NEWBIES - MORE INSIDER RECORDING TRICKS. VOCALS AND ORCHESTRAL RECORDING. - LAST ARTICLE IN THE SERIES
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1. Recording vocals.
lets start off with something simple. and its a problem a lot of
new small studios encounter. a new band comes in to record,
just off the road with a lot of live gigging experience.
but little recording experience.
being on the road a lot, the lead vocallist often you'll find practically wants to swallow the mic. particularly heavy industrial, metal or punk type bands. and there you are in your control room scared stiff the lead vocallist will trash your one and only expensive ribbon mic.
so what do you do ? a simple solution i used many times was to use 2 mics.
one a 10 dollar korean sm58 cheap knock off that he or she could
get real close to and hand held that i always had on hand for this purpose.
funnily enough you'll find some vocallists do better vocal tracks when they have something to grip onto. a psychlogical fact of recording life !
now heres the trick ! put some thin panty hose round a hanger
(this always amused my friends !) in front of the vocallist
with your great mic ie: neumann, ribbon, condenser , whatever
shielded by the panty hose suspended , maybe even from the ceiling so it can not be knocked down easily and safe from spittle and vocal pops etc.
now you CAN if you wish, record to two tracks the no name cheap mic and the elite mic.
sometimes i should point out the no name mic track just under the elite mic track in level, depending on mic used could give you a nice VOCAL EDGE to the sound.
sometimes elite mics are just too pure, and the no name just roughs things up a bit.
I generally roll off heavily vocal tracks below 120 hz or so.
lot of junk down there you need to clean up. anyway that space is reserved for things like kick drum frequencies.
just experiment with the exact hz using para eq. some singers seem at their best cutting in the 2k to 7k range. others by subtle boosts in the low mids for warmth.
This BRINGS ME TO A MAJOR POINT ! ALL NEWBIES DO THIS WHEN THEY START OUT, AS I DID TOO !
they boost eq all the time on tracks.
THIS IS A NO NO ! think CUT instead of boost. youll find you end up with better tracks often. for example, your listening to a mix back and the lead vocals are just not cutting through. INSTEAD OF BOOSTING EQ ON THE LEAD VOCAL
track, try CUTTING selected frequencies on various backing tracks
to give the lead vocal its own space.
I learnt this the hard way over many many years.
In summary, CUT CUT CUT ! NOT BOOST BOOST BOOST !
now - a word of caution. i pinned the meters the first take
i ever did with a superb mezzosoprano. so handle powerfull singers with care.
backing off the microphone in some cases quite a way. but watch your room sound is good.
if your room sound is poor have the vocal mic point towards a wall maybe covered with something sound absorbing so you dont get reflections back into the mic or maybe point the mic into a corner with diffusors.
What ive found is wonderfull singers are quite easy to capture if you watch your levels, but i often had problems with weak singers. my own voice i have to be carefull with because its quite powerfull.
I'm not the greatest singer, but i use a number of tricks to improve what the listener hears, and also cheat a lot with carefull editing.
so how do you make a poor or weak singer sparkle. ???
or a singer with little vocal recording experience ?
for the weak singer what i normally did was get the backing tracks down first with maybe a ghost vocal for reference only while the backing tracks were being done.
then WORK VERY HARD with the weak singer using a number of techniques.
firstly make sure you have a good headphone mix happening.
a poor headphone mix can make some singers sing "off".
secondly get the mic in closer, and/or get the weak singer to
understand the concept of breath control and singing from deep down in the body. thirdly try various takes of the lead vocal gradually building through cutting and pasting one good vocal track. also try doubling the lead vocal track,
ie: singing the lead vocal twice. NOTE : you probably would NEVER do this
doubling with a spot on mezzosoprano who nails it of course.
but its very usefull in rock, country, punk, and many other genres.
to add thickness to a lead vocal track. some other tricks you can try.
various audio editors and audio multitrackers have various built in effects.
for example chorusing and flanging etc. try this sometime to add interest to a flat sounding vocal track.
