Getting sick of the cliche distortion mush voice in industrial music? Find out new ways to improve your recorded vocals and still keep them aggressive.

I don’t know about you but I’m getting a little tired of endless numbers of industrial artists running their vocals through distortion in order to sound “aggressive.” Not only is this trend becoming tiresome, it ruins the dynamic range and depth of your vocal line. However, traditionally the vocals in industrial music has been processed (sometimes quite heavily); what is an aspiring rivethead to do?

For starters think about the human voice for a moment and how it sounds recorded on a professional album. In 99% of all well-produced music the vocal line is the most prominent feature of the song and will have the loudest overall volume. This isn’t a coincidence-people like to hear the human voice in their music; with rare exception most popular music and songs contain singing. David Byrne, of Talking Heads fame, has quoted to the effect that singing is used to trick the audience into listening to the music for longer than they would normally. So, unless you want your music to sound poorly produced or sophomoric-MIX YOUR VOCALS UP.

“But wait a minute!” you say; “I’m an industrial musician and do non-commercial music! I can’t (won’t) turn my vocals up.” My advice for those of you that think along these lines is to re-listen to some industrial classics by Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Front 242 and others; notice that the vocals are very prominent, in fact, they are the most prominent feature of the song. If you wan’t people to pay attention to your music you must showcase your vocals (and lyrics).

Okay now that we have that settled, I hope, let’s take a minute to review some facets about the human voice to better understand the problem faced by industrial musicians. First off, the human voice is rich with harmonics. Harmonics are frequencies related to the fundemental (base) frequency of the note being sung. Harmonics are present in almost all sound, aside from sine waves which only feature the fundemental frequency. To be somewhat simplistic about it, harmonics are a large part of what makes something sound the way it does; in other words it gives sound a timbre or tone that is unique.

Don’t make your songs sound like the Cookie Monster stopped in to cut a track with you.

To better understand harmonics you should also realize that there are two general types of harmonics; even-ordered and odd harmonics. Even-ordered harmonics are mathematically related to the fundemental frequency; thus, if singing a concert pitch A, which is 440 hz, the 2nd harmonic would be 880 hz, and the 3rd harmonic would be 1320 hz, and so on. Frequencies generated that are not related to the fundemental are odd harmonics, which are always present, but large quantities of them can generate a bad tone or sound dissonant. (Note: absence of odd harmonics would lend towards a sterile sound and thus a certain amount can be considered a good thing.) Harmonics extend far beyond the fundemental pitch, and for vocals are very important above 12 khz all the way to 16 khz or more. Harmonics that high in pitch are essential for adding character, breathiness and “air” to a vocal line.

So, you are thinking, what does all this nonsense about harmonics have to do with industrial vocals? For starters consider the manner in which the typical rivethead maven processes their vocals-DISTORTION. Distortion is an audio effect pioneered in the 1960′s to duplicate the sound of an electric guitar amp pushed past its optimal operating limits, which produces a warm, fat and rich tone filled with even-ordered harmonics. Many devices, such as the Arbiter Fuzzface, Coloursound and Big Muff Pi were developed to duplicate this effect at much lower volume levels. Some succeed at various levels, but generally most distortion devices tend to produce less than satisfactory results when applied to vocals. Let’s study why.

The famous Big Muff Pi fuzz box.

The first thing to understand are how the various units produce distortion as not all distortion devices operate in the same manner. The first units developed were FUZZ BOXES, which would take an incoming signal and modulate its amplitude by a square wave to produce audio clipping; the amount of modulation was controlled by the user. Additionally, some fuzz boxes would incorporate low pass filter designs to further shape the tone. Now, clipping produced by a fuzz box contains a wealth of overtones, many of which are odd harmonics (hence the addition of a tone control to eliminate some of the nasty upper harmonics produced by the unit). The second type of distortion to consider is the OVERDRIVE, which also amplifies the signal to the point of soft clipping, producing a rounder and warmer tone than a fuzz. Finally there is true DISTORTION that amplifies a signal much more than an overdrive and introduces a lot harder clipping. In general, fuzzes sound grittier than distortion, and distortion sounds gritter than overdrives. The greater the amount of distortion produced by these units, the more destructive an effect it will have on your harmonics and upper harmonics. For those interested in more information about distortion types check out this page located HERE.

While distortion can sound great with guitar and synth, excessive distortion can lead to very bad vocal tracks. Be careful when you choose to use distortion!

Okay, to sum things up: if you use heavy amounts of distortion your vocal will begin to take on a very nasty quality, quickly become unintelligible, and suffer from being overly compressed as a byproduct of the clipping. All of this will contribute to a terrible vocal tone. So what can an industrial musician do now to get an aggressive vocal sound?

If you must use distortion for your vocals this is how I’d do it:

1.) Cut down on the amount of distortion used. A little bit goes a long way for vocals. In fact, I’d probably not use more than 20% of the potential distortion from any unit.

2.) Avoid digitial distortion devices, which are unable to effectively generate extremely high and low frequencies simultaneously. I’ve yet to hear a digital distortion that sounded musical. Use analog. For 35 dollars you can buy a new Boss DS-1 which is an excellent distortion pedal for guitar, synth, bass or vocals. Suprisingly versatile and classic sounding.

3.) If I wanted a more severely distorted vocals I would use the distortion pedals at 0% distortion but 100% gain into an analog mixer. Make sure that you control the amount of signal going to any digital recording devices because you do NOT want to introduce digital clipping. Console distortion has a much different sound than using the distortion built into any device. The idea is to hit the mixer with a lot of signal to cause some clipping to occur.Ogre, of Skinny Puppy, seems to employ this technique (don’t quote me on this) and I know Trent Reznor does for both guitars and vocals.

4.) Some artists don’t use distortion at all but still manage to have a distorted sounding vocal tone. The most common way to do this is thru overly-compressing a vocal. Al Jourgeson runs his voice thru a number of sequential compressors to create Ministry’s sound. No distortion pedals involved at all.

5.) The use of any device that will introduce a controllable amount of odd harmonics into a vocal will appear to distort the tone. Ogre would use a delay module set to introduce comb filtering to achieve his early signature vocal sound. Pitch shifters, sub-harmonic enhancers, ring modulators, and other devices can be utilized to achive an effected, aggressive vocal tone without resorting to distortion.

There are literally dozens of other ways to produce a vocal in an industrial style that don’t involve distortion. If you do have to use distortion try to use it wisely and preserve the musicality of your vocal line. Next time you are recording and begin reaching for distortion think twice about it and try something new. You may be surprised at what you come up with.

-James Meeker (2002, 9-10)

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