Lessons

Lesson Info

Vocal Effects Part 2

Uh somebody asked about I think we mentioned made mention why dinner's a little bit here and there or some something was talking about those I don't remember uh that's weird okay so pro tools comes with a widener you can get a widener there's a bunch of different brands but they all basically do the same thing but the generic term is widener I don't really use this much at all like maybe every once in a while the guys that called it's right in front me here to stereo with sorry uh I'm gonna make this a stereo track really quick for some reason pro tools doesn't have ah a way to make that plug in stereo without I put it I just put deeper bond there and deactivated it the monastery aversion if you run into this problem a lot you know exactly what I'm talking about so right now this is stereo all right so I encourage you guys at home put on some headphones because otherwise you won't know what is going on right now uh alright so here's the regular folk for dogs so you know I'm not you kno...

w where and then with a whiner I can't even tell because the stereo field is to my side so uh you know I don't know you you know so where size who ty so so you guys sitting here that just sounds like the same like there's absolutely no difference but when you're actually in the stereo field uh you can hear it on the left and right but to me it's not as wide of a stereo as if like you actually double the vocal and paint it left and right and when you double it makes a sound full or two so if you could do that that's to me that's a lot more no no size by so hopefully we're broadcasting in stereo susan susan you're casting in sorrow in my head right now is afraid of screaming I don't know but I'm afraid of live screen she's been wincing she's once you have a fear thing I admit she only listens to beyonce all right uh anyway so that's why dinner and then I want to show you guys something super weird and if you don't have headphones I want you to wear them right now if you didn't already put them on okay so this is called uh this is just inverting the phase on one side and it is quite disorienting if you've never done this but it could be a cool way to make things stand out in your mix it might bother you it's it's uh I kind of want somebody one of you guys actually listen to this when I do it just so we can get a reaction from you ok, so all I did was literally copy one side no ok, so all I did was that was us yesterday good job everybody um all he did was copy one side identically and then invert the face and panam left and right so, uh let's see here when you're in a properly set up stereo field this sounds quite bizarre this's actually, it's actually doesn't sound right here through these no. So this is normally just so you guys know if you were listening and listening at home this is normally uh just a mono track but just by inverting the face on one side this is hot ah, yes, yeah, I was wondering with that particular effect once it gets some down to mano the two things doesn't phase with each other they do disappear completely okay, I figured they had to yeah, it literally just goes to nothing that's another problem. So if your song is converted to mano nobody will hear that one like part of it but just be gone and something I feel like something weird happened here I'm gonna try to recreate this. Yeah, if this isn't actually coming across wait, go okay, the example before wasn't right for some reason I don't know something wasn't pan but wait okay that somewhat come on up here yeah, I just want you because it it doesn't only sound weird it feels weird so you have to put your head right in the center here um let me play it, play it normally for you it's just so bizarre okay, so this is this is yeah make sure your perfectly in the center like your head is right there so so this is normal sounds sounds pretty normal and then this is with the phase inverted just on one side that is really weird. Yeah yeah can you almost feel it like you like feel like on the top there like it just feels like it oh uh he didn't have a microphone but he is agreeing with me he is a green agree which is all that matters but yeah, so he said he could feel it like on the outside of here it's like really strange so you could do that with any mano thing in your mix but like cameron said what do you do? Uh makes it down to mono it disappears which is also kind of cool but whatever just be aware of that and it's like you could have a completely stereo mics and then your guitar solo could have uninvited phase on one side and it just sounds like so bizarre and it's kind of disturbing, isn't it? It kind of felt like it was there but it wasn't at the same time like it like was just kind of on the back side of everything yeah, I don't know how to describe it it really well odd so I encourage anybody at home if you haven't tried that try it because stripy all right anyway uh uh, okay oh, here's another one really cool thing um when you do group vocals and maybe you didn't get enough takes or something like that, um and terry's makes in there a box bundle it's called choir, which is really awesome. I think it kind of makes uh so let's do it without it, you know? And then with it what, like you can mess with it? Make it sound bigger on dh sometimes I'll just mix that in or just do it subtly and it adds more of ah, big choir sound. I just wanted to make people aware that because I've I've used that a bunch, I would never use it on the main vocal, though usually just group vocals or group singing