Recording Vocals at different sessions..Newbie

[Brina]

hmmmm...

Interesting discussion....

and well considering I'm outta the loop for recording until I can get set back up this weekend, thought I MIGHT be able to add a bit to this.

No one person's voice is going to be exactly like the others, so any one technique or software or set up is going to be right, its a use what You can and pick what You like or think sounds the best.

I personally use a variety of the things mentioned.  The biggest one being vocal technique.

As Nick can probably attest I HAVE to work a mic, even the AT4040 that I'm using now, otherwise I'll peak out and distort. 

Now, the advice about hanging, angling and singing about an inch below the mic itself is good advice, I actually do that myself, however I will also sing off to the side, or inch back a bit. 

For example, if I'm looking for something with a really intimate light feel, such as with "Its Not Water" from the MC CD, I set up within about 1 inch of the mic, singing across the mic, giving that much warmer bassier tone, like Paul mentioned.

However for the rock stuff where I KNOW I'm going to be just going balls to the wall, to make sure that the track gets as much hootspah needed, and the dynamics necessary, I'll literally step back from the mic and sing OVER it, meaning on the hard belting choruses, I'll tilt my head back, so I'm literally singing across the mic but at an upwards slant, and step back 6 inches, it allows my voice to sound and feel the harder edge, but not distort the tracks, and at the same time keeps the verses from being too "low" in volume opposed to the choruses. 

Tone is as much in how You sing, where You sing, how much You sing, as in any of the software, and gadgets You can put in line.  It is also as much in learning how to manipulate Your own voice to achieve those tones, trying different ways of voicing or pronouncing words can dictate how hard Your hitting the track as well.

As far as sounding the same day to day...ummm...well to be honest.  Unless You are going to sing faithfully every single day, with the same warm up time without ever getting sick, or having allergies or what have You.  It just doesn't happen.  However, having faith in Your ability to come close, that's all You can do.  I will often work on just one part, get that perfect, and then not touch anything else until I know that I have time to complete the particular part in that same session.  That's not to say I haven't spent hours one day, and then ended up re recording everything because I liked or disliked the tone more the next day. 

Its like anything else subjective, but I'm still a firm believer in technique being the biggest discipline and the biggest consistant factor involved with good vocal recording.

And then again, I'm jonesin at the moment so, who knows maybe I'm just blowing smoke, I just know what works for me.

Brina

[TallPaul]

Good stuff, Brina!

I have one for you mixers out there: when mixing vocals, I usually use soft knee compression, some reverb, occasionally some EQ, and am now experimenting around with Vintage Warmer 2! :-) I usually senmd all my vocal tracks to a 'group' then apply effects to that group.

Here is the question: what ORDER do you usually chain the effects in? I usually do compression first, then reverb, then EQ, and now Vintage Warmer 2. Is there a better way?

Paul

[CosmicDolphin]

Here is the question: what ORDER do you usually chain the effects in? I usually do compression first, then reverb, then EQ, and now Vintage Warmer 2. Is there a better way?

Paul

The only rule is do whatever works.  There have been times when I've re-ordered plugins just because I can and it's made it better and other times worse, so I'd always say it's worth trying for the coupla minutes it takes.

It'll do different things to the sound, so sometimes compressing after the reverb will give a cool sound that might work, I often use more than one eq, one like Waves Q10 or similar to surgically cut any nasty frequencies, and often one after the compressor which can dull things, and to bring out the character of the vocal..I'll try to use my best sounding eq for boosting, something with a vintage character.

I always split the lead and backing vocals and send them to different groups as they generally need treating very differently.  something like Vintage Warmer is good to put across the buss output , but you can also do cool things using it as a send/return with more extreme settings.

CD

[TallPaul]

Good info, thanks CD!
Paul

[Basil]

Hi Brina,
Very good information and I couldn't agree with you more..wish it was one size fits all.

Question to everyone.
1. Do you eq, compress, ect....the mic before recording?

2. What do you set your playback track volume at ..do you sing above the music or right at the balance point?

3. Do you use any effects while monitoring your vocal recording ?

Just wondering.
Basil

[TallPaul]

Hey Basil, I don't put anything in front of the vocals that would stay in the WAV file as recorded. I only apply EQ, Compression, etc to MIXES AFTER the file is recorded.

I DO have a setting in ntrack called "Live" which allows me to listen to the vocals while recording, and it uses whatever track or group effects I have setup for that track. So the answer to that part of your question is a yes. But typically I like to hear my vocals kind of dry.

Depending on how comfortable I am with the beat of the track, I have the volume in my headphones accordingly. If I am very familiar, the volume is fairly low. This is important because I sing so close to the mic most of the time that any sound coming out of the headphones will be picked up by the mic as well.

When you are going to sing a track I would set the Record volume such that you don't peak above a -6 or so. So you do a trial to see if the loudest part of your song goes above that... if it does, you turn down your gain on the preamp etc. You can ALWAYS apply compression afterwards and use volume envelopes to bring up the low volume stuff. The only gotcha with that is that any "noise" in the file (less than stellar transformers, ambient noise, et cetera) comes up in the mix as well.