duplicate it, and in a audio editor (cool edit 96, sound forge, goldwave, powertracks etc),
add a pretty heavy dose of chorusing to the duplicate. then bring
the duplicate back into your main multitrack application as a new track, and put its level quite a bit down from the original unprocessed vocal.
ie: you want it just "there" if you know what i mean, down in the mix reinforcing.
and maybe even experiment with offsetting it a few milliseconds in time to thicken up the vocals.
other tricks you can try with weak singers as before in my other articles , you could try reamping
tricks like sending a vocal to a guitar amp miced (which ive done a few times), or to a guitar processor box, or a pod,
or to a miced external speaker and experiment with the sound picture.
I know in the early days on this bbs some folks said i was biased
towards powertracks. BUT I ASSURE YOU I REALLY AM NOT. i just found FOR ME
this particular package had some neat effects and dsp algorithms
i found quite usefull in processing vocals. and which in some cases i could get older vintage vocal effects if i did the engineering right.
another TIP. be also on the look out for cheap deals in used shops for old processors like old roland space echos, and even old PA korg units,
and yamaha and other manufacturers old delay and echo units.
youll find them a tad noisy, but you can clean this up using noise reduction software.
and lo and behold, sometimes you'll get a pleasing echo effect.
one final old trick is. to get an echo effect , send the vocal to
a 3 head reel to reel with a loop of tape loaded. some decks need to be in RECORD for this to work properly.
finally , be strident about cleaning up and silencing all the little noises and passages where the vocalist is NOT SINGING. this will lower your noise floor in your master. also if you look at waveforms of vocals you will see often in many parts they approximate little sideways triangles.
be very carefull in cleaning up the trailing edge of the triangle where the waveform tapers off with carefull fade outs in your audio editor. this will make things cleaner when adding effects instead of some breath noise or pop showing up in an effect.
and FINALLY THE BIGGEST TIP I CAN GIVE YOU, and told to me by a senior kind recording engineer years
ago - A RULE. when you have a vocal effect happening in one part of a song at some point in time, dont confuse the listener with lots of other stuff happening. this rule should also be applied to other instrument tracks.
DONT DROWN OUT THE MIX WITH EFFECT. ONE EFFECT HAPPENING AT ONE TIME.
some other ideas to consider. try lead doubled vocals down the centre sometimes with back up vocals stacked to left and right. try also some of these tricks like doubling on stacked harmony back up vocals.
I'm sure ive forgotten lots, but this should get you going.
2. Recording orchestras. For newbies i recommend AT THE EARLIEST, even if its just the university jazz ensemble, get some experience under your belt recording REAL ORCHESTRAL INSTRUMENTS. like violins, cellos,
trumpets, clarinets. tympani etc etc. You'll learn a heck of a lot
regarding engineering and mic placement. Another tip is if you have what you consider a pretty boring sounding song on first playback, instead of doing yet another
million notes a second lead guitar break to show how fast you are, consider using say a clarinet played by a friend in the break or some trumpets. or some other instrument for added colour. maybe a flute etc.
the combination of orchestral instruments on rock songs can be very powerfull.
Now to the TOUGHIE. recording a large orchestra or ensemble.
firstly - let me say you can get away with poor preamps and mixers for rock, punk etc BUT orchestral is a whole different ballgame.
heres the reasons. often you will be micing groups of instruments.
as an example mics on the cellos, then another set of mics on the violins and so on. maybe from above, and maybe at a distance depending on what your allowed to do.
maybe even micing the audience and the venue with seperate mic feeds. so often you need to use pretty powerfull clean preamps with good clean phantom power. and sometime if the cable runs are very long you might think about using buffers/repeaters that ensure a clean signal.
a quartet is much simpler let me assure you.
Now with a major orchestra on a soundstage you need to ensure for accuracy what is coming out of your monitors reflects the soundstage you are looking at.
so if the violins are on the left, this is where you should hear them on your monitors, not higgledy piggledy somewhere else. your overall aim is to maintain the soundstage as mix engineer in a live venue.
