A melody makes a mix go ’round.
For 99%(made up statistic) of music, the song revolves around the vocal melody. Especially when you consider how many songs use the same four chords, there would be no way to differentiate songs if you didn’t have the melody to tell you which one it was.
So you can agree that the vocal needs to really sound amazing to pull in that listener right? A dull, uninteresting vocal might sound better than four chords repeated over and over, but there’s no excitement.
Using the typical tricks of EQ, compression, reverb and delay are all great methods to create an interesting vocal, but sometimes you just need a little excitement to bring it all together. A little air to give your vocal that presence you want.
Use an Exciter
If you’ve exhausted all the standard tricks in the book and your vocal still doesn’t sound exciting, try an exciter. An exciter simply adds high-end harmonics to your vocal. It adds “air” and “presence” at the same time. You don’t need a lot, since it can sound artificial in excess.
Simple Alternative to EQ
The Exciter is for those cases where your EQ just doesn’t cut it. It’s a very simple alternative, since it doesn’t really have a lot of buttons to push. The one in Logic only really has two settings. The frequency where you want to start adding harmonics, and the amount you want to add.
Don’t go overboard. Start at around 5 kHz and move up until you’re satisfied with the frequencies added. Don’t add more than around 20 – 40% of harmonics to the signal, since you just want to lift the signal, not make is a noticeable effect.
Easy Excitement
The Exciter is often overlooked, but can really come in handy for cases like this. If you just needs a bit of air or presence then you don’t always need to use your equalizer. Try the Exciter next time.
Image by: AGENTvietnam
