H2H's advice on getting vocals more forward in the mix

dvs recordings

New member
I got some advice from H2H on duplicating the vocal track, compressing it heavily around 12 db adding eq between 8-16k, boosting at about 7db to start then de-essing to take away any harshness. I am not achieving what I am supposed to with this good advice. The sound is still kind of harsh when I bring the levels of the second track back into the mix. It does not sound like a phasing problem. One thing I did was after compressing heavily I boosted the make- up gain to bring the level up. Was this a mistake? Or should I have left the signal alonewhere it sounded very quiet.

I was experimenting with all different eq freq's and boosting levels with no luck. It was not bringing the vocals forward just sounding kind of harsh when I blended the hyped track back in.

About the first original track. I'm sure I should be compressing it, which is what I have been doing. Along with adding make-up gain. Would this have been a mistake. So if you are working with a thinner voice should you stick with a lower freq. band say around 4-7k which is the type of voice I am recording at this moment (female)

Maybe my combined entire signal is too hot eventhough it does not show it on the meters. A little frustrated.

Any advice from H2H or those who have had success with this tip would be appreciated.
 
Is your original track really weak to begin with? If you bring that 2nd track in too much, it WILL sound harsh. The main track should be well in front. It should sound the best and fullest it can before the application.

Every setting will vary depending on the voice. Especially with EQ. You just have to use what sounds good. If the person has a thin voice, you should concentrate on recording them very close to the mic and using your pre to sound as big as ou can get them. You have to have a decent track first before you use any trick.

BTW, a little background on that trick from the guy who gave it to me:

"This is my modified-for-Pro-Tools version of the old Dolby A stretch trick originally pioneered by Sir George Martin on the Beatles recordings. He used to encode the noise reduction on the high end only and would not decode it. That signal was blended with the original vocal."
 
Dvs recordings, Maybe a different mic would be the thing to bring your vocals to the front. Sometimes a more present or open mic will help alot more than post tracking trickery. Which mic did you record with? Which mics do you have at your disposal? I would prefer EQ and mic technique for presence rather than compression on the recorded track. I almost always add compression in the tracking rather than mixing fo vocals. Just me and a few thoughts....Mic list?

I doubt anyone can tell you what to change without hearing the track, even then the use of different gear will obviously create different sounds. There are precious few absolute formulas or recording would be a heck of alot easier.
 
H2H...I have her standing within 2-3 inches tomic, I just think she does not have a full sounding voice. Like tubedude said a good full voice is the best start. I will check to see if I can get the voice fuller but I am going to experiment on some lower freq's say around 4-6 k and see if this suits things better. Although the recording sounded pretty full to my ears just not " forward in the mix"

Jake-owa... My mic is a Sony C48 which is a nice mic and the pre amp is the VTB -1 studio projects..Not an Avalon or John Hardy but I don't think it sucks. The other mics are of lesser quality. I have an Apex 450 tube condenser mic and 2 akg 535eb. I know they say to experiment with different mic's but I don't believe this is the problem.. I could be wrong though and it would not be the first time or the last.

Question though.. Should I be adding any compression to the original track before or after the duplicated track has been created and hyped. And as far as the second track... Sould I being addingalot if any make up gain to it after it has been seriously compressed.

DVS ( thanks for the replies guys) hmm..poetry
 
The best mic in the world can sound like crap on certain singers. If the mic has too wide a range you could be picking up slightly offending high or low end frequencies. Think of the eq you will need to mix the vocal into the song and shoot for a mic with that type of response. I swear a sure 57 will out rock a large diaphram condensor 8 times out of ten in a heavy rock mix. Try a simple dynamic or another condensor. I personally use compression in the tracking phase of recording. Use the makeup gain to simply makeup gain lost by compression or, if you like to boost the signal to the reference level decided for the project. The way I compress vocals is to sing into the compressor while adjusting to the singer. The reason I do this is that you will sing differently if you are monitoring the compressor and you want to "play" the compressor with the vocal performance. Aim to never EQ vocals on the way in to the recorder, in fact if you choose the mic well EQ may never be necessary.
proximity could have a huge effect on the muddieness of the vox, a deep powerful sounding solo track can clot up the mix quite badly. Try keeping the singer back a foot or more from the mic as an experiment and use the preamp to get the signal strength you want.

