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How to Enhance Your Vocals Digitally

Digital vocal-processing effects add extra sparkle and impact to recorded vocal tracks. The right combination of vocal enhancements can transform a digitally recorded vocal by giving it the power it needs to fit into the song. Apply vocal-enhancement effects as part of the mixing process after you record and edit the vocal but before you master the song. Many digital vocal-processing effects are available, ranging from single-function pitch-correction software to complete vocal-effects packages.

Instructions

    • 1

      Correct the pitch of your vocals using Celemony Melodyne. This audio-enhancement utility allows you to move the pitches of the notes in the vocals, as well as to change the pitch inside an individual note. Melodyne can also move notes in a vocal forward or backward in time, and can add or remove vibrato. The program's auto-correct functions allow you to quickly correct the timing and pitch across an entire vocal. Melodyne is available both as a stand-alone program and as a plug-in for your digital-audio workstation.

    • 2

      Use iZotope's Nectar vocal-processing software to enhance your digitally recorded vocals. Nectar includes a full set of vocal effects, including a pitch corrector, an equalizer and a de-esser, as well as compression, limiting and reverb effects. Use Nectar's presets to quickly apply an enhancement style such as "Motown" or "Radio Announcer" to your vocals, or configure each element of the vocal-processing chain individually. Nectar is available as a VST, AU, DirectX or RTAS plug-in.

    • 3

      Apply the vocal-processing plug-ins in the AVOX Antares Vocal Toolkit to your digitally recorded vocals. The AVOX suite includes five separate plug-ins, each of which you can load individually, thereby conserving CPU power. The suite incorporates a de-esser and a vocal-doubler plug-in, as well as the unique Throat effect, which creates a mathematical model of a human throat, then processes the vocal recording using this model. Use the Punch plug-in to help the vocal cut through the mix; apply the Choir effect to create multipart backing vocals out of a single vocal track. The AVOX plug-ins come in VST, RTAS and AU versions.

Digital Music

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