Lessons

Lesson Info

Issues "Stingray Affliction": Screaming Effects

We're working on the song stingray affliction, which was actually originally called sld, a cz you can see up there. One thing that happens when you're a producer or an engineer, you have no clue what really song names are for a long time, because there's always working song titles, people come up to me, you know, say, oh, this is my favorite song, and I'm like, I don't know what song that is like it was never. It was called song seven for eight months, but anyways, that just ate. Just explain why the session says something different. This one I actually know because it was their first single on off of this album on its an excellent song. So basically, what I'm going to do is kind of you can kind of see familiar things here that I was showing you with the crash engine session with live session that we did here, basically the same thing with tyler. Most people I work with, you know, you start by trying to get the take you want and the fuel you want and then you go from there with comping...

, and then you move on to tuning and stuff, and then after you do the tuning and the comping and the lining up of vocals is when you get two more of the vocal production side of things and that's what we're gonna kind of focus on here and one thing I want to know that that's actually pretty cool, and I didn't do with alex, and I don't do it with a ton of people it's more of a pop thing to do it's, a technique that can help people sing in tune on really hear exactly what note they're trying to hit is run auto tune live because you can also run opportune auto mode, and if you have it, you've seen that basically, it is tunes toe what it thinks this is right on the fly. So what tyler does and time was actually the person who taught me this it's really cool that uses with other guys. Tyler puts auto tune in one year and then in his other ear, he has the un tune vocals, so I'll put auto tune on, I'll pan at one side, the other side, I haven't ox with the un tuned vocal, so when he sings, he either takes one year off or listens to this and his technique is matching auto tune to his voice and also that way when he's singing like like he matches his real voice to the auto tune voice. So then when he's singing he can hear any weird artifacts like you were talking about and he could get rid of them by controlling his voice in a way that makes auto tune worked perfectly and that's a super like top forty last ten years like pop moved to do but it's really cool and it creates a different style of vocal and it allows you to sing really passionately and teach yourself to sing perfectly and, um, make sure that when you're recording vocals, they sound professional and you don't get any kind of artifact now that doesn't work unless you practice that way because it gets really confusing fast, you can't figure out which one's the real vocal which one not, but if you're into that vocal style, you're in a tyler's vocal style that's a cool thing that practice tyler is the singer of issues of um you didn't already know that so let's break this down a little bit where my just going to bring up the course you're here real quick to show how basically what we just did with alex how that's exactly what we did in in this song and most pretty much every course on this issues out make way so now it's soul of that so you can hear just the vocals and I think you can attach what you just heard toe what we just did with alex's vocals no I don't wanna be tough what I make sure they could save me masha enough I don't want about all this the way you make me feel when you are ah without the lead vocal apologised so that's what all the stuff sounds like without the lead vocal here's with no I don't want to be tough of what I make sure they could save you I don't want about all this the way you make me feel when you were on tough god dies a little inside tio my show no but no I don't want to be tough so the cool thing about that is that I played the one without the main vocal the vocal that we spent all the time making sure was perfect and comping you kind of hear some here some of the tuning here's some of this stuff that you don't really have to spend a ton of time on you just have to make sure it works with the main vocal and and that's cool to me because when I I mean even just listening with the main vocal it sounds really cool but then when you played in the song in a real mix and that's pretty much the mix from the album way you know here all the tuning and any little mistakes in the backup vocals you just hear like this cool chorus and you get lost in the hook and that's the point for me so I'm gonna break this down a little bit I'm also going to show you that this harmony here some of these harmonies are actually harmonies that tyler and I wrote after the fact like after the album was tracked going back and forth and so they're not even they're just melody it's funny sounding it sounds hilarious, but what? I make sure they could just words I want action where you make may be tonto that's not what you hear when you hear the whole thing and that's what's cool about melody wait reason we actually did that and why they're cut up is because originally we tracked these mute this we tracked these harmonies accents in the time we thought that this was like the perfect way to treat the course. I don't want to be tough t me crash enough battle this ah and that's that's real vocals are all triple trac vocals and before we have the seance in there before we had everything else were like, this is an awesome chorus it pops these are the words we wantto accent got almost done mixing the song got all the extra synth stuff in there that tided scout and realize that the vocal wasn't big enough so then I went back and and and that's why