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Sound engineers, help me name this vocal sound
Savannah Locke’s “Oh Holy Night” has a vocal quality that I’ve heard many times before in other songs and I was always curious what it was called, as well as the general EQ settings to reproduce it.
I name this song because I feel like it’s a very over the top example that I first heard over the holidays on a random playlist. I can only describe the vocals as “paper-like”. The style is folksy but it’s that particular sound of the vocals I’m interested in identifying.
Also, if there’s a particular nomenclature to these different types of styles or a glossary of some kind I’d appreciate it.
Full disclosure: I’ve sat behind a mixing board as an enthusiast but am no means educated beyond lows, mediums, highs.
Many thanks in advance!
No expert, but I’d describe it as “breathy”. Sung close to the microphone and compressed heavily, hearing every breath. It actually sounds quite noisy because of it.
There’s also quite some reverb on the vocal, plus a low pass delay. But you probably heard that too ;)
To me, it sounds like overly heavily handed autotuning. I’m not sure if the little vibratos were in the original recording and then clamped down in post, or if they’re artificial vibrato added by the autotune plugin, but either way they sound weird.