Some more ideas...hope they help.
 
Another dynamic microphone that can work fine for your
intended application is the Sennheiser 421.
Be aware, however, that the latest MKII version is brighter than
the previous ones, and has more "presense".
Not necessarily better or worse just different.

Chris
 
dvs recordings,

I got really good results, non harsh, with H2H's technique. Actually it turns out this started in Motown about 30 years ago. There is a good article at http://www.recordingeq.com/ regarding this technique.

The key is to have the main vocal very flat or slightly low end boosted around 300-500Hz maybe 1db and lightly compressed. Focus on a warm sound in the primary range of the vocalist. The main track should be almost 100% accurate EQ wise as to the sound you want.

On the 2nd track boost the whole range from 8-16K with a peak at 10K around 8db. Heavily compress this and don't worry about the de-esser so much unless the s's and t's in the vocal come off harsh. In my case I just played with the Q setting of my EQ to get around excessive de-essing.

Put the 2nd track around 1/3 lower than the main vocal in volume to just brighten the overall effect. Center everything.

This is on a male voice. You will have to make adjustments for a female range.

The overall idea is to get the s,s and t's to jump out at the listener while overall the voice is warmer sounding at a slightly lower volume. Hope this helps.
 
Hey Middileman thanks for the help, but II could not find the tip you wre talking about when I arrived at that site. What would the specific name of the tip be?

DVS
 
One more thing Middleman... when you say boost the whole range between 8-16k with a peak around 10k at around 8db. What do you mean exactly. I run parametric eq that is in the software so does this mean I would use the 3 band eq's and boost them all between that range? A little confused...

DVS
 
Middleman said:
dvs recordings,

I got really good results, non harsh, with H2H's technique. Actually it turns out this started in Motown about 30 years ago. There is a good article at http://www.recordingeq.com/ regarding this technique.

The key is to have the main vocal very flat or slightly low end boosted around 300-500Hz maybe 1db and lightly compressed. Focus on a warm sound in the primary range of the vocalist. The main track should be almost 100% accurate EQ wise as to the sound you want.

On the 2nd track boost the whole range from 8-16K with a peak at 10K around 8db. Heavily compress this and don't worry about the de-esser so much unless the s's and t's in the vocal come off harsh. In my case I just played with the Q setting of my EQ to get around excessive de-essing.

Put the 2nd track around 1/3 lower than the main vocal in volume to just brighten the overall effect. Center everything.

This is on a male voice. You will have to make adjustments for a female range.

The overall idea is to get the s,s and t's to jump out at the listener while overall the voice is warmer sounding at a slightly lower volume. Hope this helps.

I wrote a few threads back to you about the advvice you gave me .
 
dvs recordings

Here is the article transcript.

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Motown developed a mixing method that allowed presence, bite and intensity on lead vocals. Even when the vocals were mixed at an even level with the music, you could hear every word clearly. I've released two past articles on this subject and every time I get bombarded with comments about how great the technique is.

The Pre-Motown Mix

In the 1950's and early 1960's records were generally mixed with the vocal far louder than the music. The vocal had a very natural sound to it except the there was a lot of reverb applied to the vocals. The artist that really had this sound was Frank Sinatra. Back then, when listening to Old-Blue-Eye's records, you heard the music way in the background. This sound, however, wasn't exclusive to Frank. Even the "Rock & Roll" records of the time, like Elvis & Ricky Nelson had the vocals way out front.