Also you dont just sling up a bunch of mics on the big night.
normally you draw a schematic in advance showing mic placement.
preplanning is vital. including dry runs with the orchestra
to get your levels right incoming, and your mic positions,
and setting your sends to whatever recording device your using.
one of the most gut wrenching things is going stereo direct to daw or tape,
ie: premixing for example 30 plus mics direct to stereo.
so your printing the final mix as it happens instead of sending different instrument groups to their own tracks for LATER mixdown to stereo.
if this is the case several dry runs are needed perhaps using the time when the orchestra is practising. where it gets even hairier,
and you will definitley need asistance in most of these cases is when your also recording a choir WITH the orchestra. in this case
you will need to mic the choir as well. probably look at micing in
groups once again. mic(s) on the bass singers, altos, sopranos,
mezzosopranos etc and of course if there is a lead choir vocalist
not just one but two mics on the lead. in these cases of large
orchestras and lets say massed choirs its a good idea to consider
duplicate microphones on each section just in case one mic or feed goes bad on you. which happened to me once. school of hard knocks !
you might also consider judicious use of pzm type mics for this type of gig.
something to consider is instead of many mikes say on the different sections of the choir, maybe a couple of pzm mics on the choir. sometimes on the floor in front of the choir works, other times on stands, other times suspended from the ceiling. it depends which sounds better. also seperate audience/venue mics should be considered to capture nuances.
Well i must finish now. this is but a very basic rudimentary intro
to orchestra and choir recording to give you some ideas to think about.
At its most basic level some engineers record to a mini disc, others
to a master reel to reel , others direct to stereo or say premixed 8 tracks to a daw , and some others go whole hog recording to two big 2 inch 24 track recorders.
i apologise in advance if i missed something. only so much space you know !!
THUS ENDS MY SERIES OF INTRODUCTORY ARTICLES FOR NEWBIES.
For further info and details for ideas/learning read lots of books.
although i found actually i learnt more by DOING frankly.
and i encourafe YOU to do the same.
best regards
bmanning (Bsc - for what its worth).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Recording vocals.
lets start off with something simple. and its a problem a lot of
new small studios encounter. a new band comes in to record,
just off the road with a lot of live gigging experience.
but little recording experience.
being on the road a lot, the lead vocallist often you'll find practically wants to swallow the mic. particularly heavy industrial, metal or punk type bands. and there you are in your control room scared stiff the lead vocallist will trash your one and only expensive ribbon mic.
so what do you do ? a simple solution i used many times was to use 2 mics.
one a 10 dollar korean sm58 cheap knock off that he or she could
get real close to and hand held that i always had on hand for this purpose.
funnily enough you'll find some vocallists do better vocal tracks when they have something to grip onto. a psychlogical fact of recording life !
now heres the trick ! put some thin panty hose round a hanger
(this always amused my friends !) in front of the vocallist
with your great mic ie: neumann, ribbon, condenser , whatever
shielded by the panty hose suspended , maybe even from the ceiling so it can not be knocked down easily and safe from spittle and vocal pops etc.
now you CAN if you wish, record to two tracks the no name cheap mic and the elite mic.
sometimes i should point out the no name mic track just under the elite mic track in level, depending on mic used could give you a nice VOCAL EDGE to the sound.
sometimes elite mics are just too pure, and the no name just roughs things up a bit.
I generally roll off heavily vocal tracks below 120 hz or so.
lot of junk down there you need to clean up. anyway that space is reserved for things like kick drum frequencies.
just experiment with the exact hz using para eq. some singers seem at their best cutting in the 2k to 7k range. others by subtle boosts in the low mids for warmth.
This BRINGS ME TO A MAJOR POINT ! ALL NEWBIES DO THIS WHEN THEY START OUT, AS I DID TOO !
they boost eq all the time on tracks.
