One man band - Trying to mix your own vocals

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fabkebab1

New member
I wonder if there is anyone else out there who has some decent tips - Because I am a one man band, I have to make my own mixdowns, and always end up getting the vocal part wrong -

1) Its too quiet - (I cringe about my own voice and turn it down too much)

2) Its too loud - (I over-compensate for (1))

3 ) The tone is horrible (Tired of hearing my own voice a zillion times, I start trying to make it sound different, which usually means I play with the EQ till I end up with something awful which seems good at the time)

4 ) I put way too much reverb on, or not enough.

Anwyay I am sure there are a lot of you in similar positions who have already overcome this achille's heel? If so do you have any tips?

thanks
 
Welcome to the joy of recording yourself. Its one of the great reasons for working with a producer or outside engineer. I have been a professional mixer/producer for a 14 years and mixed thousands of tracks, but still if its my part I get whigged out and nervous about it (I play on lots of the records I produce). The best thing you can do is get some CDs that you love the sound of and try and mix your vocals to match that. just stay the course and try and get your vox as close to the commercial CD as possible.
 
Of all the instruments in a typical mix, the vocal is the only instrument that you can't drastically change (unless you get another vocalist). Because of this, you need to mix around the tone of your voice so that the mix as a whole is cohesive. Start with just drums and vocals and get the best sound you can, then add bass, then add guitars. Guitars typically share the same frequencies as the voice (well, mine anyway), so you will often cut the bass out of the guitars (to leave room for the bass) and cut back some on the mids to leave some room for vocals (btw, it's a good idea to lean towards midrangey guitar tones when tracking, allowing you to cut frequencies without ruining or burying the guitar tone).

You also need to spend a LOT of time listening to your voice completely dry and without any added eq. You will eventually reach a point to where you can hear your voice as an instrument separate from you. If you are like me and you prepare a bunch of rough mixes during tracking to see how things are progressing, it will do you well to record a rough vocal that you will hear each time you mix. The first mix of each song is a bit of a shock, but at some point your ego completely shuts off and you forget who is singing.

I am assuming of course that you are singing in tune, that you are performing confidently, and that you are recording with a decent mic in a decent room. If you are not doing these three things, no mixing trick will save you.
 
fabkebab1 said:
Anwyay I am sure there are a lot of you in similar positions who have already overcome this achille's heel? If so do you have any tips?

thanks
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Hi

I'm still working on this Achille's heel but here is my setting anyway:

1) I record my vocal dry with a Sure KSM27 and an Art pre-amp.
2) I apply one of the vocal reverb of the Roland SRV3030 + 2:1 compression as a effect pass on the vocal track.
3) During mix down, I usually cut around 4.5 DB on the low and boost around 4.5 DB in the mid. The frequency and the gain of the mid depends on the type of guitar used for the song because it will compete with the vocal. I also add a small amount of ambiance reverb, chorus and delay at the mixing stage.

/Jack Real.
 
just another quick tip. after u successfully record ur vocals, let the track go for a couple days. get the track out of ur head and go in with a fresh perspective. that always helps me out personally.
 
I have had similar problems.

With regard to not liking your own voice, I think its something which passess with time and is mainly an issue when you first start 'doing it yourself'. Or, you give up singing!

Like someone said, providing you can sing in tune it's mainly a case of developing your own technique and learning to appreciate your own vocal sound and its limits. After that it's experiemntation with some gentle eq adjustments and learning how to use compression on the vocal and the right kind of reverb settings, etc.

I use a quite extreme compression on mine (5:1), which seems to work OK for my voice and makes it more powerful and sit better in the mix.

What helped me was singing live and realising that people were not booing me off the stage, and giving me the occasional complement on my singing, so i thought i must be doing OK and gained confidence.

Have you played your voice to friends? What have they said about it?

Remember there are lots of examples of singers with unconventional voices who have been very succesful (eg Bob Dylan, Lou reed, etc) so don't worry if you can't do all the fancy R'n'B style why-sing-one-note-when-three-can-be-squeezed-in stuff, it's not necessary (unless you're an R'n'B singer!!).
 
I'm in the same boat, these are some of the things i've found to make it more bareable.

- Singing the same track twice(or more), with slight variations
- Going crazy with Cool Edit Pro Delay Effects (Chorus and Flanger)

hell, you'll end up sounding like cher but sometimes i think its a slight improvement..... :(

however the best thing would be to try find your voice in a way which you like it.. the hard part is managing to sing vocals in this type of voice.
 
What excellent replies -

Cyrokk's comment particularly stands out - Its too easy for me to fall into the trap of mixing the rest of the instruments how I like them, and then lamely putting the singing in at the end - In fact I have probably been doing it wrong all these years- I should be starting with the singing.

To be honest. I suppose you need to be confident in your voice and work everything else into the spaces in between- The problem is that if you want to write heavy metal and you dont have a helium-falsetto voice, its almost impossible to achieve the sound you want.

In a close-minded world of "your voice should sound like this for x genre" its hard not to turn someone off when your voice doesnt sound right - How did Mark Knopfler/Bob Dylan pull it off I wonder? I guess by the strength of thier songs. I guess on the plus side, if you DO get acclaim, you have potentially a unique style which improves your shelf life...
 
Dylan and Knopfler have very expensive mics, top grade preamps and the usual culprits in compression; LA2A, 1176 or a Fairchild. They impart warmth and fullness. I would bet you are using budget mics and budget preamps which is the reason for the lower than expected results.

Starting with the drums and bass first gets the song organized better I have found. You have to focus on the arrangement this way. Then adding the vocal next forces you to focus on making the basic track work. Getting these three to sound good is the foundation for better tracks. All the rest is color filling.

