Processing the vocal cut with Space Designer and SoundShifter

The pitched-up vocal hook is one of the main focal points in Casual, and it comes from a short section of the original Future Cut acapella. Alex applies the pitchshift using Waves SoundShifter: “I use AutoTune a lot when I want it to sound messy and weird, sometimes Melodyne when I want it super clean, but I use SoundShifter on most of my vocals. I pitched up the little ’you’ bit by an octave, and then the rest was pitched up by an extra five semitones on top, so it gives quite a nice progression.”

Next, a very short reverb is added in Logic’s Space Designer, inspired by a trick Alex learnt from Diplo. “He uses a really small reverb with quite a lot of wet [signal] for a really different tonality. It changes the size a bit. I haven’t made it too extreme, as it’s quite a high sound, and I’ve made it more subtle with a two-second reverb.”

The vocal is then widened using Logic’s Sample Delay plugin. “I had it down the middle, but I just kind of wanted to hear it everywhere, especially listening in headphones, so I used Sample Delay. A lot of people use Spreader, but I prefer the sound of Sample Delay, so it just hits both speakers with a super quick delay. There’s lots of little vocal effects in this one. This is the first track where I really looked at that as the main aspect of it. You’ve heard it in a ton of the remixes I’ve done since Casual, but I really tried to go vocal cut-heavy at any given opportunity.”