hey chris lippe here with the isolated vocal tracks for tool vicarius there's
a lot going on both in terms of performance subtleties and maynard is just a master of
the subtle vocal performance tweaks that yield amazing results so we're going to dive into those
and then we're also going to look at some of the production stuff that they do on this song there's
a lot of neat delays and placements so a lot of fun to get into please like and subscribe to the
channel if you haven't already and turn those notifications on and if you'd like to go deeper
with your own voice click the link below and join my free voice course also visit chrislepe.com to
explore some of my other courses i go a lot more into production and aggressive vocals and some of
the other things that i offer i own the tv cause tragedy thrills me whatever flavor it happens to
be like you okay so right off there's this neat sort of reverb reverse thing at the beginning
typically what they'll do is they'll reverse the first syllable
of a word and then they'll add a bunch of reverb to it and then they'll fade that into the attack
of the first word it's a really cool way to work if you listen real carefully on bad motor finger
they use this at the beginning of rusty cage as well chris cornell's vocals right as they come in
really cool technique also if you're listening to his tone here
he thrills me we'll talk about the effects here in a minute but listen to his delivery
this is not tv it's also not tv you know he's not being terribly aggressive he's
holding back air and he's using a bit of stage whisper
like that and adding his singing to that that's engagement above
the vocal cords as i've talked about in other
videos me i own the tv cause tragedy thrills me it's really easy to accidentally get that
place too low and get tickly coffee things if you are experiencing that it's too low
you need to direct your attention i i own the tv cause tragedy thrills me
that approach i own the tv i own the tea i own the tv take it to extremes experiment with your voice
then start experimenting with signal chain there's there's a nice room reverb in there
listen hey i own the tv cause tragedy thrills me
then we've got a nice subtle delay hey and you notice it's fairly nor it's fairly narrow
what else can hear it on me and it's band limited
you can hear i've got that set up here i've got several things going on in the delay ah
first of all i've got some tape saturation on here or some saturation
as a little bit of natural breakup to the delay and then i've got this is a stereo delay
but you'll notice right here i've got it panned into the center because it's not very wide
at least in this section of the song still timed to the uh the track itself and got just a little
bit of separation you can see the groove now if i if i change this groove even more and pan this out
test test you can hear the wideness which we'll hear more in other sections watch hey
you hear more separation but i don't want much separation hey want a little bit
so it sounds wide and then i'm going to narrow pane it for this section anyway
and then finally i'm band limiting this delay
and listen to the comparison
cause tragedy thrills me
i've got a little bit more feedback or a little bit more repeats on mine than he does
whatever flavor it happens to be like you by the husband jump on the ocean shot
he's got a talking back there and he's widened at first i thought it was just
another representation like they've done something vocoder or pitch wise with
his voice but i think he's he's talking the words and then they've put a real funky delay on it
because it's it's so natural sounding but here they've widened the delay
brought it up and actually if the other delay on on his singing was a bit more
uh narrow like this test test turn off the turn off this high frequencies a little bit more echoey
they've brought a little bit back in the high end for this section
and then then they've added some saturation to the delay more saturation
yeah yeah and they've added some saturation to the main voice to it turn off now i'm gonna
mumble a little bit and then i'm gonna turn down the main approach to the vocals and let that delay
take over really really neat sound you can hear it behind the singing
still so much rat kiss you goodbye
there's so much high end that comes from
the perception of high end that comes from his vocals because of that rasp that he's using
dies now that right there sounds like a some kind of vocoder or pitch shifter at the end
but listen they they actually dial up the tape saturn or the saturation that's my kind of story
you can hear it you know if i bring up the the uh the saturation like this someone dies
they have automated this sound up as this line goes that's my kind of story
now until someone dies someone dies so cool all right don't look at me like i am a monster
frown out your one face but with the other stare like a chunky into i love the way
these harmonies come in they're wide set so you hear that narrowness of of the sound
that delay happening in the center not completely in the center but mostly
in the center and then it leaves room for the harmonies uh even just the vocal arrangement
chunky
into the listen to the different in difference in approach right junkie
junkie he's much cleaner he doesn't have that rasp
those are creating it's creating a completely different space for his vocals there
into the tv still like a zombie while the mother
holds a child and then there he they got a little raspy with the background vocals
neat sort of mod delay happening although i think some of that is artifacts from the
isolation of the vocal tracts because these aren't completely artifact-free unfortunately
why oh why cause i need to watch things die
listen to these background vocals he gets cleaner and more moany things die
things die things die that's not things die it's very smooth to compliment things die things die
now he's transitioning also right there from his to things die more of his
he's he's belting he's still adding compression he's still adding a little bit of grit
but it's that maynard forward sound now instead of that raspy stage whispery it's it sounds
less pent-up although it's still pretty pent-up that's the way he always rolls from a distance by
listen to the contrast
this is part of what makes him so good from a distance
pure background vocals doubled
ah now here we get a neat taste of this whisper into phonation we just admit it i
can't i can't like it it's not just why can't very compressed air still why can't we just admit it
okay we just admit it and then he actually ends there's this arc why can't we just
admit it why can't why can't we just admit it practice arcing that taking it to extremes
why can't we just admit it oh and that nice letdown why can't we just admit it admit it
we won't give paws until the blood is flowing
narrow delay
they opened up the the saturation and the the top end of that delay just a little bit
so earlier when we band limited it the the delay a bit more brought some automated some of that
high-end delay back and it helps brighten up the transition into the more layered blood vocals
flowing i need to watch things die from a good safe distance by carrying us three is
you all feel the same so why can't we just admit it i love that transition same so same so almost
croonerish here this is really important to take note of maynard's signature tone comes from being
diverse within lines within performances right he's got this he's got this why can't we just
admit it why can't we just admit it and then he's got this still the same so same so same so that's
a different character then why can't we just admit it and you you know you watch him perform and he's
just all over the place uh from you know gesturing and you know engagement and that comes through
in his studio recordings it's not just about technique it's about exploration and variety
really apparent doubles there jump on grave and ground
changing the character even within the doubles to provide a bit more diverse layering
cutting off the words with compression and using that reverse
effect which is being filtered out a little bit with the art of the isolation artifacts
here unfortunately but you still get the idea you can still draw some neat things from this
now that is some neat band limiting
putting an eq on the main vocal test test and automating out hey hey hey hey
one two one two test test test test
if i am automating this and within the daw you can control those sorts of things and you can you can
program it to do it automatically and that's what we've done that's what they've done there
la la la la la la
now first i thought this was artifact but when i go back and listen to the original
uh it's there this is just playing with an eq and the the phase aspect
of an eq just like i showed you this time taking the lows out and and messing with
uh a moving eq dynamically moving eq within uh a phrase so cool
notice how bright the lead vocals are now with that eq and muffled the background vocals are two
it's the difference in performance but also in a different in eq placement wise so it's always been
nice and then fading out the main audio
letting the reverb take over that can also be done with delay where you you trigger it
and let the delay happen turn up the feedback on the delay sort of like this
tweaking the delay trails to allow them to be a little bit closer together bringing up the reaver
bringing down the delay is going to help match the effect a little bit more but we're not going for
exact stuff here we're going for inspiration in our own stuff based on what we hear out of
these isolated tracks i've done another video on maynard be sure to check that one out uh cover
a lot of different snippets from different songs throughout his career but it was fun to dive into
the the production aspects particularly in in the the saturation and delay in light of his different
approaches that he's using with his singing done lots of other videos on lots of other singers
and done many of these isolated track videos so be sure to search through my in the style of
playlist on the channel again like and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and be sure
that you join my free vocal course if you'd like more help with your vocals we'll see you for more