocal track and compress the shit out of it, take the top end off in an EQ then stick it through a distortion of the Big Muff variety (fuzz also works but can be a bit raspy). Then I find a nice delay and reverb combo and mix the result into a not-too-wide stereo image sitting behind the main vocal. An octaver before the distortion can work too - makes it sound a bit like a synth line, but vocal.

[jorri]

I like playing with the reverb or delay settings whilst running back through effects, it can lend to some wet signals that don't cloud up everything too much, produce some generative 'backing vocals' in a way, call and response with delay, momentary reverb holds etc..
another option is just to compress the hell out the verb but not the clean signal. Brings out the tails in the mix and gives a kind of subtle ducking effect whilst actually 'sustaining' the reverb much much more tastefully than a ducking plugin.
Reverse can be great because it throws back obscured phrases too.
But generally keep the wet signal as a different track if you want to totally mangle it, totally separate. Run that in stereo so you keep the main mono vocal, and if need use a totally different eq in the mix and treat more like a backing vocal track-I often have stuck this on an ambient mic for that kind of separation if its needed...from the description seemed like you wanted that separation though, some stuff is just recorded more like 'everything on full' of course! The 'dry' vocal will need some ambience but really just a 'standard' amount, not actually much decay at all, to blend in unless you want it to stick out.

[daria]

Multi-track the vocals for cool organic chorusing. De-essers are good. Reverbs with pre-delay help keep the enunciation clear. I'm actually pretty into running vox through a tube screamer (real or the Mercurial VST emulation). Don't assume condenser mics will sound better, I prefer an SM58 to a fancy Rode on my own voice.

[Groovy Tunes]

My very favorite vocal effect is a Roland RE-201 Space Echo with a short delay time and spacy Echo. I think this is how Kevin Parker of Tame Impala does his vocals, although he uses it in an extreme way, but I have had a lot of success using the 201. If the RE-201 is too much, check out the Boss RE-20 foot pedal version. This is a very shoegazy/dream pop set up and it sounds absolute fantastic with a female voice in my opinion.

[cpeck]

Double or triple tracking can go a long way. I would also recommend the Soundtoys plugins.