Valhalla vintage verb high pass
Used for Albarn's vocals on Gorillaz's 'Charger', as mentioned by recording engineer and frequent collaborator Stephen Sedgwick in this July 2017 *Sound on Sound* interview about the production of *Humanz*. For this record I used the Studer preset.more It's a pretty good plug–in and you can select different tape recorders, like Tascam, Ampeg, Studer and so on. It really simulates hitting a tape recorder, and it also provides a little bit of analogue tape compression. I use that plug–in when vocals are a little too brittle or bright.
I had the McDSP Analog Channel only on T–Pain, though, basically to take off some edge. The settings on all plug–ins were very similar for both Flo and T–Pain, because they have very similar voices. It also has a great gating feature, and so it cleans up little blips here and there. But it's not hitting the vocals heavy, it only works when the vocals hit the threshold. I used it to just clean things up if there were big level differences. > 'The RVox got rid of extreme peaks on both Flo and T–Pain's vocals. You will see my second de–esser on the Mix Window, on the 'Verse' auxiliary track. I will first grab a mid–frequency with a plug–in directly on the channel, and I will then put a de–esser on an aux. Some people put a de–esser on an aux, but I find that this doesn't really grab the frequency enough. With the De–esser on Flo I cut around 5424Hz and T–Pain around 4500Hz. > 'In addition, I used the Waves De–esser and Renaissance Vox on both Flo's and T–Pain's vocals. Used on Flo Rida's vocals for 'Low', as stated by mixer Fabian Marasciullo. It probably still sounded a bit dry, which is why I sent the track to the ‘Huge Verb’ aux with the Altiverb, again taking out low end with the EQ3.more The Valhalla adds a bit of reverb here, though it’s set to -12, so it only gives a tiny bit of ambience, and the MicroShift makes the whole thing a little wider. The EMT250 is not set to a reverb, but to a phaser effect, which gives a cool stereo effect. The EchoBoy is the main delay you can hear in the verse. > “The sends go to a ‘FlangeVerb’ track, on which I put the RVerb and the UAD MXR Flanger, then the ‘Huge Verb’ with the Altiverb and EQ3, ‘Hook Valhalla’ with the Vintage Verb, and the SoundToys EchoBoy, the ‘EMT250’ aux with the UAD EMT250, Valhalla Plate and MicroShift, and then finally a send to the ‘Dot VS Delay’ track, with the EchoBoy, set to quarter note, the Reel Tape Flanger and the RCompressor.
As I said, I like using several EQs on one thing. I’m boosting 100Hz and 16kHz with the EQP1A. I added the other plug-ins during mixing, and they all add something a bit different. The Q10 has a high-pass at 50Hz and I notched out a frequency that was bothering me around 8.5kHz with the Q2. The SSL channel strip, Q10 and RCompressor remain from the tracking, and maybe the DeEsser as well, but I most likely messed with the settings more during mixing. On the inserts there are the SSL E-Channel, Waves RComp, Waves Q10 EQ, Waves DeEsser, UAD LA2A, UAD Pultec EQP1A, SoundToys Decapitator and Pro?Q2. > “The ‘Dot VS LD’ aux indeed has a lot of stuff on it! I did most of the processing on that bus. It’s a pretty complicated vocal signal chain, as Schaeffer admits. The other six are backing vocals to the four other pre-hook tracks and have no other plug-ins, other than a Trim, and are sent to a ‘Hook Background’ aux, just below them, which itself also is sent to the ‘Hoof Ref’ track.
These four are sent to a ‘Hook Ref’ aux track higher up in the session with another four plug-ins on the inserts and five sends. Nine of the 10 pre-hook tracks have Auto?Tune, while the top four have a number of plug-ins on the inserts, including the EQ3 seven-band, Waves RVox, UAD Galaxy Tape Echo, SoundToys Little AlterBoy, SoundToys MicroShift and Valhalla Vintage Verb. The verse rap track only has the AIR Flanger on it, and is sent to the ‘Dot VS LD’ aux track, which has eight inserts and five sends. > Kendrick Lamar’s vocal audio tracks, named after his teenage stage name K.Dot, consist of his first verse rap track, ‘VS 1 LD’, and 10 tracks for three moments in the track where he sings the pre-hook in a robotic voice. Used on Lamar's vocals for 'All the Stars' as stated by producer Matt Schaeffer in this May 2018 *Sound on Sound* interview.