Recording vocals - stuck and frustrated. (links to mp3 examples)

Eurythmic

Eurythmic

majordomo plasticomo
Now then. I've been recording at home for about three years now. I've only become more interested in it as time has gone by. I am but a poor student, so I lack some of the key ingredients to a good home recording setup...
I've decided to take some time off from school to give this whole music thing half a chance, so I do hope to improve my equipment selection soon...
But until then, I'm looking to get the most out of what I have. The lone mic in my collection is a Shure SM57. I plug it into my Tascam 488MK][, which I use as a mixer, and then run that into the line in on my soundcard. I use Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 for recording. For plugins I have AutoTune (which I really don't use, aside from the occasional "ooh" or "ahh" backing vocal, if the singer's voice wavers a bit), Microphone Modeler, and the Cakewalk FX pack that includes reverb.
Let me just tell you right off the bat, I DON'T have a dedicated microphone preamp or a compressor. I realize that those things will be a great boon once I learn how to use them, but I can't afford them now and I'm really a strong believer in working with what you've got. And I really don't think that I'm good enough at engineering yet to say that I've reached the limits of what my equipment can do...
I think I'm getting fairly good at putting together a good sounding mix. I'm really starting to like some of the guitar sounds that I'm able to make (though none of these mp3s are really good examples), and I'm improving all the time. In fact, whenever I listen to an old mix, I find myself thinking of lots of things that I could have done to make it sound better.
But I'm not getting better at vocals. At all. Synth sounds are great right out of the box, and my guitar recordings are sounding more and more polished - but vocals that I recorded last week really don't sound all that different from vocals I recorded a year ago. No matter what I can think of to try, the vocals always seem to have a really "cheap" quality to my ear. I realize that to make a professional quality recording, you need professional quality equipment and lots of expertise. But can't I do better than what I'm doing now?

I've uploaded some mp3s to use as examples. These are all covers - I hesitate to post an mp3 of a song I've written because you are all so good at what you do. I want a recording of one of my songs to be "as good as I can possibly do" before I start showing it off to people who can do so much better. :) Also, all of these recordings are of the "just for fun" variety. I usually do things in just one take, because I don't see much sense in spending weeks perfecting a recording of a cover tune that you're mainly just playing to entertain your friends... but I think you'll definitely see what I mean, where the vocals are concerned.


(1.01 mb, 43 seconds)
This is my (now ex-) girlfriend Lucy's rendition of "Here Comes The Rain Again" by the Eurythmics. Some of you have actually heard this, but I originally posted our attempt to duplicate the original version of the song. This is my remix, which I put a little more time into. Please disregard the performance - she's one of the best singers that I know, but she was incredibly nervous about recording with me. I had her (and actually, I do this with myself and everyone that I record) stand in a position where her mouth was about a foot and a half away from the microphone, and told her to "aim" her voice three or four inches to the right or left of the actual microphone diaphragm. This positioning of the singer seems to work well, but it's one of the many areas where I'm looking for suggestions. As I recall, here's how I processed the vocal - first, I wanted to warm it up a bit. So I used Microphone Modeler to model some sort of Neumann tube mic (I forget). I bumped up the tube saturation quite a bit. Oh yeah, and I normalized the vocal. I do that pretty much all the time, in lieu of a compressor. Good idea, bad idea? Then I copied the vocal onto another track. I left one totally dry, and put (as I recall) the "small plate" reverb preset on the other track, and upped the "wet" mix a tad.
I think it sounds good, but not great...


(1.31 mb, 56 seconds)
"Prelude", originally by Pete Townshend. I'm singing. Before you point out the fact that my voice wavers a bit, remember that whole "one take" thing. :) I know I'm not that great, anyway! So... same mic placement here. For processing I normalized and added a small plate. No other modifications. Not a bad sound, but that same cheap quality...


(1.51 mb, 1:05)
My buddy Chris, playing "Interstate Love Song" by Stone Temple Pilots. His voice has a lower timbre than mine or Lucy's, and he sings a bit louder. Same story here - normalize, add small plate. For the backing vocal, I believe I decreased the "wet" mix quite a bit. I found that the warmer timbre and increased signal strength made things sound a bit better, but I'm still unsatisfied with the way this sounds.


