screaming(hardcore) vocal recording help please!

[scarred_star]

right simple story my band have been around for a while and we finally got to recording with a friend of mine.... he uses a digital 8 track and recording was going fine but when i got round to recording my vocals *screaming* they lose the impact they have when live through a pa... i originally thought this may be because we were going straight from the mic to the 8 track but when i tried going through the pa it sounded too distorted! so has anyone got any tips.... and im sorry its so badly explained but i dont know what squat is called... so anyone got any tips or set up advice please help thanks in advance.

[Anomaly Design]

This has been my problem for a while too and I'm still working on it. The best thing I've come up with is plug it in directly to the recorder and add compression... And alot of it. This should give paper thin vocals some more substance w/o distortion. I forget what the actual settings I used were but if you would like me to find out I can, when I get home. If you want to hear the differences, check out my link and listen to the 1st and 3rd songs. You'll notice which one has more compression.

[chadsxe]

Make sure he has a pre-amp in the signal chain (might be obvious but you never now). As far as you sounding diffrent. Is this your first time recording? I am going to guess yes. Everyone freaks out when they hear them selves for the first time. Espically screamers. The hardest thing to get them to come to grips with is that that is them and the only way to change things is to change there technique. What you hear coming out of th PA is not you.

[treymonfauntre]

if the signal from the pa is distorting (and god i hope you aren't plugging it into the speaker outs) then you are looking for a distorted sound. not guitar distortion, but still something. limit the fuck out of the vocals and then maybe add a tube plugin distortion or something of the like.
record in a very dead room because all the limiting will end up making all the awful reflections shine through loud and clear. use a pop filter, low pass, etc.

[jonnyc]

Originally Posted by chadsxe

Make sure he has a pre-amp in the signal chain (might be obvious but you never now). As far as you sounding diffrent. Is this your first time recording? I am going to guess yes. Everyone freaks out when they hear them selves for the first time. Espically screamers. The hardest thing to get them to come to grips with is that that is them and the only way to change things is to change there technique. What you hear coming out of th PA is not you.

Yeah a lot of hardcore guys that record for the first time like to blame the sound quality on everything but themselves. My cousin is a screamer and he always came to my place to record and always bitched about the vocals. So he went to sweetwater studios spent 85 bucks an hour and got nearly the identical results. In fact I'm convinced it sounds a little worse. Point is unless you stand in the crowd and listen to yourself then you're not hearing things accurately. When you're in a studio or that type of enviroment you get a more true representation of how you really sound. Try adding more fullness to your voice, figure out how to make yourself sound bigger.

[brendandwyer]

Try a decent dynamic mic and put it through a decent preamp. Drive the tubes fairly hard without distorting and record.

If you want the recording to feel like a live set, record a live set.

Try not to compress or limit a source to tape because you can't undo it.

[giraffe]

set up the pa and mic it.

[scarred_star]

right quite a few tips there thank u muchly.... im not blaming the equipment its just i wanna be able to get that roar i can get from the pa, recorded live,,,, i did mic the pa once but then it sounds too distorted.... and i wasnt using a pre amp... and to be honest not a fucking clue what it is :P we are just a fun band that play local gigs.... anyway il try a few things out and be sure il come crying back to u guys if i cant do it...
ps. any more ideas glady recived

[timboZ]

Are you using the same mic for recording that you use live?
I use a Beta 57 in the hands of the screamer for recording.

[twostone]

What are you recording on you just stated a digital 8 track is this a standalone recorder or is it going thru a PC?

[twostone]

Here's a trick me and our guitarist came up with for cool distorted vocals we bought a mic line transformer turns your XLR end of your cable to a 1/4" plug that end to your guitarist OD pedal set the amount of distotion you want then just tap the pedal wheen you want your vocals distorted sounds pretty cool just a thought goodluck and have fun.

[scarred_star]

its a stand alone digi 8 track with its own cd burner and stuff... i tried using a preset distortion on that and it made me sound like a t rex.... every 8 year olds dream but not what i wanted

[twostone]

I know some of those standalones have inserts on them you can try to insert compression to your vocals and use the compressor set for a high ratio that might acheieve your goal.

[Cyanide-Depende]

What I do to get that "roar" record into a 57 (yes i said 57) with a condenser behind it (both on stands donthold the 57) then make a duplicat of the condeser track and lower the octave of that track and place it in the back of the other 2 vocal tracks. Mix it however you like it, but it adds a rumble that you cang get with your voice, similar to a furman punch 10 or something similar. It just adds a subharmonic rumble and can make things sound very evil if you want. It's a fun trick



Hope that helps
-C$

[knugen]

Try using a compressor and add some reverb and possibly a small touch of delay. Plain, dry vocals have a tendency to sound like cardboard...