Heavy breathing on vocal track

S

so.so.young

New member
i am having some real trouble with this vocal track its singing over an acoustic guitar and it was to loud so i compressed it and turned the gain down a little and the vocals sound good i wish they were stronger but now i have this real heavy breathing in between lyrics you can literally hear him snorting trying to keep his breath while singing

i would post the song up here but i dont know how
 
well the problem is that you're limiting the dynamic range. Using the compressor, you bring down the louder sounds in volume, but the quiet sounds remain the same in volume. As such, relatively speaking, the breathing becomes louder compared to the singing.

If something is too loud, drop the gain. Don't compress if you don't need to. OR change your compressor settings.
 
you can cut out or mute the sections between lyrics if you really need to. Ideally when you record a singer you need to make sure that they are aware of their breathing, that way it will minimize the need to worry about it in the first place.
 
or use an expander/gate before the compressor. You want some of those sounds though....... at least the breathing. You just don't want it annoyingly loud.

You should be able to hear it in the mix. People breathe. That's normal.

Cut out the clicks, or use the expander, or both.


we need more info.......... was this recorded with one mic for vox and guitar? If that's the case, there's nothing you can do about it.
 
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If it is the breathing between tracks, just cut those sections out completely. I like the "realness" of hearing that intake of breath before and in a vocal segment.

But I also understand the challenges. I was recording acoustic guitar and had a cold - you could hear my breathing/whistling (eww) in the recording. Unfortunately, no fixing that but I got a lot of great advice on fixing that.

Medicine, scarf, mic position, etc. all make a difference.

When I record my vocals I know I am going to cut out between segments so I am comfortable coughing, getting my breathe, practicing, etc. - preparing for the next vocalization.
 
what exactly was too loud? The vocals?
If so why did you choose to compress it instead of dropping your gain?


It most likely is too late at this point, but Antares has a good plug-in called DeBreath (that's if you are using a DAW) You can at the very least program the plug-in to remove some of the gain automatically in the "breathing" parts and leave some in so it still sounds human
 
If you're using a DAW, then you could always use volume automation to simply turn the breaths down when they occur. It's surprisingly quick to do and you've then got the option of deciding just how much of the breathing noises you want in the mix - eradicating them completely sounds unnatural.
 
so.so.young said:
i am having some real trouble with this vocal track its singing over an acoustic guitar and it was to loud so i compressed it and turned the gain down a little and the vocals sound good i wish they were stronger but now i have this real heavy breathing in between lyrics you can literally hear him snorting trying to keep his breath while singing

i would post the song up here but i dont know how
Click to expand...

I get heavy breathing just reading your post.
Hint: The period (.) exists for a reason.

Compression raises the noise floor and other nasty things.
 
If you cant retrack the vocals with a beter mic position( farther away), and less gain and if you are in a DAW,I'd vote for automate the vocals track down where the breathing is. It would be very easy to do in your computer,assuming your are using one. A gate MAY be too abrupt. If your in DAW, just fade down after every area where there is breathing.See how that goes.
 
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