To get fat vocals, record the same line more than once and layer the takes, add harmonies underneath, then warm and thicken the sound with compression and a little saturation. A single track of a voice sounds thin and close. Several tracks together sound wide, full and bigger than one singer. If you want to hear how a finished record does this, the Separate Lead and Backing Vocals tool can pull the main voice apart from the layers behind it.
This guide covers the techniques that make a voice feel thick. It does not repeat the full EQ routine, which is covered in our separate guide on how to EQ and mix vocals.
A fat vocal feels big and warm. It has weight in the lower middle of the voice, a steady level, and a width you can feel in both ears. It does not mean loud or bass-heavy.
Three things create that feeling: layers, level control and a bit of harmonic color. Most of the work comes from the first one.
Thickness cannot rescue a poor recording. Before you layer anything, make sure the main take is in tune, in time and free of noise.
- Sing close to the mic with a steady distance.
- Keep the room quiet. If a recording already has noise in the background, the Vocal Noise Remover cleans up a voice.
- If the room sounds too echoey, the Reverb Remover can reduce it.
Layering a noisy take makes the noise louder, because each copy adds to the pile.
Doubling means you sing the same line a second time, as closely as you can, and play both together. The two takes are never exactly the same, which gives a natural thickening.
- Record two or three takes of each line.
- Pan one slightly left and one slightly right, and keep the main take in the center.
- Sing the doubles a little softer than the main take, so they support instead of competing.
Tight timing matters. Sloppy doubles sound messy, and cleaner ones sound like one huge singer.
For choruses, add a copy that you sing an octave lower or higher, or shift one with a pitch tool. The lower copy adds weight. The higher copy adds shine. Keep either one quiet, so it is felt more than heard.
Harmonies are extra notes sung along with the melody, often a third or a fifth above or below. They fill out the chord the band is playing, so the vocal sounds like part of the music.
Start with one harmony above the melody in the chorus. Add a second below it if the section still feels thin. Pan the harmonies out wide and leave the lead in the middle.
A very short delay on a copy of the vocal, in the range of tens of milliseconds, makes the voice feel wider. Your ear reads the delayed copy as part of the same sound, but it spreads across the stereo field.
Do this on a duplicate track and pan it to one side. Do not use it on every vocal, because it can thin out the center when heard on a mono speaker. Check the mix in mono before you keep it.
A compressor turns the loud parts down, so the voice sounds steady and close. That steadiness is a big part of why professional vocals feel dense. Use a moderate setting and listen for the voice to sound controlled without being flat.
Compress the doubles lightly too, or send the whole vocal group to one compressor so the layers sit together.
Saturation adds gentle harmonic distortion, which makes a sound feel warmer and thicker. Many plugins offer it as tape, tube or soft clipping. Add a small amount on the vocal track or the vocal group, and stop when you first hear a change. Too much turns into obvious grit.
A soft boost in the low mids, around the body of the voice, adds weight too. Do this with a light hand, since too much of it makes vocals muddy.
If you want a quick setup, a typical vocal chain runs in this order:
- Cleanup EQ to remove rumble.
- Compressor for level.
- Saturation for warmth.
- A little reverb or delay on a send.
Buses help: send the lead, doubles and harmonies to a single vocal group and apply the compressor and saturation there. The layers then act like one voice.
It helps to hear these ideas on a finished record. Upload a song to the Acapella Extractor and you get the vocals alone, with the instrumental as a second file. Listen for doubles in the chorus and harmonies behind the lead.
Here is the process:
- Open the tool and sign in with Google. New accounts get 5 free credits.
- Upload the song (MP3, WAV, M4A or FLAC, up to 10 minutes) and press the big orange button.
- Download the Vocals file as an MP3 at 320 kbps. In our own test, a 4 minute 44 second song split into 6 stems in 56 seconds and cost 5 credits, and each stem was about 10.9 MB.
To go further, Separate Lead and Backing Vocals splits the lead from the backing layers, so you can hear how many voices are behind the singer. Splitting someone else's song is meant for private learning. If you want to release music that uses their recording, you need permission from the rights holders.
Layers. Doubled takes, harmonies and a low or high octave copy make a voice sound bigger. Compression and a little saturation add steadiness and warmth.
No. A compressor, an EQ and a saturation or tape plugin do most of it. The singing and layering matter more than which plugin you pick.
When the words get hard to understand or the mix sounds crowded, there are too many. Two or three doubles plus one or two harmonies is a common starting point.
You can, but it sounds less natural, since the copy has the same timing and pitch. A real second take gives more width.
Extract the vocals from a song and listen to them alone. The Acapella Extractor costs 1 credit per minute of song, and the price shows on the button before you run it.