How to get that "Celtic Sound"

CClub wrote on 12/20/2008, 9:13 PM

I'm trying to get an a cappella song to have that wispy, reverb, echoey sound that is typical for Enya, Sarah McLachlan, Celtic Women, and much of that Celtic/Irish a capella sound. At the end of my documentary on a Holocaust survivor, I'm going to have a young boy singing "Ani Ma'amin" (a historical Jewish song) as various images of this survivor and generations of his family fade in/out, and I wanted to have that haunting vocal sound. I've tried various reverbs and effects in Sound Forge but I'm not even getting close. Is anyone aware of what effects/combinations of effects they use to get that sound?

Comments

fausseplanete wrote on 12/21/2008, 2:00 AM

Attention to detail, just like the Celtic art.

I have read that Enya physically records her own voice as hundreds of overlaid takes. Listening to her music, the takes are musically varied/counterpointed in sophisticated ways but also for example simply at different octaves (could octave-shift).

I have also attempted the Celtic effect (in Cubase), as my female vocalist partner (of less patience) sings that style, also including Loreena McKennit by the way.

The closest I've come to achieving it from FX is to use reverb & echo not as a continuous effect but keyframed and be restricted in frequency (e.g. brief echoes of sibilants), maybe dropping the frequency over the time of (each instance of) the effect. Also tried Chorus but it sounds like a Chorus effect. Maybe also about delay - really want the members of the "Chorus" to come up (accumulate) and go away like running fingers across the strings on a harp. In Vegas maybe a script could achieve this by enveloping the rise and fall of audio tracks to progressively (as we go down the tracks) rise more slowly and fall more quickly. The umpteen tracks could contain fresh takes (ideally) or somehow simulated-fresh through some kind of random variation (anyone know how?)

For me, it remains a work in progress, but I hope that helps, and I too will be reading this thread with interest.