THIS IS A NO NO ! think CUT instead of boost. youll find you end up with better tracks often. for example, your listening to a mix back and the lead vocals are just not cutting through. INSTEAD OF BOOSTING EQ ON THE LEAD VOCAL
track, try CUTTING selected frequencies on various backing tracks
to give the lead vocal its own space.
I learnt this the hard way over many many years.
In summary, CUT CUT CUT ! NOT BOOST BOOST BOOST !
now - a word of caution. i pinned the meters the first take
i ever did with a superb mezzosoprano. so handle powerfull singers with care.
backing off the microphone in some cases quite a way. but watch your room sound is good.
if your room sound is poor have the vocal mic point towards a wall maybe covered with something sound absorbing so you dont get reflections back into the mic or maybe point the mic into a corner with diffusors.
What ive found is wonderfull singers are quite easy to capture if you watch your levels, but i often had problems with weak singers. my own voice i have to be carefull with because its quite powerfull.
I'm not the greatest singer, but i use a number of tricks to improve what the listener hears, and also cheat a lot with carefull editing.
so how do you make a poor or weak singer sparkle. ???
or a singer with little vocal recording experience ?
for the weak singer what i normally did was get the backing tracks down first with maybe a ghost vocal for reference only while the backing tracks were being done.
then WORK VERY HARD with the weak singer using a number of techniques.
firstly make sure you have a good headphone mix happening.
a poor headphone mix can make some singers sing "off".
secondly get the mic in closer, and/or get the weak singer to
understand the concept of breath control and singing from deep down in the body. thirdly try various takes of the lead vocal gradually building through cutting and pasting one good vocal track. also try doubling the lead vocal track,
ie: singing the lead vocal twice. NOTE : you probably would NEVER do this
doubling with a spot on mezzosoprano who nails it of course.
but its very usefull in rock, country, punk, and many other genres.
to add thickness to a lead vocal track. some other tricks you can try.
various audio editors and audio multitrackers have various built in effects.
for example chorusing and flanging etc. try this sometime to add interest to a flat sounding vocal track.
duplicate it, and in a audio editor (cool edit 96, sound forge, goldwave, powertracks etc),
add a pretty heavy dose of chorusing to the duplicate. then bring
the duplicate back into your main multitrack application as a new track, and put its level quite a bit down from the original unprocessed vocal.
ie: you want it just "there" if you know what i mean, down in the mix reinforcing.
and maybe even experiment with offsetting it a few milliseconds in time to thicken up the vocals.
other tricks you can try with weak singers as before in my other articles , you could try reamping
tricks like sending a vocal to a guitar amp miced (which ive done a few times), or to a guitar processor box, or a pod,
or to a miced external speaker and experiment with the sound picture.
I know in the early days on this bbs some folks said i was biased
towards powertracks. BUT I ASSURE YOU I REALLY AM NOT. i just found FOR ME
this particular package had some neat effects and dsp algorithms
i found quite usefull in processing vocals. and which in some cases i could get older vintage vocal effects if i did the engineering right.
another TIP. be also on the look out for cheap deals in used shops for old processors like old roland space echos, and even old PA korg units,
and yamaha and other manufacturers old delay and echo units.
youll find them a tad noisy, but you can clean this up using noise reduction software.
and lo and behold, sometimes you'll get a pleasing echo effect.
one final old trick is. to get an echo effect , send the vocal to
a 3 head reel to reel with a loop of tape loaded. some decks need to be in RECORD for this to work properly.
finally , be strident about cleaning up and silencing all the little noises and passages where the vocalist is NOT SINGING. this will lower your noise floor in your master. also if you look at waveforms of vocals you will see often in many parts they approximate little sideways triangles.
be very carefull in cleaning up the trailing edge of the triangle where the waveform tapers off with carefull fade outs in your audio editor. this will make things cleaner when adding effects instead of some breath noise or pop showing up in an effect.
and FINALLY THE BIGGEST TIP I CAN GIVE YOU, and told to me by a senior kind recording engineer years
ago - A RULE. when you have a vocal effect happening in one part of a song at some point in time, dont confuse the listener with lots of other stuff happening. this rule should also be applied to other instrument tracks.
