Yesterday I showed you "when" you should use my top 10 Vocal Effects Tricks.

I realize that knowing the "when" is pointless if you don't know how to use them.

So today I'll spend some time on telling what to do to get those vocal effects sounds.

Remember, if you want the full video that covers the steps in more detail, you can get the vocal effects masterclass for free if you join Produce Pro Vocals and send me your receipt.

In the full masterclass I show you how to use all these effects tricks effectively across genres such as rock, folk, punk and pop.

1. Vocal Widening Trick

How: Send the vocal to a bus, add a compressor and a stereo widener. Add in the stereo widening until the vocal starts sounding larger

2. Tape Slap

How: I use the Kramer Tape plug-in and use the slap/delay section to add it to the main vocal without using it as a send. You can replicate this without the Kramer tape by using a slap echo and some analog saturation.

 3. Advanced ADT and Depth without space

How: Send the vocals to a stereo delay with 21 ms on the left and 29 ms on the right. Then use a pitch-shifter to detune or pitch up the vocal about 10 cents. Add the send under the main vocal track until you've achieved the desired ambience needed. An advanced way to do it is with two mono delays panned hard left and hard right with one pitch shifter detuning the vocal 10 cents while the other pitches the vocal up 10 cents.

4. Diffusing Delays

How: Add a reverb after the delay bus and add a shortish delay so that every delay repeat will get diffused by the reverb.

5. The Importance of Pre-Delay

How: Most reverbs have a pre-delay setting. Tweak the pre-delay to 20 - 40 ms to hear how the reverb pushes back away from the initial phrases of the vocal.

 6. Comping vocals for Perfect Doubles

How: Depends on what DAW and what tools you have at your disposal, but the goal is to line up the phrasing exactly to the main vocal track.

 7. Parallel Compression with EQ

How: Send your vocal to two different compressors, an 1176 FET style compressor and LA2A Opto compressor for instance. Then blend the compressed vocals underneath to taste. The different compression styles will process the vocal differently so you might want more of one than the other.

8. Side-chain Vocal Effects

How: I talked about this technique in detail in An Advanced Vocal Production Trick You Need to Try.

9. The 100 ms Delay Effect

How: Add a 100-millisecond delay with one repeat. Add it underneath the vocal. Simple as that

10. Megaphone Effect

How: Use a high-pass filter and filter out all the lows and the low-mids until about 3-400 Hz. Add a low-pass filter and filter out all the highs down to 2-3 kHz. Find a couple ugly frequencies and boost them. For an even more drastic effect, add some gentle saturation for some real grainy sounding vocals. This actually works surprisingly well on hard rock as an effect.

Get the Step By Step Video

Get Produce Pro Vocals from Musician on a Mission today and send me your receipt and you'll receive the free in-depth video masterclass on these vocal effects.

The video will show you exactly what to do, and in which genres certain effects work better in than others.

Produce Pro Vocals closes on Friday so make sure you join before then.

Looking forward to sending you the new video!

Björgvin