vocal effects

[kokoshmusun]

I've played some live shows but things have changed ever since. I'm now charged with lead vocals. We are not the kind of band who can hire a sound engineer. And I don't know whether it's feasible to use a vocal effects pedal to do what I want to do with my vocals (in terms of effects). Any comments on this?

I would like to get either one of the purple digitech's or tc helicon. Can I comfortably operate these as I sing and play bass. Will the in-house sound dude be pissed off? Etc. etc.

 

[baba]

I had a singer years ago that used the Digitech you're talking about. I wasn't fond of the effects other than some light basic reverb.

Unless you have a need to personally change vocal effects throughout the set, just get a simple rack unit.

I am a bit confused though...you first state you wouldn't have (can't afford) a sound engineer, but then later you ask if one would be pissed off.

 

[echoSE7EN]

I had a TC Helicon for about three days. It drove me nuts. I'm not the greatest singer in the world, but with the Helicon engaged, I found it difficult to hit the notes I usually had little problems with.

 

[baba]

I had a TC Helicon for about three days. It drove me nuts. I'm not the greatest singer in the world, but with the Helicon engaged, I found it difficult to hit the notes I usually had little problems with.

...and that brings up another point.

If you have vocal effects in line before hitting the board, you can't get a dry signal to your monitor. I prefer running vocal monitors dry so the singer can hear what he's really singing like before processing. I can't stand singing with delay or heavy reverb coming back at me.

 

[sricks3]

I run sound regularly (always unless I'm playing) for a small, acoustic (with PA) coffee house/worship gig. It's usually a really simple job: 2 sets, each is usually one or two instruments through DI and one or two vocals.

However, there's one guy that leads worship fairly often that cannot stand playing straight through our PA. To be fair, we don't have top o' the line gear, but I can still get a nice clean/clear sound out of it, especially running just an acoustic guitar and a vocal or two. He insists on using his own mic, running his guitar through a Fishman Aura preamp, and running his vocals through the TC Helicon (Voice Live?) floor unit. The end result is that the signals that reach the board sound AWFUL and are super hot. He also makes changes to the sound on his end continuously which causes levels to change which means that the levels I've set have to be adjusted. When I eq him to get his vocals and guitar to stop battling each other in the house, he eqs himself right back to where he was from the stage. We've had the talk, but he likes "his sound" (rather what he thinks he sounds like based on the stage mix).

All that is to say that, from the sound guy's perspective, I hate on-stage vocal effects. Sure, the guy that I have experience with is probably worse than most, but unless you're using specific effects to get a particular sound, it's usually best to let the sound guy use the rack stuff that's already in the system so that he can make adjustments to get a sound that ultimately sounds good in the house (and hopefully on stage).

I also don't mean to imply that either the Fishman Aura or the TC Helicon unit sound bad. In fact, I'm sure that when used properly they could sound amazing. It just makes a sound guy's job a lot harder with potentially no improvement in sound when they're used improperly.

My rule of thumb if I've brought effects along is to give the sound guy a chance first; you might like what you hear. If not, tell him politely that you'd like to use your gear.