h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wait... can you go over that adding effects preceeding vocals thing once more? I already knew the trick with guitar, but this effect thing is stretching my mind it ways that it normally isn't stretched with fewer than three hours of sleep...

Usually if you add reverb or delay to any instrument or vocals, the effect follows the instrument. In the case of singing, some echo would sound like "LA (LA La la a ...)". If you record the vocal track normally and flip it over before applying the echo effect, the finished sound will be "(... a la La LA) La".

Does that make sense? Listen to nine inch nails "hurt" for an example of this.

Thanks!

the effect is called pre delay. you can do it in wav editors by highlighting the portion you want effected, reversing it, effecting it and then reversing it back. remember to have enough of a gap at the beginning of the portion for the echoes to decay.

My answerphone message is pre delayed

What I like doing is recording a part, adding delay then reversing it, then adding delay again.

It means you have to record some pretty spartan parts but what happens then is that you get a real wall of sound.