Layer Your Vocal Chops With a Creative Delay Effect

In recent decades, vocal chops have been gaining popularity. You can find examples in practically every genre of modern popular styles, but dance music is where you're most likely to hear them. You'd find it hard to find a major producer who hasn't used vocal chops, at least in one of their tracks. The following tutorial will show you an exciting way to layer your vocal chops with creative effects.

As usual, we prepared a short sequence in our SoundBridge: DAW. It includes most elements of a full mix, including a previously made vocal chop sequence. Let's listen to it solo and then in the context of the whole mix.

To begin processing our vocal chop, the first step would be to duplicate the existing channel and place it underneath the original.

Now, we will open the audio editor and pitch up the duplicate of the vocal chop by 12 semitones. Let's hear how that sounds.

Vocal Chops Processed With Delay and Other Effects

Next, we will apply a delay effect to the pitched-up vocal chop sequence. In this instance, we'll be using the vintage-inspired delay effect Tal-Dub. It can be used for various delay effects, from moderately distorted to extremely loud or endless delays. You can experiment with the settings, but in this case, we'll use the built-in filter and a 1/8 delay time. Additionally, in order to create some movement, we will automate the damp parameter, which is essentially a low filter. It's important to note that the mix needs to be 100% wet. Let's hear how it sounds.

It could be helpful to process our vocal chop sequence further with a glitch effect, for instance, to make it more interesting. For this task, we chose MRhytmizer by Melda. As its name suggests, it's an effect that can introduce trance gates, tape stops, and many other glitch-type effects to produce different rhythms. The tabs on the interface's main page allow you to assign various rhythmical patterns that impact time, volume, and filter. As you can see from the image below, we have set up a basic pattern, shown on the right side. Let's hear it.

Finally, after adjusting the volume of the processed vocal chop, let's hear the full mix.

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

• Add Attitude to Your Vocals
• Eliminate Vocal Sibilance with DeEsser
• Quick Help for Vocal Processing
• Get Creative with Your Vocals