Processing Vocal Takes

Vocals are my forté. I've been working on my own for about three years. So here are my thoughts. Hopefully they'll help. This is my process.

1. Set it up perfectly from the start. The first take will always be the best take. Singing something over and over again generally takes out all the rawness and emotion. I've learnt this the hard way.
2. First Pass Clean Up. For ages I was looking for a good set of tools to do that first pass clean because I don't have somewhere amazing to record from. So I use this little piece of wonderful software. https://accusonus.com/products/audio-repair/era-bundle-standard# It's worth it just for the reverb removal. The De-esser and Plosive removal on there is totally amazing. But passable. I want to buy a really good De-esser at some point.
3. Second Pass Clean Up. I got through and removed ALL the breath clicks lip smacks. All the dirty little bits that I put in there. Sometimes when I've fucked up a take of the singing I'll removed that too from the track because then I know it's fuck up and won't consider it.
4. Line up Time! This is boring as sin but lining up all the tracks in the right place with each other makes it easier to start messing with the sound.
5. Gentle Correction of Pitch. At this stage I get out my Wave Live Tune and see how far off I was on pitch and might gently correct things.
6. Bring Me the Head of Butch Vig! I really love the Butch Vig vocal plugin from Waves ... I tend to use this all the time on my tracks. It just gives the vocals a nice present feel. Doesn't work with all my tracks though ... so I also have CLA Vocals and JJP Vocals. Having a few different options is always good in this situation.
7. Commit. Up until this point I'll just be working on the vocals solo'ed so I can concentrate on them. But at this stage I'll bounce them down so I save on CPU and can commit to something otherwise I'll get lost in making mixing changes.
8. EQ. At this stage I'll work with the music and the vocals together. And start to fix the vocals into the music. The thing I've found with vocals is that you can really be creative and interesting with absolutely slamming the surgical EQ on it to make it work with the track. Don't be afraid of cutting a lot out to make something interesting. I generally use more than one instance of surgical EQ. And then start adding colour EQ. So it sounds nice in the mix. I think EQing decisions are super creative and important when it comes to vocals. It gives you room.
9. Compression. Then I'll do my compression on the vocals. But I'll also look at multiband compress on my music buss to see how the interact together.
10. FINALLY CREATIVE. Then finally after everything is done and the vocals are sitting semi dry inside of the mix then I'll start adding the fun stuff. Slap H-delay is nice (very short delay time). Aphex Aural Exciter is top draw as well to give it a bit of sparkle. Go really easy on the Reverb but that's always a nice idea. Distortion is your friend too. I think the thing with vocals is that you've got to have lots of different effects going at different times in different sections otherwise it sounds dull. Like you're listening to the same droning voice ... on and on. Keep the listener interested with the unexpected.

Somethings that I enjoy. Heavily High Passed or Low Passed Delay ... so you just get a section of the delay playing. Building up layers to eventually drop down to a single voice of the vocal. I have Zynaptic Morph 2 ... there's loads fun you can have with that with vocals.

And good luck.

For me it's all about exploring, experimenting, staying loose and having fun with vocals.

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