Paul

[CurtisDowney66]

I always record dry also, I don't know of anyone here that applies effects before it is recorded.  It is so easy to apply those effects afterwards, and if they are there before recording, nothing will reverse it.  As far as levels that I listen while I record, kinda like Paul, it depends, on some rock stuff where I gotta belt it out, I monitor it pretty loud, just makes it easier for me to get into it performance wise.  As for the headphone bleed that Paul talks about, I like to hold my hands over my headphones and smash them up against my ears so that less sound bleeds out, but to be honest, a little bit of the track bleeding through with your vocal isn't all that big a deal, as long as it isn't really loud.  I have worked with alot of other peoples vocal tracks here and for the most part, they all have a little music bleeding through, and it has never caused me much problems.  There was a thread on here where it pointed to some Queen tracks, I downloaded them and played around with them, and to be honest, some of the junk on those raw tracks is pretty bad, it kinda made me rethink all the steps I try so hard to make my tracks perfect, because the Queen tracks are far from perfect...lol
Curtis

[Basil]

Ok...record everything dry.
Put any FX on after.....what order?
What do you use as a referance ?

[TallPaul]

Like CD said above, the order of effects is personal preference, or for a specific effect. I generally try soft knee compression first, then reverb, then EQ. And like CD, I tend to send all my lead vocal tracks to one Group and all background vocals to another Group, then add the effects to the Groups and NOT to the specific tracks.

Can you explain what you mean by 'reference?'

Paul

[Basil]

Hi Paul,

Do you use headphones or speakers when you polish your sound ?
And all of the polishing is just for demo purpose ,becuase who ever is going to mix wants eventhing dry ?

[Brina]

In My personal opinion, yay I know everyone has one.

Everything should be recorded dry,that allows for a cleaner track as well as less damage control when mix time comes.  The less You do when recording the track, the more someone who knows what they are doing can do when the song is put together.

Secondly, and this might be because of the amount of harmony vocals I tend to record as well, but I will NEVER use effects on my reference, the reason? Well, quite honestly if You are changing the original track with even so much as reverb, You are affecting what You are hearing, and that means You might not be blending the vocals correctly.  Most of the time, it effects how a singers pitch is.  A dry reference gives You exactly what You are singing, I have found I tend lay better quality vocals, performance wise because I'm closer to pitch and the tone is generally more well balanced for the tune.  As a singer it also makes me less dependent upon the various gadgets out there to get that "sound" i'm searching for. 

but then again, I'm also someone that untill the last couple years would redo and redo a track to fix one slight outta tune spot, rather than let someone auto-tune, amazing how opinions change....

Brina

[TallPaul]

Secondly, and this might be because of the amount of harmony vocals I tend to record as well, but I will NEVER use effects on my reference, the reason? Well, quite honestly if You are changing the original track with even so much as reverb, You are affecting what You are hearing, and that means You might not be blending the vocals correctly.  Most of the time, it effects how a singers pitch is... Brina

I hadn't thought of that, Brina. That's good advice.

A couple of other things.

Curtis was talking about putting his hands over his headphones. That's a good idea. I have two sets of headphones. An AKG K240 Studio (55 ohm!!! NOT the K240S at 600 ohms!!) and a Sennheiser HD 280 Pro (64 ohm). Those AKG's are so comfortable I have literally walked away from studio wearing them while plugged in and about gave me whiplash. I can wear them for HOURS! The Sennheisers are uncomfortably tight for me. BUT!!!! Lately I've been wearing the Sennheiser for recording. Why? I HEAR so much more with the Sennheisers, things I never heard with the AKG's. And because they fit so tight there's less bleed outside of them. Don't discount your headphones!

Another singing is good SINGING TECHNIQUE!!! I've learned about 3% of what I need to learn to be a good vocalist. One of the BEST things I've learned from a vocal teacher in a 15 minute lesson was 'consonants get in the way of vowels. Spit them out and concentrate on the vowel sounds!' For example, I have attached two different ways of singing a single word 'amen'. Amen1 concentrates on the vowel sounds and sounds more like Aaaaaaaaaameeeeeeeeeeeeeeen. Amen2 sounds more like Aaaaaaammmmmmeeeeeeeennnnnnnnn. When you drag through the consonants you end up sounding flat. Still hard for me to do but I am working on it. And I STILL need to work on breath control so that I am holding the note better without quavering (as evidenced in the attached files).

Paul

[Basil]

Was wondering how long on average is spent recording main vocals for a song ?

[Brina]

Basil,

That's a tough one to really give You an answer for.  It totally depends on the track and the singer.

I've had times when I've done literally a once through, and I've had songs where I must have spent 16 hours trying to get perfect (or as close as possible), and that is the lead vocal.

It all depends on the song, the singers connection with the song, how familiar the singer is with the lyrics, and the composition.

However, I will say...the once through is a rarity.  On average for a lead vocal I spend between 2 to 6 hours, that's for an average lead vocal, that's just the singing, that isn't counting playing with lyrics if necessary or listening to and analyzing the bed track for cue ins and so forth and so on.

Brina

[TallPaul]

Well...

There is a lady I know named Christi John Bye who used to sing with a group named Nightfall. You can hear some of her vocals here:
http://www.myspace.com/rustyspringfieldmusic
Check out Tell Me and So Late. Anyway, the bass player Rusty calls Christi the "One Take Wonder", even on songs she's never sung before.

On the other hand, I've worked with a guy named Michael Andrew. He did the vocals on my Devil May Care song. The guy's been on Merv Griffin, wrote the score for and sang the score on a Hollywood-released movie... and he spends HOURS and HOURS on each song fine tuning.
http://michaelandrew.com/

So I guess it depends.

I tell ya, I was looking at Celemony.com's Melodyne Studio today. I may just have to suck it up and buy that program. It DEFINITELY shows you how good and bad you sing and helps you correct timing, pitch, you name it. But at $570 USA it ain't cheap.

Paul