Dark Cinematic Vocals in 2 Minutes

How to create a really dark cinematic male vocal for hardstyle. We go from a really cheesy vocal to a really full, dark hardstyle vocal.

In this tutorial
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    My notes from this video

    01

    Squash the dry vocal first

    Watch 0:18

    I route the dry signal to the mixer and add three things. First compression, which squashes it together. Then a filter where I remove the sub. Then another compressor to your liking. I use one by FabFilter.

    It's way more squashed together now. Then I render it.

    FabFilter Pro-C 2 on the dry vocal with the style set to Opto, the first step of a dark cinematic hardstyle vocal
    FabFilter Pro-C 2 on Opto.
    02

    Pitch it down on E2 speech

    Watch 0:38

    Here the fun part starts, because you start pitching the render down. Put it on E2 speech, that sounds the best.

    Then I start adding effects. A formant shifter with stereoization on it, then some really short reverb. It's a small difference, but it fills up the room. Then another EQ. The most important thing is a multiband compressor. It's all about compression.

    Soundtoys Little AlterBoy in Transpose mode, pitch 0.0 and formant -3.5, on a dark cinematic hardstyle vocal
    Little AlterBoy with the formant at -3.5.
    03

    A little distortion on the second render

    Watch 1:12

    Then you render this again. First thing on the new render is a little bit of distortion. Not too much, just to give it a little bit more crunch.

    Then I add a de-esser, which removes the sh. Then EQ, a delay, another compressor and a final EQ.

    What I use in this video

    FL Studio·Fruity Compressor·Fruity Parametric EQ 2·FabFilter Pro-C 2·Patcher·Little AlterBoy·Fruity Stereo Shaper·ValhallaRoom·OTT·CamelCrusher·Sibilance·Fruity Delay 3

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