Tips and Tricks,Vocal Effects For Modern Music Production. BACKGROUND VOCAL PRODUCTION IN PRO TOOLS. What is your Pro Tools vocal chain for recording rap vocals? Brainworx has a free filter called bxsweep. Pretty sure you can get an rtas version. Great FREE vocal plugin chain. Vocal recording and effects chains include, depending on the performance, a de- esser, a noise gate, an equalizer, and a compressor. Frequently, engineers also add effects like chorus, delay, tape saturation (unless recording to tape, of course,) and reverb, to enhance the sound. In a pro studio, most of this treatment is handled by expensive hardware and plugins (like those from Waves and UAD.) But you don’t have to break the bank to polish up your vocal tracks thanks to the many libraries of free plugins found on the Internet, most available for any DAW that supports the VST standard. I’ve compiled a list of the best plugins for a killer free vocal chain, along with a sample of the plugins at work on one of my vocal tracks. The Plugins. De- esser: Spitfish . In general, I like my signal chain to reflect this path, by placing each effect in the same order as the physical property it adjusts. In part 3 of Transom's Pro Tools Tutorials, Jeff Towne explains how to mix tracks, use automation, deal with background noise & bounce files to your disk. What is on your Vocal Bus Chain?? 003, Mbox 2, Digi 002. Avid Pro Audio Community. TLA-50 -->mBox 3 Pro, Pro Tools 12.5.0 12 Plugins: McDSP, PSP. IZotope develops award-winning audio software and plug-ins for mixing, mastering, restoration, and more. So: A de- esser modifies the effect of the singer’s tongue and teeth. A noise gate is analogous to the singer’s lips, opening and closing. Equalizers and compressors, in some ways, address the result of microphone selection and placement. Finally, reverb and delay simulate the space in which the vocal is heard, analogous to the listener’s ears at the end of the chain. These are just guidelines, of course. You can combine effects in any order to achieve a specific sound. Here’s a short section from the original, raw track, recorded with an SM5. There are some obvious issues with this recording: It’s dull: I chose the SM5. I like the way it saturates my “loud” voice. But that pleasant dynamic saturation comes at a price: Reduced clarity in the high frequencies. The dynamics are uneven: Notice how much the second “still” jumps out. Ideally, I should have re- recorded for a more even performance. But I liked the energy in this take, and since I knew I’d be compressing the track anyway, I decided to keep it. There’s sibilance: I could have eased up on those S’s a little. However, a track this dry often sounds unnatural or harsh when mixed with other instruments, especially when those instruments (like the drum kit in On My Feet Again) have an open, ambient sound. To address these issues, I choose a straightforward approach: De- ess - > Gate - > EQ - > Compression - > Tape saturation - > Reverb. Of course, this chain isn’t suitable for treating all vocal tracks. But each effect here is appropriate, given the issues identified above. The de- esser (Spitfish) is tuned to roughly 7. Khz, at a medium depth, just enough to soften the worst of the sibilants. In the quieter parts of this song, the noise gate action is pronounced, gating out my breathing. But in this sample, it doesn’t have much work to do. My inhalation sounds add urgency here, and I didn’t want to cut them out completely. I used the equalizer primarily to address the dullness I mentioned. The main causes of the dark sound are the SM5. I sang with the mic almost touching my lips. So I rolled off the low frequencies, everything below roughly 1. Hz, and gently boosted the top- end, above 3. Khz: To address the uneven dynamics, I started with the Classic Compressor’s vocal preset, set the threshold appropriately, and boosted the ratio just past 5: 1. That’s fairly aggressive compression for a vocal track, but I think the “squashed” sound really suits the song. Finally, the reverb. I placed this plugin on a bus (or “effect send” in some DAWs,) instead of directly on the vocal track, mostly out of habit. I find it more convenient to adjust the reverb level without having to open the plugin interface. Also, while it’s not relevant in this case, I often use the same reverb effect on several tracks (for example, vocals and acoustic guitar) to place the tracks in the same “space,” and using a bus lets me do this with only a single instance of the plugin. So putting it all together, here’s the processed sample. A vast improvement, and it didn’t cost me a penny! If you’d like to tweak this chain for your own uses, check out Audio Mastermind’s list of free VST plugins. For more articles on recording vocals, and home recording in general, Subscribe to the Hometracked feed. Tags: plugins, vocals, vst.
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January 2017
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