Thursday, 17 September 2015

Eric Valentine Vocals (Queens Of The Stone Age, Good Charlotte, The All-American Rejects, Slash)


Eric Valentine's favourite vocal compressor is the UA 1176LN into the UTA UnFairchild.
UA 1176LN

The 1176 does the majority of the heavy compression and the UnFairchild is just smoothing things out a bit.


The 1176 is set with a 4:1 ratio, slowish attack (1-2) and a fastish release (6-7)

It is compressing a lot. When a singer is singing loud the GR meter is pinned all the way to the left of the scale. The 1176 is one of those devices that gets thicker sounding when it compresses a lot. It is almost impossible to set it wrong.


Eric sets the Fairchild to the "2" position. Typically only compressing 3 or 4 dB

It is a bit faster than the 1176 so it catches some of the spiky moments and just smoothes a little.
Eric Valentine says he likes compressing while recording because it affects how the singers will sing. They can be more dynamic and expressive when the compressor is always pulling the sound out of their throat. If a singer is struggling to hear themselves whenever they sing softer they tend to avoid doing it and the performance starts to sound mono dynamic.

IN THE MIX

In the mix he only does very subtle compression if any at all. It is typically just enough to glue the vocals together with whatever reverb or fx are put on them. Usually a ratio of 2:1 and only 2 or 3 dB of compression.

When EQing in the mix it is usually a matter of high passing or pulling out some lows or low mids. Mostly to keep the vocals out of the way of the guitar.

Eric Valentine loves the combination SRE555 tape delay/spring verb combo on vocals. He loves mono reverb and feels it connects better with the original source sound.

Occasionally Eric Valentine uses pitch shift spread although it is usually very subtle.

The only paralell compression he uses with vocals is for distortion. Typically he sends the signal to an 1176 with the compression bypassed. he uses that in conjuction with the
line trim on the console to boost the level and get the channel strip in the console to distort and then blends it in very little.

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