How to "thicken" a thin vocal?

[GrimmBrotherScott]

I am recording a guy whose voice is a little thin. Anyone have any stock tricks to help "fill out" his voice? I realise he will never sound like Pavorati, but I don't want to just double track.

One thing I have been doing, with some success, is double tracking his vocal and panning one to 3 o'clock, saturating with reverb and rolling it into the mix at a low level, it has been creating the allusion of some depth that isn't actually IN his voice.

[joel hamilton]

I like to mult a main vocal that is a little annoyingly thin. This is assuming you cant re-track or track with a beefier mic choice in the first place.

Mult the track to two more channels, and try anything you can think of on the mults: a little tape echo, lowpass, tons of compression from something dark, some ridiculous EQ and compression along with a de-esser set to destroy anything above 2k.... Anything to give you a channel with just the "beef" in the track. Blend with the original, main vocal. Sometimes you can put verb ONLY on the mult with a little delay and tons of compression and tons of EQ and have the verb sit a little better, as it does not get the "esses." You can also De-ess the hell out of the verb send itself to creat a darker verb that stays airy but does not scatter the ess everywhere, so you can get away with a little more predelay and longer tail.

This is just s generic blanket answer meant to inspire your own solution!

Hope it helps.

[GrimmBrotherScott]

Thanks Joel, that helps a lot. Sort of like adding a signal tone to a kick via a gate.

I am recording with this same person on Friday, so I will report back with results. Maybe see if I can post them if it works out.

[I'm Painting Again]

my solution has been use multiple mics on the vocals at the tracking phase..or use something that has tubes and or introduces harmonics/harmonic distortion to the signal..like a distressor or whatever you have handy..can be old stereo gear..whatever, as long as it get you where you want to be..as Joel said running through a space echo/tape echo..I also had a female vocalist sing into a glass vase which brought out tones in a thick way with the mic on it..If you can picture that..its a little weird..but I love to use something natural with positioning and "acoustic finageling" rather than eq..

[Professor]

Just to understand better, what is it that makes his voice sound thin?
And for that matter, is he aware of the sound? And does he want to change it?
I mean if he sounds like Tiny Tim and wants to sound like Elvis, about your only choice is going to be some kind of weird gender-bender algorithm from something like the TC VoicePro. If he just plain has a high-tenor or almost alto range voice then there won't be a lot of dark tone there.

But I might suggest getting him to sing louder (if that strengthens his voice) or softer (if that mellows or darkens his voice) and get him right up on top of whatever mic you have that is dark with a lot of proximity effect. Maybe a ribbon or an RE-20 or something else that is 'broadcast oriented'? Just make sure to have a double-layer pop screen in place to control the pops.
Then layer EQ, light compression, more EQ, more compression, and you can probably get away without double tracking.

Or consider that this really is the sound of his voice, and may be what will make him sound unique in the world of music, and choose something that really brings out his thin character.

-Jeremy

[joel hamilton]

Just to understand better, what is it that makes his voice sound thin?
And for that matter, is he aware of the sound? And does he want to change it?
I mean if he sounds like Tiny Tim and wants to sound like Elvis, about your only choice is going to be some kind of weird gender-bender algorithm from something like the TC VoicePro. If he just plain has a high-tenor or almost alto range voice then there won't be a lot of dark tone there.

But I might suggest getting him to sing louder (if that strengthens his voice) or softer (if that mellows or darkens his voice) and get him right up on top of whatever mic you have that is dark with a lot of proximity effect. Maybe a ribbon or an RE-20 or something else that is 'broadcast oriented'? Just make sure to have a double-layer pop screen in place to control the pops.
Then layer EQ, light compression, more EQ, more compression, and you can probably get away without double tracking.

Or consider that this really is the sound of his voice, and may be what will make him sound unique in the world of music, and choose something that really brings out his thin character.

-Jeremy

Jeremy is back!

[Professor]

Hey, thanks for noticing Joel.
I've been hanging out with the other exiled refugees at MySpace.

But it's good to be home... and nice to see you here too.

-J

[vvv]

Singing with a mouth full of peanut butter might help.

OK, that was dumb, but necessary for me to say.

Also, consider recording two tracks, one "typical", and one where you are singing very low, low volume and close to the mic, and mixing the two.

[Brett Siler]

hear is a trick that I did when recording my band not to long ago.

There was this really epic ending to a song of our and everything needed to sound really thick and huge. His vocals are a little on the nasally side so were really needed to beef it up. We track the scream for the part once, and it sounded good but it need more, so we layered another scream. It still wasn't quite thick enough so we made another track and this really did the trick. I had him just whisper the words underneath the scream. I turn down this whisper so it was mixed with the screams and man did it sound huge!

So my suggestion would be to sing it normally once and the go over it again but just whisper the words. Blend the two voice together untill it just sounds like one voice and see if you like it.

[Jupiter 4 Studio]

I like the idea of the whisper... might be something I will try myself. I've done somewhat of the same thing. Actually got the idea a while back listening to Metallica. Track his initial lead vocal then do a really tight double one octave lowwer. Add just enough of this second vocal take so it just thickens up the first but not enough to really notice that it's there.

Just my 2 cents...

By the way, I'm Steve and I'm really glad this board is up. TapeOp is an amazing magazine and I'm glad to be able to correspond with some like minded people out there.

[Everybody's X]

hello everyone
I like to mult the main vocal into three parts
L-C-R

pitch the left up a few cents with an indicernable amount of delay on it
pitch the right down a few cents """"""""

blend your stereo tracks in underneath the main vox


basically what Joel said minus the whole "professional" angle

[andyg666]

i was going to say double track and treat the two tracks with different EQ curves, effects, etc. but it looks like many have beaten me to the punch.

[drumsound]

The singer in my own band has a thin and odd voice. A trick that seemed to work recently (after 8 years of recording the guy) was to lower the mic to mid chest level. I think I angled it up towards his mouth a bit. So I literally recorded more body so I could hear more body.

[wedge]

So I literally recorded more body so I could hear more body.

Awesome...

[Brett Siler]

The singer in my own band has a thin and odd voice. A trick that seemed to work recently (after 8 years of recording the guy) was to lower the mic to mid chest level. I think I angled it up towards jis mouth a bit. So I literally recorded more body so I could hear more body.

Really? I have tried angling it upwards like that and it sound more nasally and trebley, but when I had it up higher it and angled down sounded more boomy...