Vocal tuning, EQ, & compression

At the moment I'm working on the acoustic version of My New Meaning, which is the final (and my favourite) song from my upcoming EP 'What Comes Next'. The other 4 tracks have all been released and their respective acoustic versions are all complete, but I'm a bit late with finishing this final one.

Last week I recorded all the vocals and did all the comping. Today I spent just over 3 hours tuning the vocals, then doing a little bit of processing in terms of EQ and compressions.

I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing but by this point I've watched lots of youtube videos and always trying to try new things. I do have a standard vocal chain that I use if I need something quick but I usually find it sounds better if I start from scratch with each song and do what's best for that specific vocal.

Here's what I started with today:

And here's my project at the end of today:

Yes I changed the colours but let's walk through what I've done.

Tuning

Yes, I tune my vocals, as does almost every single pop artist.

I can sing, but I know I'm not the most amazing.

So I've gotten good at fine tuning my voice in post-production so it's actually pleasant to listen to.

Let's have a listen what it sounded like before:

My New Meaning (Vocals 23rd september start)

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My tuning process is just using Logic Pro's default flex pitch tool within the audio track editor.

For this track I kept it pretty simple and selected all the notes and set the scale to F major and the pitch correction to 85%. I don't set it at 100% as it can make it a bit robotic sometimes.

I also set the vibrato at 88% to smooth it out a little bit.

I then go in and manually make any adustments. There was a recurring melody that used a B rather than a Bb which I had to adjust as that's not in the F major scale and I couldn't work out how to automatically let Logic flex pitch different notes to B and Bb.

Sometimes I will increase/decrease the vibrato if it's too shakey or too robotic. And sometimes I have to cut up the notes as Logic often detects multiple notes as one note with loads of vibrato - so slicing it up can make the pitch detection more accurate.

This is always the most time consuming - probably took me about 2 & 1/2 hours to do all 7 vocal tracks. (1 lead, 2 doubles, 4 backing vocals).

Here's what it sounds like after the process:

My New Meaning (Vocals after tuning)

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EQ

I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to this.

I have a default EQ setting that I made for my vocal like a year or 2 ago that I always use. I can't remember why the settings are what they are but I followed some youtube videos and articles I found I think. And now I just use it everytime. This is what it looks like.

So I used this on the lead vocal, and all 4 BVs. But with the 2 double tracks I actually brought the low cutoff up the frequency a little bit just so it wasn't filling out as much space as the lead - because the doubles are singing the exact same parts as the lead vocal. My intention is to create some slightly textural difference between them.

Compression

Oh look, something else I don't really understand.

All I know is that it basically makes everything more consistent when it comes to dynamics.

I think I understand the basics of the Logic Pro compressor plugin but I don't do too much.

I always just use one of the presets - I cycle through until I find one that takes my fancy.

During this search there's nothing I particularly search for, just feeling the vibes to be honest.

The only thing I do actively do is play the loudest bit of the song, look how much the volume is being reduced, and then turn the make-up knob until it's the number. As far as I understand that brings up the volume of the quieter parts and keeps the loudest parts the same volume as they were originally.

I chose different pre-sets for the lead vocal, the doubles, and the BVs.

Once again the intention with this was to create a little bit of difference between the different types of vocals.

I also put 2 compressors on the lead vocal and the doubles. I purely did this because I've heard it's a good idea - makes it extra smooth or something.

These are the two compressors I added to my lead vocal.