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Hey everyone!

So I wanted to gather your thoughts on what singer Adam Young does to his vocals to achieve his sound for Owl City, which is not unlike Death Cab for Cutie.

http://www.myspace…"] Owl City [/]="http://www.myspace…"] Owl City [/]

I'm thinking some sort of mix between autotune and dry vocals maybe? Maybe some vocoding?

Best Wishes!
Matt

Comments

anonymous Wed, 11/04/2009 - 17:22

I would like to know as well what other opinions there are about this. It sounds like some definite auto-tuning or melodyne by tightening each note but not enough to get the T-Pain note switches. So, tighten each note but not between notes.

1) Melodyne
2) Delay
3) Maybe some very tight doubling

I don't know. Maybe you're right about some type of vocoding mix. But like bent says, fiddle around with these elements and you'll get it. Try all these options out and let us know.

anonymous Wed, 12/02/2009 - 22:11

absolutely love those vocals. they sound excellent... VERY death cab-ish. almost like a death cab / relient k hybrid vocal sound. but death cab uses absolutely no pitch correction according to the band.

part of it is vocal character (that's just how the dudes voice sounds). another part of it is probably compression. the dynamics are very tight on those recordings (and Death Cab's stuff).

but, it's very hard to listen to a recording and say "boom this is what they did and what they used." if i had this guy in my studio, i could probably get there or close, but you aren't him and you don't have my gear, so that adds another layer of complexity.

certain phrases sound very obviously pitch corrected to me, but not in a bad way. i like the sound of properly corrected vocals.

also, the enigma comment is a pretty good call. some of those sounds are enigma-ish (which is a mod / filtering effect from waves - i think its around 150-200 bucks which is prob more than you want to spend for a specialty effect).

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