The Motown Mix

Motown had a "better" idea. Motown was selling "excitement." The thinking was that the rhythm of the music is what made the record exciting and what the kids danced to. There actually was a lot of melody and important lyrics in these old records - but rhythm was the key. Actually Motown started a revolution in mixing and most modern rock (and even pop) releases are mixed in this style, even today.

Regarding reverb, another Motown innovation was to have more reverb on the music than on the vocal. There were three custom built reverberation chambers at Motown - all used during a mix - unheard of in those days. Again today a typical control room today has 4-8 (or more) effects devices for reverb (and other effects).

The 1970's "Exciter"

In the 70's a processing device by Aphex called the "Aural Exciter" (probably a tradename), started gaining popularity. The exciter took any instrument and generated a high-frequency signal component that could be added into the mix and would add "excitement" to the sound. A lot of people were impressed with this device (and clone devices that followed) especially to make the vocal sound brighter. I was very unimpressed. To my ears the unnatural high end added by the compressor may have added excitement but it also destroyed the vocal's natural characteristics. Another reason I hated the exciter units was I was familiar with the "Exciting Compressor" used at Motown a decade earlier. the name "Exciting Compressor" is mine but the technique I believe was first used by Lawrence Horn at Motown in 1963.

When a producer would ask me for an exciter, I would tell them I had something better - the Exciting Compressor. Every client I used this on was very impressed and happy with the result.

The Motown 1960's Exciting Compressor

With the Motown mix approach there were problems. If you wanted the lyrics to be heard you had to use a lot of compression on the vocal so that the the softer words could still be heard over the higher-level music. In addition you boosted the "presence range" (around 5 kHz) with an equalizer. The only problem with this is that it took the life & natural dynamics out of the vocal.

Lawrence Horn came up with a brilliant idea. He took the vocal and split the signal so that it when to 2 console channels. Before the vocal signal went to the second channel, it went through a compressor. Now he had two channels of the vocal - one compressed and one uncompressed. On the uncompressed vocal he added very little with the equalizer and he added the reverb. On the compressed channel, he compressed the h**l out of it and added a ton of high-frequency equalization. What he would do is bring up the "natural" channel to full level to get the basic natural sound on the vocal. On the other compressed and equalized channel, he brought this up just enough to add excitement and presence to the vocal sound.

The result was nothing less than amazing. In the mix the vocal sounded very natural and bright. None of the music ever "stepped on" the vocal and you could hear each and every syllable in the lyrics. The vocal never got lost.

Using The Exciting Compressor.

I don't know if anyone at Aphex knew anything about this technique - BUT - the purpose of their product and the older Motown technique seen basically the same. As you try this technique out you will find it works for other instruments as well. Often the frequency of EQ needs to be changed for the instrument. The vocal works well with tons of 5kHz to 8 kHz added to the "exciting compressor;" guitars work better with 3 kHz - 5 kHz and bass guitars work better with 800 hZ to 1.5 kHz.

For analog recording or working with an analog console, splitting the vocal into two console channels is easily done with a Y-chord or similar function at the patch bay. For digital consoles, it's a little harder; usually the best results are obtained by actually having two vocal tracks recorded on the tape.
 
hey dvs recordings,

rather than boosting the high end between 8-16db, cut the low end from 8khz down.

but, you've got the motown trick down pat, you just gotta play with it until it works for you.

I've just discovered within the last week however, that using a multi-comp can achieve the motown trick without this complication.

using a multi-comp, set the threshold lower in the sub-8k range, and higher in the over-8k range. this way you compress the lows more heavily than the highs when the vocalist gets louder.

or

set the thresholds the same, but use a heavier compression ratio for the sub-8k range.

what i played with today was a multi-comp on the lead vocal with the same threshold but different ratios and no makeup gain where the crossover points where 120hz / 2khz/ 8khz. it sounded pretty good, but i think i can do better if i play around with the crossover points some more.

you get emotional, dynamic vocals but the high-end is compressed less than the low-end once you reach a particular level.

i'm glad i ran into this thread. gotta love this BBS.
 
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