DONT DROWN OUT THE MIX WITH EFFECT. ONE EFFECT HAPPENING AT ONE TIME.
some other ideas to consider. try lead doubled vocals down the centre sometimes with back up vocals stacked to left and right. try also some of these tricks like doubling on stacked harmony back up vocals.
I'm sure ive forgotten lots, but this should get you going.
2. Recording orchestras. For newbies i recommend AT THE EARLIEST, even if its just the university jazz ensemble, get some experience under your belt recording REAL ORCHESTRAL INSTRUMENTS. like violins, cellos,
trumpets, clarinets. tympani etc etc. You'll learn a heck of a lot
regarding engineering and mic placement. Another tip is if you have what you consider a pretty boring sounding song on first playback, instead of doing yet another
million notes a second lead guitar break to show how fast you are, consider using say a clarinet played by a friend in the break or some trumpets. or some other instrument for added colour. maybe a flute etc.
the combination of orchestral instruments on rock songs can be very powerfull.
Now to the TOUGHIE. recording a large orchestra or ensemble.
firstly - let me say you can get away with poor preamps and mixers for rock, punk etc BUT orchestral is a whole different ballgame.
heres the reasons. often you will be micing groups of instruments.
as an example mics on the cellos, then another set of mics on the violins and so on. maybe from above, and maybe at a distance depending on what your allowed to do.
maybe even micing the audience and the venue with seperate mic feeds. so often you need to use pretty powerfull clean preamps with good clean phantom power. and sometime if the cable runs are very long you might think about using buffers/repeaters that ensure a clean signal.
a quartet is much simpler let me assure you.
Now with a major orchestra on a soundstage you need to ensure for accuracy what is coming out of your monitors reflects the soundstage you are looking at.
so if the violins are on the left, this is where you should hear them on your monitors, not higgledy piggledy somewhere else. your overall aim is to maintain the soundstage as mix engineer in a live venue.
Also you dont just sling up a bunch of mics on the big night.
normally you draw a schematic in advance showing mic placement.
preplanning is vital. including dry runs with the orchestra
to get your levels right incoming, and your mic positions,
and setting your sends to whatever recording device your using.
one of the most gut wrenching things is going stereo direct to daw or tape,
ie: premixing for example 30 plus mics direct to stereo.
so your printing the final mix as it happens instead of sending different instrument groups to their own tracks for LATER mixdown to stereo.
if this is the case several dry runs are needed perhaps using the time when the orchestra is practising. where it gets even hairier,
and you will definitley need asistance in most of these cases is when your also recording a choir WITH the orchestra. in this case
you will need to mic the choir as well. probably look at micing in
groups once again. mic(s) on the bass singers, altos, sopranos,
mezzosopranos etc and of course if there is a lead choir vocalist
not just one but two mics on the lead. in these cases of large
orchestras and lets say massed choirs its a good idea to consider
duplicate microphones on each section just in case one mic or feed goes bad on you. which happened to me once. school of hard knocks !
you might also consider judicious use of pzm type mics for this type of gig.
something to consider is instead of many mikes say on the different sections of the choir, maybe a couple of pzm mics on the choir. sometimes on the floor in front of the choir works, other times on stands, other times suspended from the ceiling. it depends which sounds better. also seperate audience/venue mics should be considered to capture nuances.
Well i must finish now. this is but a very basic rudimentary intro
to orchestra and choir recording to give you some ideas to think about.
At its most basic level some engineers record to a mini disc, others
to a master reel to reel , others direct to stereo or say premixed 8 tracks to a daw , and some others go whole hog recording to two big 2 inch 24 track recorders.
i apologise in advance if i missed something. only so much space you know !!
THUS ENDS MY SERIES OF INTRODUCTORY ARTICLES FOR NEWBIES.
For further info and details for ideas/learning read lots of books.
although i found actually i learnt more by DOING frankly.
and i encourafe YOU to do the same.
best regards
bmanning (Bsc - for what its worth).