Add Body to Your Vocal

Mastering vocal production is essential for making music that is appealing to listeners. There are several factors to consider for getting a good-sounding and audible vocal. Sometimes, you get vocal recordings that sound too thin, and in the following tutorial, we will show you how to add body to your vocal.

As usual, we'll begin by listening to the short sequence created in our SoundBridge: DAW, which contains most of the entire mix's elements, including the lead vocal.

~Full Mix - Vocal (Unprocessed)

~Vocal - Solo (Unprocessed)

Create a Duplicate of Your Vocal and Pitch It Down by 12 Semitones

In order to add body to our vocals, we will apply a few techniques. The first would be duplicating the original vocal channel and placing the copied version underneath.

Because the original vocal lacks low-mid frequency content, essential for creating the desired "body" of the sound, we will use pitch shifting to lower the pitch on the duplicated vocal by 12 semitones.

~Vocal Copy - Pitch - 12 Semitones

Use Appropriate Effects Processing to Add Body to Your Vocals

Moving forward, we will apply a few effects to this pitched-down vocal copy in order to blend it better with the original. The first effect in the chain is saturation, which is used to emphasize the mid-harmonics. The second effect is an equalizer, which we will use to reduce the low-frequency content of the copied vocal, which is now producing too much energy. Since the copied version of our vocal could use a wider stereo image, we will finally add a stereo spread effect to the chain.

~Vocal Copy - Solo (Processed With Saturation, EQ, and Stereo Spread Effects)

Now we have a thick vocal layer, and after mixing it with the original, this is how it sounds in the context of the overall mix.

~Vocal - Solo (Processed)

~Full Mix - Vocal (Processed)

If you liked this article about vocal processing, here are some more on the same subject:

• How to Make Wider Vocals
• Use Vocals to Create a Buildup
• Make Your Vocals Sound Unique
• Apply Volume Automation to Your Vocals