Exploring Vocals and Effects

Now let's talk about vocals. Within my little group of instruments, I've got my mic rack here, and this track has a bunch of different things on it. We're going to go through these and show you what I got.

Effects on Vocals

Basically, what I want to be able to do is put lots of different effects on my voice, it's like radio voice. I've got a bunch of different tools:

• Repeat
• Pitch Killer

The concept is very similar. I've got external audio in from my interface. I've set it to "input" just because I want to get whatever's inputting all the time.

Track Setup

This track here in my Core 8 is mapped with my APC40. It's set to receive audio from my mic. When I record enable this track, I can easily hit record on this clip and start recording one of my vocals.

You'll notice that the track and clip retain any effect that I've put on my voice, which is kind of nice. You can set up some really ambient vocals. For example, I just made a drone noise with lots of reverb, kind of cool!

Vocals Rack and Effects

Let me show you what's going on here. I have a vocal rack with a whole bunch of effects really. If I were to open this up, I have:

• A gate (currently off, but it turns on when I talk)

  • Set to a level that's loud enough to pick up my voice but low enough to eliminate feedback from the music during live shows.

• EQ

  • I've cut out a lot of the low frequencies to prevent them from competing with my music.

• Compression

  • This is key for balancing my vocals.

• Beat Repeat

• Pitch Decay

  • This is done via a knob, trust me, you can have a lot of fun playing with that!

Auto-Tune Feature

I want to talk about this in a minute, but this is where I have Auto-Tune. This is actually the only non-Ableton plugin I use: Nectar. I use it for the autotune function, which is great when you want to either:

• Not sing out of tune
• Get a kind of robotic sound

This goes into my reverb and delay, and then you'll notice that I have a looper.

Looper Setup

If you remember from my instrument talk, I like to have the looper first, then the effects. However, for my vocals, I prefer to have:

• Effects, then
• Looper

This way, I can record my voice with all the effects into the looper, and while that's going, I can change my effects and sing on top of that.

Practical Application

Let me give you a little example of what I'm talking about. I'll start playing these tracks for you and record something in my looper.

I have this looper set up to a different pedal on my footswitch. So that loops, and I've got the beat repeat repeating that note. I can add that, creating a little harmony with the looper.

If I wanted to, I could record this into this track, which I'll wait for in the next bar. I only recorded half of it, you get the idea. The looper is handy for capturing all those effects and then changing them afterwards.

Conclusion

So that's generally what I've got on my mic. Again, I have this external audio effect feature, where if I hit that button, I can apply all these effects from my chaos.

Yes, lots of effects, lots of possibilities. It gives it some nice character.

And that's how I do my vocals!