or something like that suddenly and it adds another dimension to it. Still on antar is nick's squillante was asking if you use antar is warm because he sees the brand inside of your dog and just wondering if that's something you'd use on screens um on screams no, actually I do not I don't know if I've actually tried this before oh yeah I have tried this before no, I don't use it on screams it might be cool it probably adds like, a subtle distortion or something like that to it assuming there's like a to um but anyway another thing that I have used before this is pretty cool it's called throat and you can add airiness like if you had breath penis I mean, if you have if you saying on like a not so good mike maybe you did sing on like a fifty seven or something like that in high end just wasn't there or they were off axis or something and you didn't get that breathless that you want you could well well that's not what you want to use it on that but I just this is good uh I would have to dial this in that office he didn't work but I just want people to be aware of these other tools I just have other stuff that I want to get to so I kind of just going through this quickly but yeah, those air some really awesome tools for effects now let's go into another session uh for some other sweet effects. Okay, so this is ahh and terry's again it's called the aunt teri's harmonizer so let's uh take it off I'll just play the vocal just how it is it always seemed to me the dreams apart reality so that's just a vocal by itself um and what I did was well I'll just place way seem to me the dreams of our reality parcel piecing scenes cola sense of imagery so I imagine that's what they use um and a lot of people think that it's a vocoder and I'm going to get into voters in second but it it is actually not it's the aunt teri's harmonizer I maybe there's another version but I'm pretty sure it's the interior harmonizer uh what it actually does is whatever notes I have down here let me just open it up for you um you can have up to four different harmonies with the main vocal so appreciate this is the way see this's the main vocal here trains really? So I just took that out, you know? You seen me and what we have here is just what I've programmed in the midi so it takes my regular voice and it will pitch shifted to either this note well, it pitches it to this note and this note and this note and this note at the same time and plays it so uh whatever I do I mean aiken you know, transposed this scene may hey tris it's still does that so that's another cool effects that I use every once in a while like to throw a little delay on stuff like this simple but it's only the voice but it's the chords and the voices you always seemed to me the dreams are way also piecing sean's cool all right so this is the delay that I have on here I love this delay I just want to highlight it because I use this when I do like different kinds of things where you can really hear the actual character of the of the delay and you can put put a little bit of like d tuning on it if you want you know you seem to me that dreams are god and that kind of gives it a mood you know what I mean like it's not just your typical like standard delay so you could do like a ping pong delay or it goes back way seen me dreams way uh you can filter the actual delay you know you got your standard tools they're too dry wet feedback um has an analog thing we're kind of and lo fi where it degrades it a little bit as it plays but that's a really cool the way I just wanted to bring that up because I like it a lot. Yes um what do you what is the difference to you of using digital digital effects as opposed to rack? You know, analog um I actually don't really own any analog outboard effects in my studio I've used like different pedals and stuff and like you know mainly guitar pedals that's really the only like experience I have with outboard gear but some of those are really cool and I feel like you can get, uh, similar effects or like as close as you can get you know, with these ones like h delay and stuff like tape delay simulation I actually asked the same question to my good buddy dan corn if who also is a producer and I asked him specifically about tape delays and he said the main he could he could tell the difference but it was because of the sound of the hiss that where that that's where the difference came in and I don't really care about the sound of the hist so like that's not something it's not like I couldn't you know it didn't sound as lo fi or anything that it's just like some small thing with the hiss some different so to me I mean that that's and he's he's worth like he built he built my compressors in my studio like he builds equipment he's used tons of equipment so like for years and years um so if anybody knows he he would know so he's a fan of the in the box stuff and I know a bunch of other producers are um so the other effect oh, really quick I just want to make uh you guys aware of another cool effect it's called I call it bit crushing I don't know if it's called bit crushing but I called that crushing so there you go. Uh I think this is the one scene wade seen many dreams so chip tunes stuff me so suddenly you have something that sounds like it's from a nintendo original you get really close with sometimes it's cool like you khun you know you can automate this stuff too so maybe in an intro ah, you know something like that but if you do use this you want to turn the anti alias all the way down otherwise it just sounds like it's muffled so you