Recording live vocals

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Chaos351

New member
So my band has recently been recording our practices for review and we plan on potentially uploading some of them sometime. The drums sound alright, considering the setup we currently have and the guitar sounds fine (Axe FX 2 direct into board), but I keep running into problems with the vocals.

I have the SM58 mic going into an ART Voice Channel strip. The compressor is set pretty heavily (don't have the settings with me at the moment, but I know it's a heavy compression) and then into the board. The problem lies in that I can't figure out how to get the vocals to sound even. My singer likes to move around quite a bit, and when he's right up to the mic, it'll sound fine. Other times though, he can be up to 6+ inches away from the mic and, no surprise here, it'll sound thinner and the vocals won't sound like they are on top of the mix.

Besides trying to convince the singer to be more aware of his distance from the mic, is there anything I can do to better even things out? It's one single mix, unfortunately, as the board will record everything to an SD card, so I can't manually fix it. Do I just add more compression and hope for the best?
 
Not sure if you have the ability but maybe putting a gate on the vocal will help him break his habit. If he backs away too much the gate will cut him off.
 
I doubt there is much you can do with a stereo pair. Going forward you need to level with your singer, pun intended. Let him hear the recordings and point out what is going on. Even if you had individual tracks to work with, "fixing it in the mix" is never ideal. But for vocals especially, the things that you will have to do to compensate for a flawed recording are going to make the vocal sound less natural and less appealing.

Of course your vocalist has to want to improve.

Is this just a problem on live recordings? Maybe he feels that energy is more impotant than technical qualities. And maybe he is right. Maybe it makes more sense to let the live performances exist in the moment and save your recording efforts for the studio?
 
It's unlikely that a technical treatment will overcome a substantial acoustic deficiency. You singer needs to stay on the mic. This is going to be especially true if you play out. Ask yourselves, are you playing just for your own amusement, or do you want an audience to join in the experience? If it's the former then carry on. If it's the latter then you need to make accommodations.

I assume everybody else has learned how to play their instruments. Same goes for the singer, and his instrument is his voice and his mic. You wouldn't stand for the guitarist playing the wrong chords just because he didn't feel like playing the right ones. You wouldn't let the drummer go into a solo during the first verse. Why does the singer get a pass?
 
Chaos351 said:
Besides trying to convince the singer to be more aware of his distance from the mic, is there anything I can do to better even things out? It's one single mix, unfortunately, as the board will record everything to an SD card, so I can't manually fix it. Do I just add more compression and hope for the best?
Click to expand...

Riding the faders is an art-form that most good, live soundmen do.
If you know the songs...and the habits of your singer...you just anticipate his/her moves.
Usually most will do similar things...move in on a certain section, lean back...etc..which can become very predictable, and then you mark 2-3 spots on the board's fader strip so you can easily hit them...you know...loud, med, soft...that type of thing.

Or just hit him up the back of his head every time he moves. :)
Seriously though...he should also learn to work the mic, just like the soundman has to learn to work the fader.
That will get you better live results than just slapping on more processing and hoping for the best.
 
Here's an idea: take the compressor off entirely. You may have inadvertently trained him to rely on compression to keep things together. Let him hear himself (live and on the recording) without compression and maybe he'll realize he needs to step up and do his job.
 
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