Top 10 Vocal Effects Tricks

and How to Use Them

Björgvin Benediktsson

The easiest way to make your vocals stand out in

a song is the clever use of vocal effects to make
the singer jump out the speakers.

Whether you’re looking for parallel processing

tricks for larger vocals, cool slapback echoes,
advanced double-tracking or aggressive
megaphone effects, you’ll learn them in here.

1. Vocal Widening Trick

When: For subtle widening of vocals to add
depth across the stereo spectrum.

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
When: For a live-sounding studio feel. It makes
the vocal sound like it’s recorded in an old-
school studio with the instruments all around it.

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
When: Use this technique when you want vocal
depth without space. It’ll make the vocal larger
and more present without adding any reverb tail
that could clutter up the mix.

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
When: Sometimes you want to soften up a delay
and make the delay repeats sound smoother.

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

When: Pre-delay can make the reverb sound
bigger without getting in the way of the vocal
because it’s essentially delaying the effect of the
reverb by the number of milliseconds you
choose.

How: Most reverbs have a pre-delay setting.

Tweak 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
When: Singers can’t always double their takes
perfectly. If you have the ability through editing,
you can make the vocal track stronger by
tweaking the phrases to match exactly. This is
especially easy with modern flex-time editing
tools. You’ll end up with a perfect double instead
of two vocal tracks that sound slightly out of
sync with each other.

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

When: If you want to retain the dynamics of the
main vocal track but add thickness and punch,
you can add multiple compressors in parallel to
get the best of both worlds.

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

When: If you want a lot of space around the
vocal, but you don’t want to clutter everything
up with reverb you can side-chain the reverb and
delay to duck out of the way whenever the
singer is singing.

How: I talked about this technique in detail in An

Advanced Vocal Production Trick You Need to
Try.

9. The 100 ms Delay Effect

When: This is another vocal effect that’s more
about adding depth than cluttering up the mix
with too much reverb or too many delay repeats.

How: Add a 100-millisecond delay with one

repeat. Add it underneath the vocal. Simple as
that

10. Megaphone Effect

When: For that propaganda vocal 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 Vocal Effects

Video Inside Mixing With 5 Plug-ins
Now that you’ve read the article on these top 10
vocal effects, it’s time to watch the video.

The video will show you exactly what to do, and

in which genres certain effects work better in
than others. This masterclass is a collection of
ten different vocal production tricks I use in
multiple different genres – folk, rock, and punk to
name a few – that help me make vocals stand
out and sound more professional.

It’s all available inside the bonus vault of Mixing

With Plug-ins you can check out here.

Music Mixing