if you plug a mic directly into a ProCo rat, you can get a pretty good sounding distortion quality. its sufficient.

Cheap tube pre turned up too high.

try sticking the vocals through a guitar amp and then micing that up. especially small combos or nasty amps.

Run a cheap dynamic through a hi-z XLR-1/4" into this baby.


Use the onboard distortion, and crank both that and the volume all the way. Through a nice condenser in fornt and enjoy!

The best distorted vocal I have heard to this day is John Wetton (I think) on King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man."

I don't know how they did it, but given the technology of the day (1969), I don't think it could have involved much more than a guitar amp/cabinet and maybe an early distortion pedal.

I am a geek, so god forgive me...

But John Wetton was not in Crimson in '69. Thems be the vocals of Mr. Greg Lake.


Lord have mercy on my soul.

I second the proco .

A little vocal distortion goes a long way and you can quickly lose the ability to discern words. If that is a issue, use more than one microphone. That way you can blend the two. or have the distorted one in a different eq place than the original. Or apply the distrotion to the clean vocal by routing to a seperate track in mixing.

If you just put the microphone through a amp you can distort it a lot with just the eq on the amp and microphone placement in the room. As well a microphone that will distort if choked up on and put right in or near the vocalist mouth and lips to get proximity effect. (most cheep dynamics will fill the bill here)

Using a delay to throw the distortion a tiny bit behind the initial vocal is a best of both worlds technique. I also like to throw a distortion on the echo repeats maybe a slow phaser too.

I am not a singer.

Yet I am attempting to sing.

For the purposes of this thing I am recording, I am using a pair of binaural mics, one in each of my ears. I'm recording myself playing guitar and the other instruments in this way, and I thought it might be fun to record the vocals in this fashion.

I am recording directly into the computer (a Mac, and some of the stuff is going directly into Peak. I have yet to re-install Logic 6 because I was told that Garageband 2.0.2 uses the latest version of the Logic engine and is better than the actual Logic version I have) and was looking for suggestions on how to make the vocals sound as if I were "underwater."

The best examples of this I can find are the vocals on "Cannonball", and a few Sparklehorse tracks. Basically I want the distortion to cover up a multitude of sins on my part, but not render the vocal track an indecipherable mush.

I have also toyed with the idea of using the Mac's built-in mic to record the vocals, but nobody I know has tried this, so I have no idea if it's effective or not.

Any help you guys have will be appreciated, because there is a very good reason why I do not sing.