From rap vocals to soul vocals...

[Phobea]

Hi, I don't really know which section I should post this in seeing as it covers a few areas so... fingers crossed.

I'm pretty new to recording, I'd been playing around with Cool Edit Pro for a couple of years as a hobby, recording rap vocals over other people's beats and trying to teach myself the ins and outs of it all. I was on a very slow learning curve as I hadn't any peers doing the same thing, or any real motivation.

Anyway, long story short last summer I hit a big break in the industry and decided to set up a slightly more serious studio in my bedroom, because I really find it difficult to get creative anywhere else. I started composing my own tracks with a MIDI keyboard and some softsynths and just read a shitload of magazine and internet articles about it all.

Last summer my group project acquired a female vocalist and this is where the problems started.

I think I'd gotten into some really bad habits in recording vocals. I was using a cheap kareoke mic (that actually sounded quite like an SM58 in retrospect) with a DJ Mixer as a preamp and my tracks got used to being an abundance of filters trying to make up for the poor equipment (hard-limiting each track, 2 or 3 warmifiers on each track, etc.) and some chap taught me an 'insider secret'.

He taught me to record my vocals in 5 layers: 1 lead, 2 backing, and 2 'adlib' (to emphasise certain parts), panning the layers like a pyramid with the lead at the top, same goes for the volume. This worked pretty well, it made my vocals seem a lot wider and they sat in the mix a lot nicer, but as my ear has become more an more trained I'm noticing I can hear the layers and I really don't like it (am I just mixing them too loud?). Also, I have a large condenser mic now (M-Audio Solaris) and a decent pre, so I'm really just wondering if I can go back to recording one layer of lead vocals and adding a little delay or chorus to widen it (I've always used reverb, am only now discovering delay)... does anybody know the common practice for rap vocals?

I'm a bit confused because the guy who taught me the pyramid thing was just a novice like me.. but last summer I recorded with one of the best hip-hop engineers in the US and he used pretty much the same technique... but I'm really a purist and my beats are all very acoustic and it just seems as though the vocals aren't sitting right anymore.

Use my ears, I know, but I'm just wondering what anybody else who records rap vocals does?

Anyway back to the original problem - the soul singer - and yes, I have been using the same pyramid technique with her vocals and I've got to say, it doesn't sound good at all. What is the standard way of recording female soul/pop vocals? Would I be better to use a chorus/backing-vocals plugin than to try and use her dicarded layers as backing vocals? Her vocals sound far too 'harsh' lately and no amount of reverb or warmth or eq or anything is fixing it, do I just need a better mic for her?

I record in Logic 5.5 and one day I got really lucky and acquired the Waves Platinum and Masters bundles so I've no shortage of quality mixing effects... I'm just stuck on the fundamentals.

Any ideas?