3 Vocal Editing Techniques I Have Been Abusing The Hell Out Of

1.  Recording Lead Vocals at a Slower Speed

When I started recording vocals for Shards, I knew I wanted to create an "urgent" vocal sound.  The song has a lot of internal rhyming and alliteration and I felt like my timing needed to be super precise.  I ended up taking the BPM of the song all the way down to 90 or so, and recorded the vocals at that speed.  When I sped it back up, I found that my voice had more personality, and I didn't "trip" over phrases with a lot of syllables.  Even though it felt exaggerated at the time, upon playback it sounds surprisingly "normal."  At some point I would like to stretch this out even further to the point where it sounds obvious, and maybe even try it in the other direction, where I record the vocals super fast and then time-stretch them real slow.*

2.  Automating Effects

So far this album does not have a lot of synthesizer on it, so I've been trying to take out my knob-tweaking on the vocals.  I've been setting up multiple FX channels with all sorts of reverb, distortion, bit crushing, chorus, you name it, and then bringing them in and out based on the flow of the song.  Nothing like a nice swell on the end of a line to give it more intensity.  This is making for a much more dynamic sound and really takes the listener for a ride. Of course, adjusting things like volume and EQ on the fly are obvious, but I like taking things to the extreme.  Automating some of these effects in a rhythmic fashion can create some really strange effects.  The key is to find the point where the effect is unnoticeable, then find the point where it sounds ridiculous, and then find a place somewhere in between where it is almost unnoticeable but also ridiculous.

3. Fuck Auto-Tune, How About Manual Detune?

Here is a technique that should be so obvious, but I stumbled upon by accident.  While working on effects automation, I thought to myself that I could do a lot more if I could import my vocals as MIDI, and then control the settings like a virtual synth.  So I loaded my vocals, line by line, each as a different "note" into my sampler and started screwing around.  Playing with the cutoff and resonance and such was fun, but once I realized the fun I could have with pitch-shifting, it changed everything.  You can adjust how sensitive you want the pitch wheel to be, so if you want to make very subtle changes you can do that, or if you want to stretch things quickly by the octave, you can do that too.  Slight warbles really give things that analog feel, like when you would start up your car in the winter and the tape deck would take awhile to heat up.  I prefer a subtle approach, where small adjustments make things sound just a little off, but not enough that the listener really thinks about it.  I suppose you could use this method for slight pitch correction if you wanted to, but my way of looking at it is this:  there are millions of recording artists out there trying to sound perfect.  I'm not going to win that game.  By deliberately trying to sound imperfect (and in some cases worse than that), I am embracing my limitations and creating something original that is unique to me.  In the days of plugins and presets and Youtube tutorials on how to sound like anyone else, I'd much rather fuck around and sound like myself.

* A bad example of this technique would be the song "Sucks To This World," which was actually remixed by Greg Brendel** like 15 years ago.  Back then I had to use separate programs for recording and editing, so I couldn't monitor my vocals as I was recording them, so I just stretched them out to fit each bar.  In a downtempo song, I suppose it could have nice, full, menacing results.

** It is worth noting that I will post embarassingly bad old recordings any time as long as it allows me to namedrop Greg Brendel.***

*** Speaking of Greg Brendel, since he is my biggest fan, he is one of my 4 followers on Twitter.  If you have been enjoying this blog, add me and I will let you know when I post new updates.  Thanks!