Need advice for recording a loud singer.

J

JohnWatkins

New member
Hey guys,

I had a really great singer come down to record and she did a phenomenal job. Really sounded great. But, when I went to do my mix I could not get a good tone. There was this harshness, or resonance at several spots (2.8k, 8-9k). I ended up having to do a LPF on it to get a useable track, which was a shame because she has a great airy quality to her voice. The signal path was TLM-103 > Avalon 737 > StudioLive > Cubase.

Could it be the capsule resonating? Tubes? I had no distortion or pegged meters anywhere in the chain.

I've got her coming back down to re-track it, but I'm already embarrassed enough; I don't want to put her through any more mic/pre testing than absolutely necessary. I'm thinking of just playing it safe and running a SM58 straight into the board.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance for any advice.

John
 
Some singers can have a spike/resonance at certain frequencies. I'm working with a female singer and she'll do the ice-pick-in-ear thing at around 2.5-3k Hz on certain words...it's just her voice.
First few times I recorded her, I had do notch filter that out after the fact in the DAW....now I just do it going in, saves a lot of time.
Also....some mics/pres can over-emphasize it, so you have to find the right mic that complements the good parts of her voice and smoothes out the bad stuff.
In my case we already started switching mics/pres to find the best combination.

What you hear in the room can be "softened" by the room....meanwhile the mic is picking it up with all the details....good and bad.
 
Resonance - time smear and/or peaks in the response..
Or distortion?

(Or both..?
..Some pepole get nasty sounds as they push
So curious.. what were you hearing while tracking?
 
I guess if I'm being honest, it was there during tracking and I probably just blamed it on the headphones and/or assumed a little compression would tame it. I had her in the same room with me, so the monitoring wasn't ideal. Maybe I'll try to notch it with the condenser on the way in as suggested, but then have a dynamic there too as a backup.
 
Sounds like you might be leaning to saying it's spiky sounding frequencies rather than distortions'.
.. it was there during tracking and I probably just blamed it on the headphones and/or assumed a little compression would tame it. I had her in the same room with me, so the monitoring wasn't ideal. Maybe I'll try to notch it with the condenser on the way in as suggested, but then have a dynamic there too as a backup. ..
Click to expand...
Two points then.. Why 'on the way in'?, and how about the room? Hard close reflections can be at play in the lower range you mentioned.
 
One trick I have used on female (usually female) singers with harsh frequencies is to use some eq sensitive compression, like a de-esser but with the frequency dialled in on the harsh frequencies. This is because the singers usually hit the harshness when they push certain notes hard. The eq sensitive compression just holds the volume back on the hard frequencies and seems to smooth it out. You have to take time to set this up so that the compression only acts on the loud harsh frequencies.

Alan.
 
All great answers. Change out mic, mic placement, mic pre, recording space if you can to try and eliminate the problem. But what is key here is to take some time to listen back while you are NOT recording prior to recording the final take. Time is your friend here. Listen back critically while you aren't worried about the capture, levels etc. Experiment and find the sound you like.
 
All great ideas, guys. Thanks. The room is heavily treated and I set up a little cocoon of 3" thick panels around singers for extra measure. I did end up using a dynamic EQ on one of the songs and that helped a lot. I'll post back here after the next session with whatever I was able to learn. Thanks again!
 
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