Vocals

The vocals on this song were recorded as several distinct chunks:

1. A single track of lead vocals on the verses and the bridge
2. Doubled lead vocals on the choruses backed with a single track sung an octave up
3. Eight tracks of background vocals
4. One extra track singing the "what's your plan" line in the choruses

The unprocessed lead vocal track was designed to be distorted. As with the bass track, if the Amp Sim is fed too much bass content, then it bottoms out on bass. So the lead vocal was radically EQed to remove bass and boost treble. I used a Waves Q4 with a -10 dB low shelf @ 273 Hz and a +5 high shelf @ 9000 Hz. I also used a +7 dB boost @ 2300 Hz to bring out all the snarl in the vocal.

This was by far the most radical EQ used on the album for any vocals. The filtered vocals were fed into a Renaissance compressor, 4:1 ratio with a low threshold getting up to -12 dB gain reduction. The output of the RCL was set hot to engage the limiters. I wanted this track slammed.This highly compressed vocal was then fed to Bus A (for clean output) and a little bit to Bus B (more on Bus B below) for swirliness. Hear how that track spreads out into the speakers a little more? The vocal was also fed to Aux 2 for short delay, Aux 3 for distortion, and Aux 4 for long delay. Envelopes were used to control the delays and to bring down the distortion for the bridge. The fully processed distorted vocal is big and brash. Note how much low end the Amp Sim added back! That's the reason for the deep EQ cuts on the track.

The chorus features three vocal tracks: a doubled lead vocal and a third vocal that's an octave up. I used a Renaissance Compressor on each of the doubled tracks to ensure that they were very up-front and consistent. The three tracks were bussed to Bus B, which I set up for these chorus vocals and the background vocals. The processed chorus vocals were dry and up-front, never loud but always at the front of the mix.

Bus B was set up to handle processing of all the background vocals. By routing all the doubled and tripled vocals to this bus, I could avoid having to put effects on each individual track. Bus B was set up with a Waves Q4 to lower the bass on the backups - a gentle -2.5 dB low shelf @ 400 and a +1 high shelf @ 3500 did the trick nicely. The EQ was routed to a Waves MondoMod to add increased chorus and thickness as well as stereo width. This was fed into a Hyperprism Harmonic Exciter - an effect I rarely used but which sounded really good on these tracks. Finally the output was fed through a Renaissance compressor set with a 4:1 ratio and getting about 3-6 dB of gain reduction - just enough to tame the peaks and raise the valleys. You can hear the background vocals dry and after processing through Bus B.

There was one last vocal to squeeze into this mix. In the choruses, a very distorted Debra sings "what's your plan". Originally this was routed just like the lead verse vocals - through the distortion on Aux bus 3. But after hearing the final mix, this just wasn't enough distortion. While the distortion was obvious in the emptier verses, the thick choruses covered up the distortion, making the vocal sound muddy, not aggressive. The solution was to drop another Amp Sim onto output Bus C and crank the living bejeezus out of it. Since the vocal is panned mostly to the right prior to running it through the distortion, the effect only filters the left side, while it distorts the right side. Listen to the processed vocals and see what I mean.

The Mix

This was a mix that just had to be wrestled to the ground. Each sound was strange and unusual. Nothing was "normal" or "in the pocket." It was a long process of honing and tweaking. In the end I was very surprised at the way it turned out. I had hoped to get a chance to take a complete ground-up re-do of the mix, to get a different slant on it, but there was never time to achieve that goal. I am sure that there is a better mix waiting to happen, though.

One thing that just amazes me is the sheer volume of plug-ins I used. Any time that many effects are in use, it's got to be a mistake. In the end, I used 19 EQs, 9 compressors, 5 choruses, 4 amp sims, 4 gates, a harmonic exciter, and a bass maximizer. Good heavens, is there anything I didn't use? Also impressive is the Roll Your Own Thunderbird's ability to deliver enough CPU power to play back 48 tracks of audio through 43 different plug-ins in realtime.

I hope you take the time to listen to some of Debra's other material. There is a broad range of good music on her CD, which can be ordered through her website. There are a few other tracks on her MP3.com website as well that can be downloaded.

As always, I value your feedback on these articles. Please drop me a line to let me know what you think!