(1.86 mb, 1:21)
Please don't laugh at my Morrissey impression. :) This is his song, "The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get". Now, you can obviously tell that I'm not as technically accomplished of a vocalist as Chris or Lucy, but I thought I performed this song pretty well. But not only does my mix have the same cheap quality that I've been complaining about, but I completely failed to capture the performance in the first place! You can barely hear my vibrato at all.

So, I'm looking for help. I know that a lot of people here are really big on "listen, use your ears, keep trying until you get it", etc etc, but I'm really at a standstill here.

Trust me, I do know the obvious solution here - buy a real vocal mic, buy a good compressor and learn how to use it, and buy a dedicated mic preamp and ditch the Tascam. But aren't I correct in assuming that I'm not getting the best sounds possible with the equipment I do have?

Please share with me any information you like - micing techniques, ways I could have mixed better, how you like to record and mix vocals when you're engineering, etc. I'm really in need of some things to try, here.
 
you want to fool us, right?

I listened to ex1 and 2 and I have to say; this is not only quite good considering the fact that you do not have a compressor & stuff...
I myself have a mic-pre, software-compressor, tried several reverbs, eq-ing and it still sounds too home-made for me - and damn worse than your examples.
is it that mic-modeller you mentioned? where did you get that?
 
I am not able to listen to your examples since I am at work. However, there is one thing that jumped out at me that can be the whole cause of your problem.

The problem I see is mic placement. Because the SM57 is a dynamic mic, you need to get up close and personal with it. If you were using a condenser it would be a different story.

Try getting between 3 t 6 inches from the mic. This will give you a fuller, warmer sound. One word of caution, you may need to use a pop filter or wind screen to get rid of those nasty P's.

Hope this helps. Let us know.

Peace
Joe
 
Guessing that you probably didn't have these recordings mastered, they sound pretty good to me. Probably not what you wanted to hear, guessing you are looking for pointers from the more advanced engineers.
The other singers did sound like they had stronger singing voices than you, though.

Just thought I would get my humble opinion out there.
 
Hmmm.

six: Hee, hee. Thanks. :) Antares Mic Modeler sells for about $250, but I'm sure you can download a demo. But really, I don't use it often - just to try and add warmth to vocals. And considering what JC Lives said, I may start using it even less.

JC Lives: I'll have to give that a try. I've tried singing closer to the mic before and I don't remember liking the result (no air), but maybe I could compensate for that by trying different reverbs (maybe experiment with rooms instead of plates). Singing closer, I wouldn't have to use quite so much gain, which out to give me a better signal... I do have a pantyhose pop filter ( :) ), but I haven't really noticed that it does a whole heck of a lot. Maybe I'll try singing both on- and off-axis with the mic. I could see the proximity effect making Mic Modeler a little more unnecessary, which would be good, but singing closer might also make the fact that I don't have a compressor a lot more apparent. I'll experiment a little, and see if I can't get a sound clip or two more online tonight.

rats: Oh no, nothing's mastered. None of my recordings are good enough, and as yet I've never tried recording in a professional studio. That may be a project for this summer, if I keep writing songs I'm happy with.

But basically, what I'm hearing from you guys is that I'm not doing so terrible with the equipment I've got. That's pretty encouraging.
 
Either get closer to your sm57 or get a large diaphragm condenser. Also, a big part of singing is in the dynamics. Contrasting dif parts of a phrase with dif projections. Contrasting dif parts of a verse with dif projections and expressions, etc. The vocals should not be one clean straight line. That is a huge part of sounding less demolike and more pro and thats why good singers are much less common than good musicians. Its not as easy as it looks. BTW, I prefered your voice to your ex girlfriend and your buddy chris.
 
JuSumPilgrim: Thanks, I really take that as a compliment.

vox: I thought I was out of luck when the first software compressor plugin that I tried didn't install correctly, but then I found the BlueLine series of effects... non-crippled shareware, imagine that!

Obviously the compressor was what I was most interested in... I haven't tried laying down any vocals with it yet, but I did try a couple of acoustic guitar tracks. The compression definitely altered the character of the sound a bit. But it also made the volume level of the tracks a LOT more even.

