Happy accident - is this a technique?

I’ve always been drawn to gravely vocals but unfortunately my voice is rather smooth. As a novice I’m not great with EQ - I cut the extreme lows to get rid of room noise etc, bump the mids a bit and lift the highs slightly for air without paying much attention to numbers , I just play it by ear.

Last night I was dabbling and pushed the low and high mids fairly extreme and ended up with a slightly distorted but very cool gravely vocal that I guess only a producer or engineer would realize was distorted - very cool and “throaty” indeed for the style of the song.

 

I’ve never read about this as a technique anywhere - is this a trick that anybody uses?

Well, that's just a form of distortion and there are many ways to overload, distort, waveshape or rough up an audio signal. It depends on where the distortion is coming from - likely you're bumping up the signal level so much you're distorted further plugins/processes down the chain, unless the EQ itself is distorting, which seems unlikely - how much gain are you adding?

Only just using eq Des, no other effects. In the 400-800 range I’m bumped up to 15 on the left side of the input and probably about 8 on the right side (on the EQ plug-in). I think I have the EQ bumped so high in those frequencies that it’s distorting......or maybe I smoked too many cigarettes before I sang - joking, but that’s a possibility. Sorry about the lame description of my settings - as I mentioned I just listen and not look, but I’ll spend some time on that when I’m not just having fun and stop trying to run before I can walk.

check out the overdrive plugin (i've used it on strings to great effect, adds a little 'scrape' to bowing)... or some of the distortion effects (where less is more, unless you're going for that seriously-distorted effect).

 

probably better than the eq thing, so you're not overloading the signal... just creating a sound that seems overdriven...

It's hard to tell what you're hearing without hearing it. I don't believe the EQ can add saturation/clipping on its own, unless you're overloading another plug-in or Logic's output down the line. Maybe the exaggerated EQ curves are hyping up a character that is already present in the recording? Just guessing though. Can you share a sample so that we could hear it?

On listening back to this a bunch of times I’m starting to think this might actually be raspiness in my voce . At the time I had been up all night and chain smoked as I was stressing over issues trying to get things working properly. Not complaining at all as I’m very happy with the result for this particular style of song.

The first time using this very sensitive mic and how close I was to it probably played a part (U87) of a very throaty recording......good to know - I’ll have to stock up on more of those Malboros.

On listening back to this a bunch of times I’m starting to think this might actually be raspiness in my voce . At the time I had been up all night and chain smoked as I was stressing over issues trying to get things working properly. Not complaining at all as I’m very happy with the result for this particular style of song.

The first time using this very sensitive mic and how close I was to it probably played a part (U87) of a very throaty recording......good to know - I’ll have to stock up on more of those Malboros.

 

or check out the overdrive plugin, as i suggested (seems a better idea that the cigarettes....)

A "happy accident" becomes a "technique" when you do it the second time

A "happy accident" becomes a "technique" when you do it the second time

Or when you explain what you did to the client.

A "happy accident" becomes a "technique" when you do it the second time

Or when you explain what you did to the client.

 

A conversation I've had more than once:

 

"Did you mean to do that?"

"Do you like it?"

"Yeah!"

"Then yes!"

"Did you mean to do that?"

"Do you like it?"

"Yeah!"

"Then yes!"

cigarrette is an awesome thing, but it can be detrimental to both vocals and personal health, i heard marc foster (foster the people) quit smoking for this reason

stay safe my fellow artists