Audacity Forum

I've recently been recording hip hip lyrics, and I've noticed most producers put a sort of echo on parts of their lyrics that the want to emphasize. Does anyone know how this could be done on audacity. I'v been playing with the echo function but I have yet to produce the desired effect.

NOTE - I don't listen to much hip-hop.

Maybe you are talking about Reverb? (Audacity's included reverb effect is called GVerb, or you can look for an optional plug-in.)

Echo is a clear repetition of the sound, "Hello - Hello". It rarely happens naturally. Sometimes it sounds good when you time the echo to match the beat. i.e. You can set the echoes on the 1/4 notes, or on the full-note, etc. Of course, in order to do that, you have to count the BPM (beats per minute).

Reverb is like a stretching of the sound and it's made of several shorter echoes, "Hhheeelllloooo". You don't hear the distinct echoes, but you hear the overall effect. Natural reverb is very common. It's the echo-like sound you get in a tiled bathroom, or in a concert hall.

There are lots of settings and different sounding reverbs (in real life, a bathroom doesn't sound like a concert hall). You can use lots of reverb or you can use just a little bit so you're really not aware of it, but it sounds like something's missing when you turn it off.

P.S.
There are also chorus and doubling effects that make a voice or instrument sound "thicker" or "bigger". Doubling usually works best when you truly record 2 (or more) times and layer the tracks. There is also an effect called ADT (automatic double tracking), but you don't get the same timing/phase variations that you get with two separate recordings. Sometimes heavy metal guitar tracks are recorded many-many times an layered (mixed) on top of each other. This requires a good singer or musician that can sing/play with "exactly" the same timing every time.

Ah, thank you.

CrookedBeats wrote:I've recently been recording hip hip lyrics, and I've noticed most producers put a sort of echo on parts of their lyrics that the want to emphasize. Does anyone know how this could be done on audacity. I'v been playing with the echo function but I have yet to produce the desired effect.

I think what you want is called Doubling - the live performance of hip-hop have multiple guys (it seems to be 99% male) joining in on the key phrases, so in the studio you probably want doubling.

One way to do that is with the Delay effect:
Delay type: Regular
Decay amount: 1.0
Delay time: 0.03
Pitch change: 0
Number of echos: 1

Play around with it (small adjustments to the time, or perhaps 2 echos), and tell us if that's it.

Another way to produce a doubling of a vocal (or other) track is to duplicate the track (select the track, then press Ctrl+D), then use the Time Shift tool to drag the duplicate track a short way to the right (or to the left for "pre-delay").
The nice thing about this method is that you can easily tweak the delay amount (by shifting the track with the Time Shift Tool) and the relative volume level of the echo (with the track volume slider). A good "delay" amount will probably be somewhere around 50 milliseconds for a "doubling" effect, or longer for a more distinct "echo" effect. Very short delays (around 10 milliseconds or less) can create a type of "flanging" effect (often more noticeable on instruments such as acoustic guitars).