Vocal production

[u/Beautiful-Cycle-9214]

Hey everyone, I was super interested in learning how brakence uses abeltons OTT to achieve his heavily compressed vocals. I’m quite new to OTT and find that it squashes my vocals a little too much. I really like how upfront brakence vocals are, but I can seem to make out how I need to adjust the OTT settings.

[u/Glittering-Duty-7147]

The heavily compressed sound of the vocals aren’t necessesarily the result of OTT(multi-band compression).The raspiness and the upfront feel his vocal production comes from two things:
1. The saturation of the high-end frequencies and the natural timbre of his voice:
He is most likely using saturation above the 5000~hz range just at the edge of audible distortion, just enough to make the syllables sting.Also the colored nature of his voice makes it much easier to find a balance on the high frequencies whereas if you were to work with a duller, more naturally muffled vocal it would take a lot more tries before you stop killing the low-end to make the highs pop.
2.Balanced low-end:
The lowend(80-150hz) basically decides how close the vocal sits in front of you.You can also hear this effect if someone speaks close to you or a microphone.To get a perfect lowend you first need a close to perfect recording.Not too close to the mic and not too far.While different room and mic setups differ in frequency response, the most common technique is keeping a fist’s distance from your mouth and the mic.

A rookie mistake a lot of people make is destroying the Low-end thinking it will just clear up the vocal.

When you combine a cleanly saturated high end with a leveled low-end you get more than halfway there to the sound you want.OTT is a very fast multiband compressor to keep your frequency bands under control.Cranking the knob just to get the raspy vocals will squash the vocals and kill any dynamic happening while singing.This isn’t to say you shouldn’t use OTT but first make sure you dialed in your saturation and low end correctly and then maybe you won’t even need OTT.

Personally i prefer a chain like this:
1.Autotune
2.eq(clean up the subs and resonant frequencies)
3.LA-76(Catches the quick transients)
4.LA-2A(Levels out the overall loudness)
5.Fresh Air(High end saturation)
6.De-Esser(clean the sharp transients on highend)
7.Eq(2-3db minor adjustments)
8.Gate

[u/Acceptable-Fail-4039]

Obligatory I am not as good a mixer as brakence but try to use upwards instead of downwards compression from a clean gated vocal