How to Sound Like The Weeknd: The Vocal Sound, Explained
Published · by Loopin
How to sound like The Weeknd is mostly contrast: a bright falsetto in front of a big, dark space, and verses made small and lo-fi so the chorus can open up. Illangelo described doing exactly that on The Hills.
Start from what Illangelo documented on The Hills
What's on the record (sourced): Illangelo engineered, mixed and co-produced “The Hills” (2015). He told Sound On Sound (December 2015) he wanted the verses “very spacey and lo-fi, with a lot of low end taken out,” and on the choruses he wanted “everything to come in.” The verse lead was made to sound small and heavily effected, with a chain that included Auto-Tune EFX, FabFilter de-essing, EQ and multiband compression, a tape-delay plug-in, a Waves doubler, UAD API 560, 1176 and EP-34 emulations, Soundtoys Little Radiator and MicroShift, and Altiverb.
Later, on After Hours, Serban Ghenea mixed “Blinding Lights” (2019) at MixStar Studios, per Mix. No settings were published for any of these. The takeaway is structural: the verse and chorus get different treatments.
Listen for the space behind the voice, not on it
“Wicked Games” (2011): a falsetto hook floating in a long, dark tail while the voice itself stays clear. “The Hills” (2015): the verse vocal sounds narrow, gritty and distant; when the chorus hits, the voice fills out and the space widens. “Blinding Lights” (2019): the opposite era, clean, bright and stacked, with the tuning mostly invisible.
Listen for: a bright top on the lead while the reverb underneath is dark, falsetto harmonies stacked in the hooks, tuning that is usually transparent but obvious on the odd line, and how much low end is missing from the verses compared with the choruses.
How to sound like The Weeknd: make the verse small so the chorus can be big
Put the verse lead on its own track. High-pass it at 250–400 Hz, low-pass it at 6–8 kHz, add saturation until it crackles slightly, and add a short slapback (80–120 ms, one repeat). On the chorus track, go full range: normal high-pass at 80–100 Hz, a double on each side and falsetto harmonies 6–8 dB under the lead.
The space: a long, dark reverb on a send, 2.5–3.5 s decay, 40–80 ms pre-delay so the words stay in front, and the return high-cut at 4–6 kHz. The vocal stays bright and the tail stays dark. Push the send 2–4 dB higher in the chorus. Reverb on vocals covers pre-delay if the words blur.
Set up The Weeknd vocal chain as a starting point
In order: high-pass; pitch correction set transparent (medium-slow retune), switched to fast only on lines you want to hear it; de-esser; EQ with a gentle 1–2 dB lift around 10 kHz; an 1176-style compressor taking 3–6 dB; then reverb and delay on sends. The processor types echo Illangelo's list; the numbers are ours. Nobody has published his settings.
What goes wrong: a dark reverb makes a dull vocal duller, so brighten the voice, not the tail. If the chorus doesn't lift, the verse isn't small enough; narrow it further rather than pushing the chorus louder. Falsetto thins out under compression, so compress the harmonies less than the lead.
Skip The Weeknd vocal preset and plan the arrangement
A preset is one static chain; the sound is two chains that switch at the chorus. It also can't sing falsetto for you. If your chorus isn't in a range where you can stack three clean falsetto parts, change the key before you change plug-ins; finding the best key for your range takes ten minutes.
Record the chorus falsetto three times per harmony, keep the steadiest, and only then set effects. If the switch between small verses and big choruses is where your mix falls apart, that's the stage Project Jade is being built for.
Get the rough mix to a finished one
Project Jade is an agentic mixing product we're building: drop in your rough mix, get back a studio one. It isn't released yet; access is waitlist-only. Once the mix is done, master it free.
Loopin isn't affiliated with or endorsed by The Weeknd; the name is used only to describe a style. Want your track mixed toward this kind of sound? Join the Project Jade early-access list.
Frequently asked questions
What vocal chain did The Weeknd use on The Hills?
Illangelo told Sound On Sound (2015) the verse lead used Auto-Tune EFX, FabFilter processors, 1176 and API emulations, Little Radiator, MicroShift and Altiverb, among others. No settings were published.
Does The Weeknd use Auto-Tune?
Auto-Tune EFX is on the documented Hills chain. On most songs the tuning is transparent; it's obvious only on selected lines.
What reverb settings sound like The Weeknd?
Not published. Start with a 2.5-3.5 second reverb on a send, 40-80 ms pre-delay, and the return high-cut at 4-6 kHz so it stays dark.
Does The Weeknd vocal preset work?
Only as a layout. The sound needs different verse and chorus treatments and a falsetto performance, which a single preset can't supply.
How do I sing falsetto like The Weeknd?
Pick a key where the chorus peaks two to three notes into your falsetto, sing lighter than feels natural, and stack three takes.