milady in schools I went back tyler didn't have to fly back out from atlanta we just in fact I think they were in europe when we're figuring this out so he didn't have to come all the way halfway across the world I just took the main vocal and filled in those gaps with melody it makes it a way bigger chorus and that sounded a little group because I turned the melody harmony way up that's that's just a really cool thing to be able to do these days is you don't have to sacrifice your song because of circumstance and you know you can do that toa whatever level you see fit but so that's that's basically how what we just did uh translates over to what I did on this record and when I do on a lot of records and some will show you to since you brought up working with more delicate parts and stuff that's more out front let's go to the parade, which I believe is this but I'm just kissing you don't want to hear it and I don't want to be the person to slip up and you can't say they don't want to say it to your face but it will be like god put you in your place I'm not a baby screaming tio I don't see that teo you changed her hand, I know you don't want him and I don't want to be the person to slip up, so you got a part like that and you take all the harmonies and everything and just make sure they're really clean and really cool. Like I said before, it's just about working with your circumstance, working the vocals to sound nice over whatever you're doing, but also you don't want to waste the time a ton of time doing something you don't have to do, but what? You don't see that, teo, you're transparent and I know you don't want to hear it, and I don't want to be the person to slip up and how you're feeling another part where we tracked the vocals a bunch of times and panda left and right because you hear those certain words and the whole point is to have those be the focus and they pop because if you know if we mix the song like this, what? I don't see that you see right there and I know you don't want to hear it and I don't want to be the person just cool but it's not that special I mean it's cool cause, intimate there's, no accents, there's, no there's, nothing that grabs you, but all the other vocals tio I don't see right you get those accents you you you fill space without sounding like a queen or something you know and having like all the vocals harmonize and which is also cool but yeah oh I know and that's why they're incredible at it but most other people don't need to do things like that the darkness maybe but that's a whole nother story um yeah so that's that kind of touches on what you were talking about uh that I was going to go through here actually touch on screaming a little bit unless there's any questions about the singing immediately I'm gonna touch on effects as well let's keep going cool yeah well what's uh let's get into the screaming a little bit because that's something that alex doesn't do that we didn't know that my band doesn't it doesn't do that um just because we don't play music heavy enough to warrant it it would sound really strange uh way all grew up on music like this love love this stuff uh michael it's a really cool screen and I was screaming you khun basically use the same techniques of like doubling certain parts to make them wider high ten the double all screams all the time unless someone has a very like unique scream or supposed to sound like torturously like it's actually one person scream but about tracking screens and you do you from tracking clean aside from mike choice it's almost exactly the same one of my main mike's for screaming is assure us, um seven b I also have a sound, alexis, you ninety nine, which is pretty cool that mike doesn't work super well with screams it just wise it brings out too much air and that's one thing about mike choice like I was talking about before is you gotta think about the vocalists and a lot of screamers are pushing a ton of air. You don't want to hear that you want to hear the throat on the voice, so if you have a really airy mike and mike with a lot of top end that's not going to do well with with a screamer because you're going to get all kinds of that every time and it's going to make him sound quiet and whispering it's because you're getting the air before the tone. So that's, why I like that some seventy kind of lo fi, but you can beef it up, it doesn't catch that top in and that fast top end stuff also the speedy stuff you don't want and screaming all the time stuff so quick question again on screaming have you ever quad tracks screaming doesn't work the same way or does it not work as well? Oh, it works great, and I was about teo show basically how I use quad tracking, screaming usually tio to emphasize parts there have been albums there is like a album that I did a long time ago that super popular I'm pretty sure you like that all of the screaming is quad tracked and that was really cool and that was part of the artistic thing on that album we have eyes the compression the same for clean locals yeah, pretty much yeah, I use the same compressor and pretty much the same settings the one thing with screams that it's just like singing vocals that you got to kind of choose with how much air compressing is just to remember how much the breaths air coming up and some screams like that's what you want you want to hear the like the breath in between that kind of holds the rhythm and makes it sounds super passionate if you want the screams to be super slick don't compress is hard or you can automate or clip gain down the breath but for the most part the same same mike pre do you run parallel compression on screams as well? No no not unless this is a suspect. I run parallel distortion on scream sometimes which I think I have this no now just like I often just use the sands and