Dastrick: Multiple listens? That may be the best compliment I've received yet. Thanks, man.
Darkshine: Regarding the "warmth" of the sound, I'm afraid I'm not really sure how it was achieved, but I'll try describing what I did...hopefully the answer lies somewhere in the process?
- Mic: I don't have much experience with mics, but I do love my MXL v67g. The only other mic I have is an SM57...which I NEVER use. The MXL sounds better on every single instrument and vocal I've ever tried it on. The SM57 is hollow and cold sounding. (I'm still not sure why so many people suggest it as the best "all round" mic...no way.)
- Close Micing: I definitely sang really close to the microphone, and set the preamp to a lower sensitivity to allow that. I also sang in a very relaxed way, and focused on outputting as pure a tone as I could manage; it may have taken some of the passion out of the performance, but that was the sound I was going for -- nice, smooth, relaxed tone. The close micing probably increases bass frequency response in the recording, which might contribute to the warmth of the overall sound (the added bass frequencies, etc).
- Preamp: I do use a DMP3, but I've never used anything else. From what I've heard, it's a fairly "clean" preamp that doesn't add/affect the sound much. So it's probably not that..?
- EQ: I did EQ my vocals a little to decrease an upper frequency that was a little scratchy...and may have increased it elsewhere... I'll have to check, as I'm not remembering.
- Double Tracking: I triple tracked the chorus vocals, meaning, I had a "main" vocal part, then sang that same vocal two more times, and panned those two recordins left and right 100%, which adds a lot of sweetness/smoothness/fullness to a vocal, so there's a good chance that's what you're referring to? That may be the "indie" sound you mentioned. If you listen closely to pop, over half of pop tracks double up in the chorus. Coldplay, BradSucks, Jack Johnson...they all do it all the time. (And it sounds much, much better than only using a chorus effect.)
- Master Plugin: The very last thing I did was throw in a mixing/mastering plugin (for the ENTIRE track), which I just set to a default setting called something like "soft master". That may have helped also, though when I listen to the track with and without it, it seems to mostly effect overall loudness of the recording...I'm not sure there's a big "warmth" change...but I also honestly have no idea how to optimally use the plugin -- like I said, I (embarrassingly) just use a default setting with no edits whatsoever.
If you want, remind me, and I can check out the EQ settings I used, and any other plugin settings I may have used, for the vocals.
I hope that helps!!
-Mike