know e I use that a lot I love that just on little parts here and there sometimes you just you run it effects you don't know what to do what you want to do something special this is a cool thing um and then an easy way to make something sound this is called lo fi but actually talk about low five really quick and it's not this so uh if you do want a really quick I'm just gonna touch on this for one second just a super quick lo fi is, you know, high pass low pass it's just like mainly midrange coming through I mean that's a typical it's a really common effect, but if anybody didn't know that's how you do it there you go all right so another one is the vocoder which is a lot different than harmonizer it sounds similar but it is not the same so I took my actual vocal that you've heard and totally transformed into something else I could change the core progression or whatever if I wanted to wait so just just you know you could totally change so if you ever hear artists like daft punk or anybody that like they're using vocoder is a lot on their main vocals and these the sense that I'm using are just you know like in pro come with pro tools but you can literally so if you take like uh for vocals if you're going to use a vocoder the best sound is going to be like um stew in your face is like a hard lead sound not like a slow patter anyway uh um and this is what I'm using as the vocoder is made by waves again uh it's called them or photo uh and this is how it works basically you have your carrier which is the vocal that's goingto be there the sound that's going to be the vocal it's called the carrier and that's what the hard lead would be the carrier and then the modulator would be uh the actual vocal or whatever you're using now you could actually take a vocal sound and use um vocoder and let's say you're let's say your modulator is a vocal and then your carrier could be a sound of a lawn miller or something like that I don't have that set up as a demonstration but you could put those together and make something in saying you could use a guitar you could put it on drums so suddenly you're like doing all these crazy sounding things now uh something really similar to this uh that pro tools has also built in is the, uh talk box you can automate this however you want but it's just in proto I eh uh uh that's just our senate tio why I e so what's cool is sometimes you could put you could literally like take maybe put it on it like an off sound let's say way what's cool is you could take that and just put that on the reverb of, say, a vocal or the reverb of guitars only that and so whenever you're playing it sounds like acquire is following your main vocal or acquire is following here guitar or something that so these are a bunch of different crazy effects maybe guys have heard of all of these I don't know but uh there's there's so many different ways you can use these just with each other and stuff okay, so that's the end of, uh effects I hope you guys maybe learn something from effects really like effects the fun we could take questions and I also was thinking about getting into mixing, starting mixing a little bit. But if we do have any questions or comments or anything like that, we could do that right now. Yeah, I, uh a little experience doing my last album with reverb specifically, um when I was listening to it in in my studio ah, the reverb that I had on my vocal tracks was probably set around, you know, twenty, twenty five percent or something, and it sounded really good, but it was in a narrow our field and I took my mixes over to a friend who has a nice five point, one surround studio, and he just pointed out, he said, your vocals don't sound is centered as they need to be and by reducing the reverb just a little bit, it did dry out the track, but it actually narrowed it and made it more center specific. So what what would you suggest as faras use of reverb on a vocal track? Because I know the more you add, the wider it becomes in the stereo field and it can almost reduce the amount of things here. Yeah, it's really easy to put too much river like because sometimes you put you put the river bond and the setting will be like, I mean in pro tools it's at one hundred percent so you hear tons? We really it's kind of cool, but obviously that's too much. So then you bring it down. Um and you're still kind of your first impression. Was that revert all that reverb. So you bring it down to what's. Probably a good level and you're like, I can't really hear that reverb so then you turn it up too much. So what I suggest is before you listen anything put it at zero go the other way. Okay, add the reverb till you khun just hear it. Not so it's like you know it's all in your perception of how things started with it isolated and it sounded really beautiful when the track was isolated so I sat it in the mix and it sounded good. Yeah, but then when I actually had time to process it and sometimes it's cool, you have all the river on a day like I mean, I like all this river but you listen to other things and everything's jumbled, you know, so that that really does happen it's definitely coming from school things. Yeah, ninety one wants to know if you can please explain the routing for the harmonizer and no quarter. Okay, harmonizer, yeah, good question, um well, the harmonizer uh, you just put it on it's like uh it's not a it's not an instrument and neither is the the more photo or neither of those are instruments so you're gonna put him on the tracks like like a plug in so let's just talk about the harm you've