Here is another example of a Vocal Only video.

A LOT of processing here.






And the final product...






Again, this is intended to show an example of how vocals are heavily processed for these type songs... And, perhaps, spur on those who are seeking to capture this in their own recordings/mixes...

A discussion of WHAT folks hear in these might be helpful to others...

This is a good one to examine because it covers a wide range of vocals.

A "soft" male vocal.

Then a "big, loud" male vocal.

A "soft" female vocal.

And a "big, loud" female vocal.

And the "whole bunch of voices" thing.

There is obviously a huge amount of reverb. And delay. I hear some chorusing effect. There is likely fairly heavy compression to get this vocal range even - that is, of course, a guess - riding faders could account for that, too...



Do this effectively, and you too could have a BILLION Youtube views...

Cool find. This was one of my favs in 2012. Sound On Sound has a great article on the song and how it was mixed. if you just want to read how the vocals were done, scroll down to Vocals for that info. Link below. Enjoy.

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/mixing-gotyes-somebody-i-used-know-francois-tetaz

Thanks Floyd for posting these discussions. They are a great help.

What do I hear? A LOT of very complicated processing that I have little hope of ever emulating no matter what DAW I am using!

Josie. Thanks for the link to the article. It is an very informative read.

"Most of the songs on Making Mirrors have a lot of detail, with many different bits and pieces resulting from Wally having cut up and arranged loads of samples — 160 tracks per session was not unusual!"

So...THAT is what it takes to make a modern sounding song....I wonder how many hours were spent on this song alone (let alone the amount of hours of practice and training to even get to this point).

I think most of us on this forum we are "hobbyists" and don't have the training or know-how (or patience) to produce anything even close to this song. There may be some that have the talent but talent is probably not enough to make a song like "Somebody"

There is however, a lesson I CAN take from this..

"When I mix, I always make sure that the vocal performances and edits are top-notch before I do anything else"

I think far too often I get bored of editing and tuning vocals and say "that will do" when in actual fact it wont do and I can easily do better. What is the point of putting badly performed and edited vocals on top of the perfect Realtracks that are generated by Band in a box?

I know extremely little about this but I feel reasonably sure a plug-in like Waves vocal rider was used (as fj alluded to). Or maybe they manually rode the faders.

I hear more riding than compression as most of the dynamic range does not appear to have stripped out.

I’m probably the odd guy out here (ample precedent) but I do no editing of vocals and use minimal effects. Perhaps keener ears than my old pair hear “improvements” that I could make. Dunno. This curmudgeon just doesn’t get this super processed vocal thing; however, I’m absolutely not disparaging it.

Irrespective of genre we listen for soul in a vocal. I’m not sure I could offer a good operational definition of that. But I could give many examples of it.

Vocals edited for pitch perfection, overly fader ridden, significantly compressed, etc., seem to have the soul sucked right out of them along with nuances that help define the uniqueness of each voice.

I think this heavy vocal processing and vocaloids are on a collision course.

Bud

Disclosure notice: I’m aware I may have strayed from the thread topic with my rant. I’m aware that the older I get the harder it is to stay on topic. I’m further aware that it’s often better to keep my mouth shut and appear ignorant than to open it and confirm the ignorance.

floyd,

Thank you for posting these clips of vocals. I've never thought about using Youtube in this way. I've found it really educational to listen and learn.

Noel

Most of the article states use of compression, EQ, and reverb. Not all that complicated.

The de-easing is something you might not have in your arsenal of plugins or hardware.

Sure most of us do not have a stockpile of a bunch of outboard dynamics processors like what is listed. But we did have some and the progression of processing is instructive.

I’ve had this album for about a year. One thing that also gives it a modern feel are the ‘intervalic’ jumps in this and other tracks. I borrow that term from Rick Beato, who you should subscribe to if you enjoyed this video. He has a series called: what makes this song great that breaks down hit songs from a theory and production standpoint. Gotye reminds me of Sting in his somewhat unique choice of interval jumps. Beato calls this ‘intervalic’ when songwriters choose large jumps of notes; large intervals; in their melody.

The whole Gotye album is a treat if you enjoy this song. Stylistically it ranges far from this song, but really nice and surprising in its variety.

Yeah, interesting thread FJ.

One of the things I've noticed with this and most other examples, is that the vocal mix is not static. The processing may even be similar but it is always dynamic - changing from verse to chorus. Sometimes with different processing on even a few words. Much like the arrangement the processing on the vocals evolves and ebbs and flows with the song beyond just fader riding.

One of the things that caught my atIention (if I read it right) was compressing the reverb itself. The reverb used on the vocals here is a convolution impulse. Never tried compression on the reverb.

I find this stuff interesting and I like to experiment. However, I think NOT ALL but SOME processing just for the sake of piling on more processing can lead to overkill and is often so "subtle" that it's unnecessary for my hobby purposes. Not that I wouldn't like my mixes to sound better with every new mix - of course I would, I'm just saying.

(Rant alert.) For me, no matter how much processing a track has or how well or how modern it's mixed, if on a scale of 10 the song is a 5 - it's still gonna be a 5 no matter how great the singer is or the mix is once it's out there competing for attention in the real world. You don't want to screw up a good song with a bad mix but a mix can only do so much.

I also don't think the mix in and of itself is solely what makes it sound modern. How it's written, sung and arranged, then mixed is the order of potential effect on the masses in my opinion. Your opinion may differ. (End of rant.)

Josie - Thanks (a ton!) for the link to the article! I was hoping to find something like that. A great addition to having the separated vocal track and the final...

It is a fascinating read.

In the Sound On Sound article Sundance posted, they mention using Cranesong's Phoenix tape saturator. I think this is an effect that a lot of people overlook when recording digitally, and why it's easy to end up with overly clean recordings that sound like they're coming out of a computer. A big difference between what we do and how classic albums were recorded is that they used tape, and that's pretty easy to emulate digitally these days.

I'll throw a bit of saturation on pretty much everything, especially vocals, to get a bit of color on the tracks and make them more harmonically interesting. Soundtoys' Decapitator is my favourite and has been a go-to for the last couple years, and I usually have an instance of Waves' MPX Master Tape in the signal chain when mixing and/or mastering as well.

I also invested in a really nice reverb unit a couple years back (Eventide Space), and I'm pretty blown away with how much difference a really good reverb makes, when compared to cheaper plugins or the reverb built into my mixer.

Cheers
Kent
PG Music

Where do you find these Floyd? I have an audio copy of various famous Motown singers that I 'acquired' presumably originally from the studio or the person who has the tapes. They make for interesting listening. PM me if interested.

Hi, Kent... would LOVE to hear what your vocals sound like! Any place we can go to do that???

Hi Floyd,

Nothing online that I can share at the moment, sorry. I don't actually sing myself, just have some projects on the go with some vocalists that I have to keep under wraps until they're ready to be released.

Cheers
Kent
PG Music

Floyd, sorry I'm late in commenting, but these examples are so helpful. To be able to clear away everything else to hear what is going on in a single element of so is amazingly useful.

Then to be able to listen to the mix again, it's easier to hear how the pieces of the puzzle fit.

I know it was mentioned, but when this song first came out, I thought it was Gordon himself.