Vocal chain

Press Dry below, then Chain. Dry, the singer sounds like they're standing in your room, a little boomy, a little uneven, quiet words slipping away. Through the chain, they step forward: clearer, steadier, sitting in a small space just behind the speakers. That's a vocal chain. In almost every song you love, the voice is the thing you follow, and the chain is the set of small decisions that make it easy to follow without making it sound processed.

Before you start: which stage do you think makes the biggest difference? Most people guess the reverb. Listen again with that in mind.

1. Clear the mud, find the harsh spot

Every vocal recording picks up low rumble: traffic, a desk being bumped, the singer's breath on the mic. You can't hear most of it on its own, but it makes the voice sound boomy and it makes the compressor react to the wrong thing. A low cut removes it. Hiss, room echo or a popped "p" are different problems that EQ can't lift out; Repair and restoration covers those, and what each fix takes with it.

Raise the low cut until the voice starts to sound thin, then back it off a little. Then hunt for the harsh spot: with the narrow boost up, sweep Frequency slowly through the upper mids until one area stings your ears. Flip Gain to a small cut there, a few dB. Now the voice is clearer and easier to listen to, without sounding EQ'd.

Why: EQ teaches you to start from a problem you can hear, not a curve you've seen.

2. Decide about tuning

Pitch correction can be invisible or it can be the sound itself. Slow, gentle correction nudges notes toward the key and leaves the singer's slides alone; you shouldn't be able to point to it. Fast, hard correction snaps every note into place, and since Cher's "Believe" in 1998 that robotic snap has been a sound in its own right, all over pop, R&B and hip-hop. Choose on purpose: if the take is in tune and the slides are part of the feeling, skip this stage.

Why: Pitch shifting explains how a pitch corrector moves a voice, and why fast retuning sounds robotic.

3. Bring the quiet words forward

Singers get louder and softer as they phrase, which is part of the expression, but in a busy mix the quiet words drop under the music. A compressor turns down the loudest moments so the whole line sits in a narrower range, and then you raise it all back up.

Lower Threshold until the loudest words come down a few dB. Keep Attack around 10 ms so the first consonant of each word still pokes through; a very fast attack dulls it. Now the quiet words are audible without the loud ones shouting. In the finished chain at the top, Squash is the same Threshold.

Why: Compression connects threshold, ratio and attack to the shape of each word.

4. Put it in a small room

A completely dry voice sounds like it's whispering in your ear, which is great for some songs and strange for most. A short, small room gives it a place to stand. In the finished chain, raise Space until you can hear the room in the gaps between phrases, then back it off until you only notice it when it's gone. Now the voice sits in front of the music, not pasted on top.

Why: Reverb shows how the size and amount of a space change how close a singer feels.

5. Judge the words, not the sound

Switch between Dry and Chain one last time and listen only to the lyrics. Are the quiet words easier to catch? Does the singer still sound like themselves? If something feels over-processed, take back the stage you changed most.

Why: Listening and comparing keeps your before/after tied to one question.

Keep it

Write your chain on one line: low cut at 100 Hz, a small cut at the harsh spot, gentle tuning or none, 3:1 compression with a 10 ms attack, a short room at a low mix. That line works as a starting point for almost any lead vocal, in any software, and it's the first thing to set up when you record your next demo.

Quick check

1. The vocal still sounds boomy after compression, and the compressor seems to react to every bump. What did you skip? The low cut. Rumble you can barely hear still drives the compressor. Clean up first, then compress.
2. You lower the threshold a lot and the voice sounds flat and lifeless. What happened? The compressor is squashing the natural rise and fall of the phrasing. Raise the threshold or lower the ratio until only the loudest words are touched.
3. A singer's slides into notes are part of the song's emotion. Should you tune the vocal? Maybe gently, maybe not at all. Slow correction leaves slides alone; fast correction removes them. There's no right answer, only the one that fits the song.

Next steps

• Use it: Stems to remix. Put this chain on a separated vocal and hear how it holds up.
• Sideways: Making room with EQ. Sometimes the best vocal EQ move is a cut on the guitars, not on the voice.