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Hi. I am mixing in Pro Tools. I have the Waves Platinum bundle and the Digi plugins, that's all. I am using an mbox so I can't send to an outboard box. I'd like to put a light vocal distortion on one song (ie Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Is there a suggestion as to how I can do this using what I've got? Thanks a bunch.-J

Comments

StevenColbert Sun, 07/15/2007 - 21:31

Jova wrote: Not sure if this is quite the sound you are looking for, but you can always just crank up the level on your preamp and let it clip like crazy... That'll get you a very interesting distorted sound. Trent Reznor does this type of thing on vocals and everything else quite often.

This is the same way I record distorted vocals.

I use a Great River.

anonymous Mon, 07/23/2007 - 00:14

Without hearing the song, it's hard to know what you're after.

Here are some things I use to get different distorted effects on my vox:

1. VST pluggin called North Pole. I think it's free (and it's FANTASTIC!!)

2. Use an overdrive pluggin instead of North Pole

3. If the singer has a really nice strong (loud) voice, I'll get them to sing some parts through a Behringer XM8500 dynamic mic. It's got a very nice sound, but a low SPL, especially in the mid and upper ranges. The distortion from that is pleasing.

If your Waves bundle has Morphoder, you can get some very cool results of of that too. Try the "whisper" preset and mess with it, then mix it back into the original vox.

Hope that helps.

therecordingart Tue, 07/24/2007 - 13:58

johnnyl wrote: Hi. I am mixing in Pro Tools. I have the Waves Platinum bundle and the Digi plug ins, that's all. I am using an mbox so I can't send to an outboard box. I'd like to put a light vocal distortion on one song (ie Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Is there a suggestion as to how I can do this using what I've got? Thanks a bunch.-J

Massey THC

jonnyc Thu, 08/02/2007 - 13:03

therecordingart wrote: [quote=johnnyl]Hi. I am mixing in Pro Tools. I have the Waves Platinum bundle and the Digi plug ins, that's all. I am using an mbox so I can't send to an outboard box. I'd like to put a light vocal distortion on one song (ie Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Is there a suggestion as to how I can do this using what I've got? Thanks a bunch.-J

Massey THC

Or sansamp, always works good for me.

Cucco Thu, 08/02/2007 - 13:41

Jova wrote: Not sure if this is quite the sound you are looking for, but you can always just crank up the level on your preamp and let it clip like crazy... That'll get you a very interesting distorted sound. Trent Reznor does this type of thing on vocals and everything else quite often.

This won't always work.

If your preamp is heading straight into your AD converter (or it's built into an interface, such as the MBOX) the only thing you'll be doing is overloading your ADC and causing digital clipping. This isn't exactly pleasant sounding distortion.

Folks like TR overload either a multi-gain-stage preamp - usually a tube based or transformer based pre with an input and output gain where you can crank the input gain and turn down the output gain forcing the tube or transformer to overload and then sending out a reasonable amplitude for the ADC to be able to handle.

Besides, cranking the gain up on a single stage preamp shouldn't cause it to overload. Unless of course it's a POS.

I second the idea of running the voice out of a speaker and recording it. Especially if it's a 2 or 3 way speaker. You can mic only the mid or woofer and get a very cool effect when layered with the original voice! Go through a guitar amp and get even cooler effects!