The tip on A/B'ing your sound against commercial CDs has worked great for me. If you're working with low end mics and preamps get a UAD-1 card. The compressors in that package will get you very close to a commercial sound.

When you record your voice, set up 5-8 tracks for the main vocal and record it to fill those up, one at a time but don't change your EQ or levels between takes. Then come back and take each section, pick the best performance for that section and build the final track from those peices. Thats a real time saver for the homerecordist because it takes away the pressure of one golden take and lets you experiment with different ways of singing the song.

This gets in to developing short cut patterns to save you time and maximize your fun trying to be engineer and musician. You have to develop templates in your software for writing and tracking. These will save time so that the recording environment is set up and ready to go when you are. Otherwise you end up dinking with the software each time and can kill an inspired moment.

If you have a Dylanesque or Knopfleresque or even Tom Petty sounding voice. An expensive mic into a Neve preamp with an LA2A for limiting can enhance that type of vocal. Or a Manley Voxbox.

This gets into another issue, why suffer along with your budget preamps and mics for the final takes. There are lots of places in the big city you can rent top gear. I am now in the habit of working out the songs on my low end gear but renting a Great River and Neuman U47 for a day to record vocals. Total cost, $60 for the day. I can knock out about 3-4 songs with results that are much better than recording over and over and endless EQing using my regular preamps. By the way, background vocals using my regular preamps works fine but you want that detail in the main vocal.

Sorry for the rant but I have one of those sounding voices and have chased this awhile.
 
dirtythermos said:
They said I sound like They Might Be Giants.

Time for a new mic. :(
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LOL!! I get the Billy Bragg comparison a lot (i.e. "you cannot sing" - they are sort of right though on both the comparison and the comment)

I am interested in the compression comments - I guess its pretty standard to use it on vocals, but I must come clean - I never have - I will make a seperate post on it though because I want to dis-associate this thread with something so basic)
 
MiddleMan - What a great post too - thanks for sharing your thoughts with me (and anyone else) - I will look into the cost of some of those gadgets on ebay....

My setup is basically a Shure SM58 and then some other cheapo Shure microphone placed a bit further out to pick up some different tones. I then mix them together for the overall sound. All of these plug straight into my home studio thingy (Fostex VF160). Very primitive sounding when compared to what you guys have posted.

Actually I do that with just about all my (acoustic) instrument recording too, although I also add the direct line to the recorded mix when I have it available, giving me the chance to construct an acoustic guitar/mandolin sound from three different sources. I guess that means the voice shouldnt sound much different (or worse) than the quality of the instruments, especially as the SM58 is meant to be a vocal mic?


Also for my setup for vocal recording there is the previously mentioned lack of compressor.
 
fabkebab1 said:
The problem is that if you want to write heavy metal and you dont have a helium-falsetto voice, its almost impossible to achieve the sound you want.

In a close-minded world of "your voice should sound like this for x genre" its hard not to turn someone off when your voice doesnt sound right - How did Mark Knopfler/Bob Dylan pull it off I wonder? I guess by the strength of thier songs. I guess on the plus side, if you DO get acclaim, you have potentially a unique style which improves your shelf life...
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Well, I can say in the world of metal, helium was replaced with grovel, with cookie monster vocals in the extreme regions of the style. In both rock and metal, it has always rebounded back to a rebellious attitude of the singer. Having attitude while singing in tune will get you just as far as anyone else these days.

And that's probably the case of all genres of music: that as long as you competently portray the mood of the music, regardless of whether you fit a mold of style, then your efforts are passable. This of course doesn't include the opinions of the major labels.
 
one man band

I am recording acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, percussion, and vocals in my very small, low-budget recording studio. I have the E-mu 1212m with Cubasis 4 VST and I'm finding it hard to mix my vocals. I know you're all going to say get a different mic for vocals and I plan to, once I get the money. I'm using a Shure sm57 with a pop filter. It's a very accurate reproduction of my voice. People compliment me on my singing a good amount. They say my voice is very warm and full. Therein lies the problem. Sometimes it's so full that I lose diction. I try to have better diction without sounding like an idiot and I've tried slight to moderate EQ adjustments like a mid/treble boost to enhance my diction. It ends up kind of raspy sometimes. Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance...this is a pretty good thread!
 
fabkebab1 said:
My setup is basically a Shure SM58 and then some other cheapo Shure microphone placed a bit further out to pick up some different tones.

QUOTE]

With 2 mics there's a possibility of phase issues, which could be robbing your recording of some of its oomph. Check what you're recording isn't wildly out of phase
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All these people have been mentioned, Dylan, Knopfler, They Might be Giants, Billy Bragg as pople who have difficult voices or can't sing too well. Er...all these people have been very succesful in their own fields, so there isn't a problem with their voices.

What they all do is write their own material to suit their own voice. You must do the same. If you want to write in a paricular genre for which you voice is not suited then you'll have to bring in a singer.

I accept that expensive mics and other equipment can really help to improve the sound of a voice without doubt, but the fundamental thing is to write appropriate material for your own voice work WITH your voice not writing things you wish you could sing, but can't. It's all part of developing a style, all the artists mentioned have a recognisable style.

So if someone says you sound like Billy Bragg, work with that, and stop trying to sound like Bon Scott for example !
 
Actually, the TMBG sound on that recording was due to bad mic placement. The cardiod mic was tilted up toward my eyebrows, therefore rejecting the bassier frequencies resonating from my throat and chest. I was being flip when I said I needing a new mic.

I didn't hear it when tracking, and then the performance was so good I tried to keep it when I was mixing. As always, fixing it in the mix didn't work, and I ended up sounding like the Johns.

I'm keeping that in my bag of tricks, though, for the next time I want to do a song about Istanbul.
 
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