plug in and some kind of coursing effected andi I'll show that here in a minute but you know the only time I really do parallel compression in the mix personally is I have a technique, I use them bass a little bit and then my drums always have a drive us in a carol compression both, but if you're interested in that stuff, watch tomorrow because I'm going to get way deep in tow those sort of things but vocals just the main compressor actually do a lot of limiting on screams because I like him the sound really like crunchy and what not second show you the difference here of the these are the screams as they are in the mix, this part's just doubled good that's everything as it is in the mix now I have a little distortion going on it um and a lot of reverb first someone removed the reverb so you can hear with the dry screaming sounds like doubled actually also remove all the effects on this part just hear the dry screaming double a step further and I'll just play the single screen sounds cool, but it's missing a little bit of that like texture, you know, especially in a band like this for you got a vocalist that we're constantly like doing tons of harmonies and layers and all kinds of stuff you don't want the scream to come in and just sound boring and bland, so green by itself is the screen with the double way the cool thing about having a double with scream I can control how like intense the scream sounds or how crazy it sounds by automating the double up and down so I'll show you I can play this and as I rise it up, you get more of this like intensity and more coursing to get that kind of you know you can hear come up you get a little more coursing a little more craziness and and that's a tool that you can use in the mix you have it there bring it up and down and again screaming almost more than vocals sounds way cooler doubled because you're getting mohr difference and pitches and you're getting like when you think about a screen it's distortion and it's break up in a voice so if you kind of think about it like away form or like the way anything to start or offsets especially vocals it's kind of going like this but it's random so you have a screen one that's going like this and you get a certain tone when you double it you have one that's randomly coming in and filling the gaps and what I'm doing by this I know it looks like I'm doing a ridiculous robot dance but really what it is like the uh it's the distorted that's hard to go without going into detail fact I could just show you without doing a dance this is the hand motion I was attempting to make in picture form so this is why double winners don't really double screams the same way that really doubling as you can see these peaks and this is the distortion this is ah voice distorting so you see all these little peaks and that's the main vocal and then you look at this one and the peaks kind of fill in the valleys on this one so you're getting mohr constant more constant distortion that way and that's why when you bring up the double, it sounds more intense because your evening out the distortion but if you haven't even all the time it khun sound alone corsey and unless the pitches perfect at all times, it sounds a little funky and you don't need to go that far with it at all times unless you want to I mean some some things here that way uh and then now played that same part and I'll bring the distortion back in because on top of that there's still like a little a few gaps, you know that you can see that it doesn't scream still doesn't feel completely constant, so I'll put in a distortion and I'll mix it really low and that to me is what fills in that extra space and the mountie raise the distortion is the amount of space you're feeling so with distortion in this way just adding it in as that little bit of extra intensity and that's where I chose to put it in the mix if you want it even crazier you know you can um as you can see bringing up the distortion brings up the intensity I have the distortion kind of bright because like I was talking about earlier um if I want something to be quieter but stick out I'll brighten it up if I want something to be present but not stick out or be in the background I'll dole it out because you know we here hi hi mids faster than we hear anything else so my distortions kind of bright because I don't want a loud I don't know sound distorted but when it's low in the mix I want youto get that intensity so if I was going to bring that up which I'm literally just using the stocks hands and plug in I'd roll off some of this top end and maybe take the drive down a little bit because it doesn't need to be is apparent and it's crunch bright sort of a little bit too feel free to steal these settings and nothing crazy just uh old sands amp that place again I can bring this uh turn the automation so don't hold it wait I get that a little more of that intensity crank up the distortion I'll just go from a little too a lot no a little goofy loud even soul that sounds ridiculous like that's not I mean it's cool effect but that you don't want your vocals sound like that all the time so you bring down more low and in a little more high end back in it but you take that effect you take that drastic effect and that's kind of the idea behind any parallel type of compression or distortions take a really drastic effect and you mix it behind the clean effect to get an interesting uh attention to anything without that drastic sound being a parent so bring it back down sounds normal that's no distortion you can wave intensity bring the river back in the river well, I guess I never turned off reverb but the river back in he's a little bit longer reverb on screams because there's those gaps but you want to fill him so like as you can here take the river about and I start to focus on