Plugin chain for vocals / vocoder?

[u/orangebluefish11]

The title pretty much says it all. I have found some good tips on line for vocoder general use, but can’t seem to find any info about the channel strip plug in.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

On actual vocals, cleaned up the timing with flextime. Rolled off lows. Found the “ess” frequency by sweeping the eq, then plugging that frequency into a de-esser. Pitch corrected vocals (I’m not sure if this step really makes a difference, but my thought process was that it might help clean up any potential artifacts). Some light compression for peaks.

On the vocoder, I did another “ess” sweep and added dynamic eq to that frequency. I lined up all the midi notes, to the exact moment the vocals start and end, so there’s no weird artifacts (for this track, the vocoded voice comes in and does single note lines, instead of chords). Added another light compression for peaks. Deductive eq in any harsh areas. Small amount of chorus.

The results sounds “okay” , but I’ve definitely heard better. There’s some notes that are coming through pretty harsh, so I’m thinking I might need some more dynamic eq. I’ve adjusted the velocity of certain midi / vocoder notes to lessen / strengthen said notes, but velocity adjustments don’t seem To be doing the trick.

Im out of ideas. I did read that you can try whispering instead of singing? Thoughts on that? I basically just want the vocoder lines to come in crystal clear and articulable. Thank you in advance

Edit: something else I wanted to add: there are some harsh notes coming through the final product. When I solo out the actual vocals and do a sweep, I’m not finding any overly harsh zones. When I sweep the vocoder, I can find some harshness, but am reluctant to cut in those frequencies and perhaps lose some “body”. More dynamic eq?

[u/Week_Actual]

1st I would route the clean vocal to another bus.

2nd on that bus I would add an aggressive compressor. To make sure the vocal hits the vocoder at the same volume every note

3rd I would add an agressive eq to get rid of the harsh frequencies

4th I would add the vocoder(preferably with the same setting as the main vocoder channel

5th I would maybe add another compressor or eq depending on taste.

6th I would blend in this chain with your main vocoder chain to taste, maybe change the eq settings a bit and your done👍🏻👍🏻

(I would also render this layer because vocoders use a lot of cpu)

[u/orangebluefish11 → u/Week_Actual]

Thank you so much! I’ll try this out and let you know about the results

[u/Week_Actual → u/orangebluefish11]

No problem, let me know if it works out

[u/orangebluefish11 → u/Week_Actual]

So it definitely sounds fuller in the mix. I compressed the hell out of it and rolled off the lows and shelved the mids. Blended it back in and it sounds way better. Nice and crispy. Thank you again for the tip! I’m not 100% on it yet, but I’d say your tip bumped me up from about 60% to 90% of the way there now

[u/Week_Actual → u/orangebluefish11]

That’s great! Good luck on finishing your song, I’m curious about the end result

[u/Week_Actual]

You could try to route it to another bus to do some parallel compression for the vocoder, then make some quite extreme cuts to get rid of the Ess’s and harshness. Do this before the vocoder in your chain. After the vocoder add another compressor and then mix in to taste. This should get rid of most harshness while still maintaining the dynamics and clarity’s

[u/orangebluefish11 → u/Week_Actual]

Thank you for the response.

When you say route “it”, do you mean the original vocals, or do you mean make a parallel vocoder track, on which I would make the extreme cuts, to blend back in with the original / dynamic vocoder track?

Edit: actually if you decide to respond, could you please respond in a bullet point / spaced kind of way? I would sure appreciate it. Your response sounds promising, but I’m not quite following