seen me let's bring up the instrument guy right here so all I have is this mini track that is literally like nothing I mean there's no there's no instrument on it it's just a midi on lee so it's ah I'm sorry it's an instrument track but it's just me so I just have that routed to the harmony engine channel one and and that's that's it so uh then you put in just keep in mind when you're programming for it that only does for harmonies so if you do more than that it's some weird things are gonna happen it'll just randomly choose which notes to use instead of actually doing the thing that you wanted to do so uh that one simple as long as you just have the midi track going too the harmonizer and then the more photo is the way I have this set up there might be a few different ways to actually set this up but I have uh let's see okay, this is actually kind of a complex routing situation you know what I'm thinking about it uh I have here in the sense I have the vocal sent out uh and in pro tools if you click the pre put post fader it will also send it whether or not you have the track muted so this is sending it out to the more photo and it's the right channel which since is the vocal it's the modulator so I have the modulator selected as the right channel and then uh well this was I'm sorry okay so this was a stare it this was a stereo bus but I only selected the right channel just so we're clear let me show you yeah here we go so this is the this is the bus but I only selected the right channel to send out to that and then the actual the carrier which is the left channel I just have that selected going out to the more photo left and the more photo is on justin auxiliary bus um by itself I would have some effects on it you don't have time for those effects but uh the sense that are in the background are just on a completely separate track it has nothing to do with the thie that's all that the more photo is this other stuff is just is an extra tracks in ah has nothing to do with the actual thing so hopefully that means since you know it's kind of it's kind of complicated but uh that's how it's routed does anybody have effects that they like actually that I didn't mention yeah, he's, that I should hope final plugin oh, yeah cause it's like a lot of vintage e sounding production that I do and it just works really great it's super intuitive and it has its free yeah, it's free. You can just download it plugs into a lot of different dawes so that's, a great kind of it kind of makes your whatever you send it through, someone could spend on a record you can had static or actual electrical noise, core pops and clicks and the worked. If the city is warped or scratches, you can add all that stuff. What year? The record is from how many rotations per minute all that stuff. So, yeah, that's a cool, effective isotope vinyl that is a free plug in. I think it might be a vsd, though. Yeah, all right. Anyway, if you have a v s city adapter, you can use it with pro tools via sita are tested after all, right? So I think I might know your answer to this one based on some comments earlier but lauren s or lauren's in the chat room was saying, based on the software available and how smooth the software runs, what do you recommend using to record in general guitars, vocals, etcetera, a mac or a custom built pc of the same price uh, that's a wait, a custom built pc of the same price, I think that's the grocer there. I mean, is that, you know, where's the value here in utilizing a mac system or a equivalent value? We'll see. Yeah, I personally use pc because of its upgrade ability and the cost effectiveness of it. If you do, if you do have a studio in europe grading your stuff, a lot of computer is something that you're upgrading a lot. You're not really upgrading your compressors a lot, you might add equipment or whatever, but you're not like you don't have to get a new chip inside this or something like that. Um, if you're going, you could spend like, six thousand dollars on on a mac or spend, like two hundred and get the same specs on a pc, so saying, same price, the price that is the difference, so it works just a cz well, like I have run into a a few small problems, as I was using this, um, it may or may not have been life, I don't remember, but I've been using this and I've tracked albums on max and stuff, and they all have problems, but I think the problems come from the actual plug ins and software that are being used. Like some plug ins are buggy and that's. What causes pro tools? The lockup? Not really the not really windows or mac. And I've had one virus in the history of my entire recording career, and I've been recording for, like, ten years or more. So, uh, I'd go with, um pc also pc, uh, developers are developers for plug ins. Released a lot of cool v s t is for pc that are not available on a mac. Plus, I actually have been talking about there well, there's, there's one and there's a there's, a few different shortcuts on a pc that are not on a mac because when you hit all it highlights the many of the top just different things like that. So yeah, either one is great. You can upgrade a, uh pc a lot easier, though, because you can replace components in it already. There one is great if you have the money. Yeah, ok, you have the money. All right. Oh, that harmony engine and I'm not going to go back to, but it also has a feature where it does automatic harmonies you have to, like put in the key, but it will actually do the harmonies for you uh, I would never do that, but maybe you want to for a specific reason