the gaps and it's weird put the river way naturally as the tail to it I'll show you all that stuff solo but at the tail that kind of like like chauffeurs the next wine in it keeps the dynamics a little more straight to me I sound decade allowed so long gone what he wanted funny by itself I've never played that way but in the mix it works so when you hear that and then here's a here's, a screen that's been quite tracked. It's got to weigh on into was pretty cool delays always funny when you when you stop the track, and I also have another effect on that that I was about to get into with screams that there's a really cool way toe um, make scream sound huge in spots, so this is without effect, and when I quad screams always liketo have the two stereo ones be slightly different pitch, and that makes it kind of sound like a mix between a group vocal and just a huge screen, because I don't want it to sound like a bunch of grows like, show me what you're worth weii just wanted, like we wanted michael to sound super human in that part, you take out the doubles, it's not as good screen, but it doesn't hit you know you want to sound crazy, so it was crazy, but then we decided wasn't crazy enough. So I had this effect that I called demon screams that's just cause it's something I programmed in on on this, but, um, it's, you could call it anything you want, that's just what I decided name it because it sounds demonic, and first I'll play it without it how it is on the album like super huge and it's still like a cross between a group of local and is a huge sound now solo it which is kind of funny kind of scary on that that's just this vocal show you watch noir with eight eight pitch shifters on it all pan left four on the left four on the right and each one or just random pitches but the cool thing about the age eight thousand is that it actually takes those pitches and it slowly modulates them up and down so it doesn't just sound like a pitch shifter it actually sounds like people that are kind of changing pitch a little bit so that's when you get the scary but it's cool I get it in the whole thing just sounds here just school that's a fun effect I'll see youse that go for it so like you have kind of like your set gear that used you kind of have your set plug ins that you used to that you used for every session was that depend on us? Well, yeah pretty much lays in your re verbs and stuff. Yeah, totally that's actually changing a little bit right now because I just shifted from a pro tools hd system to approach hdx system so some of my tedium plug ins that were tedium on ly I lost there's only a couple of like eco farm I definitely miss but there's actually really built some really cool delays in this that kind of do the same thing if I'm in the box for the way generally use echo boy or one of the delays, or a lot of times, I'll just use the stock pro tools, delay and then add other effects after it to make the delay sound cool. There's a lot of different ways, sometimes I'll use guitar pedals. I have a bunch of guitar pedals that all youse two, I want unique stuff if I want to, like, mess with it while it's running and then just recorded back in and that's kind of why I like this is because it's got the big nobs so you can select what you want and then message that while you're tracking there's a million reasons, I like that, and I don't play one other part that turned out really cool because of that demon screen with you, just another one of those things where, you know, sometimes you're tracking and you think you have enough, then you get to mixing and you realize you need a little more so that's how I do that was screaming, and you can actually I do that with group locals to I use that same effect if I have, like a group shouting or a group of five a group singing and it's supposed to be loose kind of like that drunken bar champ seeing it's like a chancy singing you can use that effect and it's really cool because it just sounds like a bigger group of people with more varied voices that doesn't work for just saying because like I said it's random pitches and so it will just make you sound like you can't sing it try to put it on something that scene so that's all of my basic effects for screaming my basic effect for the singing vocals unless there's any questions about the screaming on the stuff that doesn't involve special effects uh maybe one from katie dhd you vocal line screamed scream it doubles like with locals absolutely all those doubles have been vocal line and triples and quads yeah definitely and that's that I love vocal line for that sometimes you get like a doodle doo super long screen will turn out really good and it's kind of hard to recreate because you've given like everything on that main vocal when you come to the double and it's like don't kill yourself get it they're all vocal line it will be awesome so vocal line is handy and any vocals you want to match and that means said if you have a chorus or apart where the singer saying first the screamer screams over but sometimes it's kind of hard to like scream with the same length of each syllable in the way you sing, because singing is like fluid and screaming, you have the little punches on every syllable. Take vocal line, and you can go both ways. You, khun, you can make the main track. The singing put it on the screaming and a little kind of melt the screaming into the vocal. So if you want it to sound like you know, if you wanted to sound totally matched up, it works great, and you could do the opposite way, too. Sometimes you want the scream to sound different, because you wanted to be, like, sound, like two voices. But if you just wanted to sound crazy, kind of like one really tight voice, just vocal, line your scream to to your singing, vocal and it's, a good way to fix that.