i wanna know what effects are good for vocals

effects in general, or specific hardware units and software plugins?

Beyond compression, I generally use reverb,and maybe a delay...

run the vox through a Full-tone full-drive guitar pedal.

also, use some form of an echo chamber/room, recording the vox out of speakers inside the room.

This is so open ended its unbelievable. First thing is first: you need to know how your singer sings/screams/raps/etc. Then, depending on how you record, and what you're recording to, decide wether you want your effects in the signal chain or do you want (or have to) do it in post.
Recently I recorded a metal band that had a screaming demon of a singer. He really wanted saturated vocals with distortion and compression, really wanted it to sound as noisy as possible while still retaining some sense of human voice. I know that most plug-ins I use dont get that gutteral, nasty, sound that a good (or cheap) stombox does. So, I ran the mic to a distortion stompbox and ran that into my preamp and then recorded it. With a little compression, some EQ'ing, and some reverb on bus, we had ourselves a gnarly sounding vocal track. the only problem is that the distortion is in the signal chain, so I wanted to make sure that the sound was SPOT ON when I recorded it. But if he was a regular singer, I'd have 86'ed the stompbox and ran into the preamp directly. Preamp.... have a good one always. Presonus makes some decent, lesser-expensive ones.

js wrote:

run the vox through a Full-tone full-drive guitar pedal. also, use some form of an echo chamber/room, recording the vox out of speakers inside the room.

XD thing is, i have run vocals thru guitar FX before. it's fun.

zacanger wrote:

js wrote: run the vox through a Full-tone full-drive guitar pedal. also, use some form of an echo chamber/room, recording the vox out of speakers inside the room. XD thing is, i have run vocals thru guitar FX before. it's fun.

YES! Like I posted, using guitar FX are really fun and can open new doors that you may not have imagined before. I build FX pedals for guitar (A GREAT HOBBY) and I made one that wasnt grounded too well, so (for some reason) if you made a lot of noise (i.e. we yelled at it) it added some serious effect and crazy noise that made the recording one-of-a-kind and the singer couldnt have been happier. Also, try using guitar amplifiers. I run the mic to a guitar amp and some guitar FX boxes and mic the amp and the singer at the same time, NOW THATS F*CKING TRIPPY!!!!
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The most common universal straight forword vox effects used in most of todays top 40 charts are chorus and reverb. Not always nesicarily both together, and not a lot either. There are plenty of tracks out there where chorus is added ever so slightly to vox tacks but the average listener wouldn't even notice it. It's just enough added effects that it is adding something only slightly noticable, yet with out it there you can hear a BiG difference.
Kind of like the coconut sprinkles in a macaroon. (if you've ever had one)
Know what I mean?
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RAGEWorks wrote:

zacanger wrote: js wrote: run the vox through a Full-tone full-drive guitar pedal. also, use some form of an echo chamber/room, recording the vox out of speakers inside the room. XD thing is, i have run vocals thru guitar FX before. it's fun. YES! Like I posted, using guitar FX are really fun and can open new doors that you may not have imagined before. I build FX pedals for guitar (A GREAT HOBBY) and I made one that wasnt grounded too well, so (for some reason) if you made a lot of noise (i.e. we yelled at it) it added some serious effect and crazy noise that made the recording one-of-a-kind and the singer couldnt have been happier. Also, try using guitar amplifiers. I run the mic to a guitar amp and some guitar FX boxes and mic the amp and the singer at the same time, NOW THATS F*CKING TRIPPY!!!!

Oh, yeah, totally. I did this one song where I ran the vocals through a Line 6 amp with an octave effect and a ton of distortion and had a mic on the singer too. It sounded insane, in a totally kickass way.

wow I bet that was pretty cool sounding!!!
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ja, pretty much. actually today i was recording drums for an industrial/goth/punk thing, and i ran the drums through a behringer x v-amp just for fun. it sounds insane! i dropped the pitch down an octave and turned the compression and gate all the way up. incredibly electronic sounding, in a good way. think roisin murphy.

zacanger wrote:

ja, pretty much. actually today i was recording drums for an industrial/goth/punk thing, and i ran the drums through a behringer x v-amp just for fun. it sounds insane! i dropped the pitch down an octave and turned the compression and gate all the way up. incredibly electronic sounding, in a good way. think roisin murphy.

I would think that might be incredibly noisy or degrading on the signal, but, if it works, it works. What do you record to? Pro Tools? Tape? A multi-track? I use pro-tools and record digitally, I would have done those things with a plug-in, as an after effect. i'd be kinda afraid of the v-amp's permanent effects. Interesting as hell idea though. Might need to try that.
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Yeah, if I had decent equipment I would've done it after but I'm recording to a crappy Fostex MR-8 at the moment, until I have enough money to get something better. So basically any FX that go on what I record have to be applied while recording. It sucks, but it teaches me ways to jerry-rig things... haha.
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ah, good ol fostex. My first personal recorder was a fostex 4-track tape recorder. I loved that thing. The digital are decent enough to work, but you just cant play with them like you can with tape. Right on, good work with the materials you had. I bet that was fun.
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The revolution will not be televised... you'll hear it coming.