How to "thicken" a thin vocal?

[mjau]

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.

Something about this statement has me laughing.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

well i gotta say my namesake is pretty unbeatable on vocals. i almost always roll a bunch of the treble off, so when it's mixed with the track you don't really hear it as delay, you just hear it as Awesome.

doubling can work as well...but i dunno i kind of have issues with doubling, i generally don't really like it. i think it takes away a lot of the intimacy of the vocal. when it's just one vox it's someone singing me a story. when it's doubled it becomes...a thing. i dunno. can make the singer sound kind of robotic IMO. now, 24 tracks of vocals on the other hand...

[Brandon Schexnayder]

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

Even with the delay and pitch, do you ever find phase issues in doing this?

[teletextnights]

I know the idea is repellent but a small amount of 'chorus' might just do the trick.

Also, you could try recording it to tape with too much gain to make it buzzier.

[mfdu]

slam it to tape.

try a hand-held dynamic with a large condensor or ribbon set back a bit.

i have always found that a large diaphragm set low on the chest of a vocalist tends to collect the nasal resonances from the nostrils and the roof of the mouth. but maybe it's just a fault with my technique (a good engineer never blames the tools)

hmm.

chris.

[allbaldo]

Sometimes I usa a stereo delay with really short times spread left to right which can help...like 25ms to the left, and 50ms to the right. It won't solve eq issues, but will give a "larger" sound to the voice.

[I'm Painting Again]

Sometimes I usa a stereo delay with really short times spread left to right which can help...like 25ms to the left, and 50ms to the right. It won't solve eq issues, but will give a "larger" sound to the voice.

good call!

I do this too with good results..its easy to go overboard and have it sound robotic though..so you have to be a good judge..I get the best results using a second track that i copy the take to and just give it a little bump over..rather than using one track with a plug-in..I find effects always sound better on another track rather than one track with a processer that whas a wet/dry % in the box and in the analog world on an aux track..

[Rigsby]

I get the best results using a second track that i copy the take to and just give it a little bump over..rather than using one track with a plug-in..I find effects always sound better on another track rather than one track with a processer that whas a wet/dry % in the box and in the analog world on an aux track..

True that.

[GrimmBrotherScott]

Thanks for all the advice kids. The whispering thing REALLY appeals to me because in his demos the vox are almost...whisper sung and it really works. Over a whole band, not so much. Plus he wants to "bring the rock" a little bit.

Damn, I am excited as hell to give this a shot. I will seem like Phil Spector if this works out. Minus the whole shooting B actress thing...

[jaguarsg]

can someone explain what a mult is?

[I'm Painting Again]

can someone explain what a mult is?

its the haircut preferred by "rednecks" and 80's rockers..

this is what we use the word mult for in TV production:

Mult, Mult Box or Multiplexer: A device, connected to the main microphone at a news event, which individual broadcast journalists or crews can plug or "patch" into, eliminating the need for a forest of mikes at the podium. Each mult unit usually handles 12-24 separate lines.

I'm not sure what specifically people using this term mean in audio production beyond splitting a signal by some means..

[penrithmatt]

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

spx 90 has a patch called "Pitch change c" which does this

i like to use an AMS 15-80 to do the same thing.

[vvv]

I think multing a signal does mean splitting it.

But it seems that computer recordists often use that term to refer to identical track copies which are intended to be processed differently (maybe due to software limitations...)

I do, anyway.

[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 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...

I don't even remember if I angled it up or not. If I did it wasn't much. Hell, maybe I angled it down...

[Professor]

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.

Something about this statement has me laughing.

It kinda made me laugh too. But you can be sure that I didn't mean anything bad about the new VoicePro - that thing is ridiculous and I will be buying one very soon.

I'd still like to know how this guy defines a "thin" sound, and how he defines a "good" sound, because all these technique suggestions seem to make different presumptions about what is making the sound "thin".

Oh, and "mult" is short for "multiply" or "multiple". So when you "mult" to two or three channels, it means copy the track to two or three channels. In the analog realm you could just split (like with a y-cord) and bump the gain a little on each track, or to do it right you might use a distribution amp. In a DAW you can simply duplicate the track.

-J