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Manipulating Live Vocals


Guest idol_wild

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Guest idol_wild

I am a big advocate of manipulating my vocals with some reverb and/or delay. Some of the venues I have played don't have the ability to make this work and I would like to bring my own set-up with me on tour, especially as I'm beginning to take my music a little bit more seriously. Plus, I want to start looping and layering vocal harmonies and use different effects on each vocal loop.

Am I being naive to think that all I'll need is my own delay or reverb pedals added to the mic set-up? Or is this bad practice?

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If you have a spare three/four hundred quid kicking about you could achieve a lot of those things with a vocoder, your current set of pedals and a small midi keyboard.

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I am a big advocate of manipulating my vocals with some reverb and/or delay. Some of the venues I have played don't have the ability to make this work and I would like to bring my own set-up with me on tour, especially as I'm beginning to take my music a little bit more seriously. Plus, I want to start looping and layering vocal harmonies and use different effects on each vocal loop.

Am I being naive to think that all I'll need is my own delay or reverb pedals added to the mic set-up? Or is this bad practice?

It's fraught with technical difficulties. Loopbacks would need to be controlled by you and shouldn't cause too much trouble but adding (and having the ability to adjust) your own FX onstage means you need a monitor mix that's going to rival the FOH* and still not feed back. Good luck with that.

* otherwise you might have it sounding great on stage but it's a minging mess out front, and there's squat the engineer can do about it.

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Guest idol_wild
It's fraught with technical difficulties. Loopbacks would need to be controlled by you and shouldn't cause too much trouble but adding (and having the ability to adjust) your own FX onstage means you need a monitor mix that's going to rival the FOH* and still not feed back. Good luck with that.

* otherwise you might have it sounding great on stage but it's a minging mess out front, and there's squat the engineer can do about it.

I was hoping you or unbroken would reply to this. Thanks for your input.

Is it likely to be less troublesome if I leave behind the idea of looping and layering and just go with the general effect manipulation? I wouldn't change the settings of the effect much during a set, if at all.

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I was hoping you or unbroken would reply to this. Thanks for your input.

Is it likely to be less troublesome if I leave behind the idea of looping and layering and just go with the general effect manipulation? I wouldn't change the settings of the effect much during a set, if at all.

The looping and layering would be easier actually. Putting on reverb/delay really needs ears out front because there's not so much room for manoeuvre.

Perhaps one way would be to split your vocal, send dry to foh and fx, then send the effected vox to foh as well. that would give the engineer some leeway as regards monitor, main level and EQ. For example, if the FX is feeding back in the mons, the engineer can take down the FX without reducing the dry feed.

I'm struggling to come to terms with the fact that there's so many rigs/engineers out there that aren't capable of doing a simple thing like chucking on a bit of reverb or delay. Personally I wouldn't go to the trouble and expense for something I'd expect the house/hire PA to be equipped with.

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Guest idol_wild
The looping and layering would be easier actually. Putting on reverb/delay really needs ears out front because there's not so much room for manoeuvre.

Perhaps one way would be to split your vocal, send dry to foh and fx, then send the effected vox to foh as well. that would give the engineer some leeway as regards monitor, main level and EQ. For example, if the FX is feeding back in the mons, the engineer can take down the FX without reducing the dry feed.

I'm struggling to come to terms with the fact that there's so many rigs/engineers out there that aren't capable of doing a simple thing like chucking on a bit of reverb or delay. Personally I wouldn't go to the trouble and expense for something I'd expect the house/hire PA to be equipped with.

This is a very useful post. Thanks, Ian.

The majority of venues do have the ability to lace the vocal with reverb or delay, but my main problem stems largely from the fact that I don't get the effect through the onstage monitors. And I really like to hear the effect through my monitor mix - it definitely aids my vocal performance.

Given your advice, I think I'll lay off the idea of affecting the vocal myself.

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Guest idol_wild
Could you use some sort of in ear monitor??

This was suggested to me actually. I know pretty much nothing about them, though. I must admit, the idea of using in-ear monitors really doesn't appeal to me.

Do any of you have experience of using them?

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Would a Loop pedal and a little mixer like the Love of Everything chap not do the job? The one he was using seemed to have a nice little built in delay too, to make the guitar all spacey and loop in and out of itself. Didn't seem to lose any quality in the recordings either. Even the percussion loops sounded top.

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Guest idol_wild
Would a Loop pedal and a little mixer like the Love of Everything chap not do the job? The one he was using seemed to have a nice little built in delay too, to make the guitar all spacey and loop in and out of itself. Didn't seem to lose any quality in the recordings either. Even the percussion loops sounded top.

I didn't get close enough to see what his set-up was like actually. I was going to see if he was available for a wee chat later in the night and seek advice from him, but I was absolutely goobered by that point and really didn't want to embarrass myself. :dunce:

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Racked on a weekday? Party bastard!

I'm pretty sure it was just a standard loop pedal with a guitar and a mic input, into a mixer, into the PA? Or maybe it was into an amp and the amp was mic'd?

Scott might know it a bit better, since he was doing the sound and whatnot that night.

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I don't know how much you were planning on spending on this venture Phil, but definitely the cheapest way to go about this is at the end of every line you sing, repeat the last word a few times whilst gradually moving away from the mic. Also saves the hassle of worrying about wrong delay tempos throwing you off.

The singer of the band below is superb at it: Note at 0:52 and 1:14 how well he does this - I assumed it was a delay unit on first listen.

And you thought Ian was helpful.

:D

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This was suggested to me actually. I know pretty much nothing about them, though. I must admit, the idea of using in-ear monitors really doesn't appeal to me.

Do any of you have experience of using them?

If you're only looking at having reverb in your mons to help with pitching then IEMs are the best option. Not everyone likes them though.

I assume this is for your solo work so a decent set of in-ear headphones would work, no need for fancy mouldings etc. since you don't need to block out various other noisy bastards.

Feel free to PM me if you need any technical advice.

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I don't know how much you were planning on spending on this venture Phil, but definitely the cheapest way to go about this is at the end of every line you sing, repeat the last word a few times whilst gradually moving away from the mic. Also saves the hassle of worrying about wrong delay tempos throwing you off.

The singer of the band below is superb at it: Note at 0:52 and 1:14 how well he does this - I assumed it was a delay unit on first listen.

And you thought Ian was helpful.

:D

that why i love youtube

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I don't know how much you were planning on spending on this venture Phil, but definitely the cheapest way to go about this is at the end of every line you sing, repeat the last word a few times whilst gradually moving away from the mic. Also saves the hassle of worrying about wrong delay tempos throwing you off.

The singer of the band below is superb at it: Note at 0:52 and 1:14 how well he does this - I assumed it was a delay unit on first listen.

And you thought Ian was helpful.

:D

Hahahahaha, that was fucking brilliant, but oh so shite at the same time. :up:

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