Drake's vocal effects on new album Thank Me Later

  • Thread starter Thread starter EmmanuelB7
  • Start date Start date
EmmanuelB7

EmmanuelB7

New member
I know Drake uses Auto-tune on some of his songs, but on his new album a couple of the songs sound a little different. I understand the concept of layering audio tracks and using different effects such as reverb, expanders and eq's but it doesn't seem like i could achieve the same effect using just those methods. I like the way his vocals sound on a couple of the tracks, you can see that it sounds very mellow and ambient. I'm not sure how else to explain it, i know most of you are experts at analyzing different songs, i did some searching and haven't found anything relating to the effects he uses. If any of you could recognize the effect or style right off the back or even have a suggested method of producing a similar effect I'd appreciate it.

The songs that I'm talking about on his new Thank Me Later album are:

Fireworks, Karaoke, The Resistance and Cece's Interlude


FP won't let me add links to Youtube to show you the songs that i'm talking about, so just search the songs on youtube if you haven't heard the album yet.

Thank you!
 
Last edited:
Why does everyone think that getting vocals like Drake is some mystery? He uses a mic pre that cost several thousand dollars, a mic that cost even more, and has a professional engineer recording, mixing and mastering his music. End of story.

Go rent time at a real studio, find a mic that matches your voice, record properly, and pay an engineer to mix it.
 
Well since dude above me didnt offer any real help, ill try. from what i've heard it sounds like its just a bypass filter on his voice, id have to listen again to tell u for sure, but its nothing all that complicated and nothing that should cost you thousands of dollars to imitate. mess around with your filters, cut the bass and a lil of the highs, and i expect you'll get a similar result. ( i assuming your talkin bout the telephony kinda voice thing he does right?, if so this will do it)
 
I'm just tired of people thinking great vocals come from secret plugins or settings. It about using quality gear and have enough expirience to make it sound great as well as having the talent to be a vocalist. Drake just sounds like drake. His songs just sound like him properly recorded with great gear and good engineering.

And there is no substitute for expensive gear. You don't need expensive gear to get a great sound but you can not emulate expensive gear with plugins or techniques.
 
Thank you Kontraversy thats what i thought it could be i just didnt think it would be that easy though. I'll try that for sure, that makes a lot of sense.

Morning_star im not trying to sound like drake, i just liked the effect he used and i just wanted to know how he achieved that effect.
 
He got sick engineers and programmers thats for sure

---------- Post added at 11:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:24 AM ----------

But i think its EQin and adding resonance to the mid range
 
Last edited:
Thanks marcusn. Any specific plugins you could think of to get that effect? Or just a lot of normal eq tweaking?
 
His vocals sound like the combination of his recording chain, compression, eq, reverb and delay. I would start by having a nice recorded vocal, subtractive eq, compression, boost eq (if required) and then play around with the rest as sends. Overdubs and extra stuff can be pushed to the left and/or right of the stereo field and I would probably use a stereo enhancer on it. Specific plugins I would recommend and I have heard are the Oxford EQ, Fab Filter Pro C, Psp Old Timer, Psp Vintage Warmer, RVox, Fabfilter Timelessness, Reverence (or equivalent), Crysonic Sindo. Could go on for ages but a combination of similar plugs to these will get you started.

Don't be too quick to slam Morning Star's advice, it will get you the best result out of any in this thread.
Cheers,

Edit: boost eq part.
 
Last edited:
a bunch of stuff

yea forty, drakes engineer knows his shit well. I agree with using a lot of subtractive eq and it is true that Drake usually has a pretty sharp cutoff on the bass for the more "filtered" or telephony effect. Also a huge thing is using a doubler. If you have a decent DAW set up a doubler in an aux channel and send your vocal to it, it will come out sounding phat as oprah used to be. good luck homie
 
EmmanuelB7 said:
Thank you Kontraversy thats what i thought it could be i just didnt think it would be that easy though. I'll try that for sure, that makes a lot of sense.

Morning_star im not trying to sound like drake, i just liked the effect he used and i just wanted to know how he achieved that effect.
Click to expand...

...Since you never returned to the thread with a reply about how that all turned out, I'm going to have to assume that that simple eq advice didn't get you what you were wanting...

I think the most important piece of MorningStar's advice was that Drake sounds like Drake.

As an engineer, you have to understand the quality of a person's voice in terms of what to highlight and what to subtract. In Drake's case, he ALSO has some pretty expensive gear that can be used without even turning a knob that is going to do a lot of the highlighting that we are talking about.

But to even further the argument...a lot of So Far Gone was recorded very cheaply and some of the mixes were headphone mixes with a mastering limiter that 40 used to match all of the volumes of the mixtape that "sounded like an album." Drakes vocals sound the way they do a lot because of his DELIVERY and 40's proper micing technique in different environments. I'm confident he is using a lot of parallel processing. He keeps a nice dry vocal up front and processes his delays and reverbs on a separate track and just matches up the volumes.

The mixes are also likely to have been built around the vocals. 40 probably would create a mix for Drake to rap on. Then go back and turn off everything but the vocals and create the best sounding vocal he could make. Then brings in the kick, snare and bass.

But like morningstar said...this is nothing special at all...it is exactly what the majority of pro AND amateur engineers that I've worked with teach and do.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top