I have a hip hop section in a track I am doing and I want to get a big thick vocal sound, similar to Kanye on "stronger". I read the SOS Manny Marroquin write up, which was great but it cited "numerous processors", and I dont have a load of outboard gear. Does anyone have any tips, or favourite tricks? (this isn't my usual stle of music so I have no clue what I am doing )

Last year I engineered a grime album with limited equipment and if it's any use I'll list some basic techniques I used to use:

- If it's for a chorus/hook section then it's good to double or treble the vocals, and if you spend some time with the vocalist to perfect the different takes - i.e. maybe different pitches, or emphasis on certain words or phrases it can increase the impact on the section.

- By putting different plug-ins or effects on the separate takes can also help this - panning, reverb etc all specific to each take.

- Obviously you'll need to compress the vocals to help fit them in the mix better, but you could experiment with a clear vocal take with soft compression (which can be put at the front of the mix), and maybe the other parts compressed hard to again increase their impact.


That's only a couple of ideas, but as you can see I found that by having multiple takes, and by using multiple processing and mixing techniques on each separate one can help give the desired effect.

Hope that's some help, and wasn't written too badly, and feel free to contact me if there's anything else I can help with...

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PowerBook G4; Logic Express 7; Akai MPC-2500; Korg PadKONTROL; Alesis Photon X25; 2X Technics SL-1210MK2; Numark DM-1001MX

I think that compression will bring you close the sound you are looking for and the use of proximity effect as well. Try recording that rap verse close to the mic maybe just two inches away and put it through a compression plugin like Waves Rvox if you have it.

- Dan

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# Daniel #

cool, thanks guys. I will try out the suggestions.

I wonder then why Kanye needs a squillion different processors, parallel de-essing etc.

But I'm pretty sure the suggestions will work... I like the idea of proximity effect + compression.

I don't think it's a matter of Kanye West 'needing' the extra processing, but was it 11 engineers he went through (mentioned in the article), so I think we can safely put that down to being too picky, and if you're Kanye West you've got the backing to act like that!

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PowerBook G4; Logic Express 7; Akai MPC-2500; Korg PadKONTROL; Alesis Photon X25; 2X Technics SL-1210MK2; Numark DM-1001MX