But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you don't know how to use compression properly right out of the box - no matter how much you've read about it.

So I've got to learn it, and plus I'm hoping to pick up some new reverb techniques along the way. I tried quickverb and HATED the sound of the presets - maybe it's a good plugin, but I definitely didn't get a good first impression. BlueLine has a reverb plugin, though. So I'll give that a try - anything to get away from those plates for a while. :)

I'm hoping to find a way to use LESS reverb. Listening to most newer recordings, I find that the vocals sound like they have almost no reverb whatsoever. Maybe you can get away with that if you use a condenser mic, eh? Since that type of mic will tend to do a better job of capturing the air around the voice?

Anyway, I'm gonna go try and add a few tools to my "arsenal" or whatever. I'll get a couple more soundclips online as soon as I can, and we'll see if you folks think I've improved at all. Thanks for the pointers, and keep sharing them if you like!
 
i've got the blue line plugs too... mainly for compression. the reverb isn't that great on vocals though it sounds quite warm. you can get powerful guitarsounds out of it however.

i don't know if you already did this; but a nice low cut on the vocals will put them a bit back - even without any reverb - and make them sit better in the mix. for falsetto you can cut quite a bit (up to 150 hz and more for lead). for deep chest voice it doesn't work that well without hearing it.

yesterday I found another free reverb plug-in, which - in my opinion - is even better than freeverb. it's called rgcAudio Reverb and is based on freeverb, but there's a bit more parameters and it's sounding a bit warmer than freeverb... and the ton of presets are quite useable.
you can get it from the page listed above.

yes, it seems there's not much hearable reverb in today's music. even those neo-punk-combos, whose singers can't be THAT great (are they?), manage to mix their vocals sounding quite dry.
I really was astonished how dry even motley crue's new stuff sounded. damn, this mixers must be gods to get those drunkards sounding so well on cd.
I myself have to hide my crappy voice - so I definitely HAVE to add some reverb... but your voice sounds quite good to me (although it's not the kind of voices I prefer) and your 2.mp3 DID sound quite dry.

MY biggest problem is that my vocals always sound a bit like sung at a very low volume... maybe I'm not that good at compressing yet.

but anyway, eurythmic, for "entertaining your friends" you can leave your work as it is - even for demos. and if someone says it sounds bad than kick that someone's eggs or tear off his ears ;-).
 
antares mic modeler

hmmm... I've got the demo now and I really doubt if it's worth anything... and I can't believe you - as a poor student like me - paid for it.
I even downloaded 'my mic' from the antares page to get the best results - but hey, it's basically a tiny bit of eq I can do myself and some wierd overdrive.

not even worth to search the whole net for a crack ;-)))
 
Ya caught me.

I didn't pay for Mic Modeler, or AutoTune. I pirated them both - and they're both about to get the axe. Compression+singing closer to the mic+better mixing have solved all of my problems. After a few days of reading posts religiously, and simply TRYING harder, my mixes are coming out sounding much better. I guess when it comes to things like Auto Tune and Mic Modeler, I would have been better off listening to the general mantra of posters on this board - better to perform the song better, and do a better job of capturing the sound, then to try and fix it later. Sometimes, simpler really is better.

I'll be posting mp3s for critique soon!
 
Everyone, come see what I've learned!

Okay, folks! After I originally started this thread, I took your responses to heart, locked myself into my room and read posts religiously, and recorded like I'd never be able to do so again. :)

And I really think I've improved, a lot!

To avoid a cross-post, I put the links into the mp3 mixing clinic. You can see that post here:

http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=25401

I posted four mp3s. Two of them, you haven't heard yet - but I also worked on two of the songs that I originally posted as examples for this thread. "Interstate Love Song", I simply remixed. I think it sounds worlds better. And I re-recorded "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get" from scratch. I sang closer to the mic, put more time into singing BETTER (I think my Morrissey impression isn't half bad now :) ), and mixed a little more intelligently. So please, hop over and check the mp3s out.

The sounds I'm getting are much more satisfying to me, now. Thanks for all the help.
 
.......

Just one more post to raise my post count, because I feel like a lot less of a newbie now. :)
 
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