irritating high pitch female voice

J

jerberson12

mucis procedure
...my singer when she sings at high pitch, it gets irritating like it will poke a hole on your eardrum. How do I fix this? I can EQ it out that frequency but it sounds something missing. It sounds like that frequencey was needed. Is there any other technique like is there a good mic for this or a compressor? TY
 
If this is anything like an experience I had, the answer will be in a different mic selection. If other mic options are not available, experiment with placing your mic slightly off axis and record the high parts on a separate track. Actually, before I get ahead of myself, what mic are you using? Do you have the opportunity to re-track the vocals?
 
yes i have the opportunity. but it will take awhile since she doesnt have time. So I was thinking of fixing by mixing. I placed the mic off axis like 30 degrees, shes was like 10 and up inches away from it. and my mic was AKG Perception tube 820. No EQ , comp or any effects while tracking. I used 100% software effects.

heres one of it. dont mind what you see since it just a lipsync. The actual tracking setup is what i mentioned above.
Arah Crystle - No One (Alicia Keys Cover) - YouTube

this recording still has that irritating high pitch voice but I think I made it sounds better by adding too much reverb, well I really dont like that I idea. Ive heard some, even the vocals are dry, they dont sound irritating at high pitch.
i dont know if it has something to do on how she sings and her kind of voice, vocal chords, etc....
 
Well, I do hear a problem, but I'm not sure we have the same definition of irritating. I think her voice is fine. @ 2:45 I noticed an obvious unpleasing sound. At first I thought it to be just my crappy laptop speakers I am listening on now. Once I heard it, I hear it all over the track. It sounds like a vibration actually (like a drum mic stand touching the snare). I think you have clipping going on somewhere in your chain, or there is something wrong with the mic. Could be a gain structure problem with a plug-in being over driven. Do you have the ability to post only the raw vocal without any effects?
 
yes i will, please check it back maybe around 7 pm pacific. i have to go in a bit.hope you can help me with this. I can also post some other tracks with similar problems. TTY
 
Listened in the studio. My laptop speakers did tell a story. That they are crappy. :(

I hear nothing other than need of maybe a limiter on the vocal track. It does jump out a bit at times. Maybe a multiband comp to attenuate the 'piercing' frequency alone, if limiter does not do it. I myself find the dynamics of her voice to be something that is lacking in most non-talented singers. It just seems to need a bit of taming. Eq of the piercing frequency, will just take the presence of her voice away. Controlling of the volume is what I hear, needs to be done. And, a couple of pronunciation points on particular words, but that is a whole other thing. :)

I like her voice.
 
jerberson12 said:
...irritating high pitch female voice
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My ex is in your band...????

jerberson12 said:
...my singer when she sings at high pitch, it gets irritating like it will poke a hole on your eardrum. How do I fix this?
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Duct tape would work...or maybe a sock.

:D

Actually...she sings really well. I don't find her voice irritating. I think it's maybe the style of music. Does she sing anything that's hers/yours rather than covers. Something that lets her sing her own style instead of imitating.

Have her sing more from her stomach...she seems to sing from her head/nose which could have some irritating resonance.
I bet she can find a really ballsy voice singing from her gut.
 
I dont hear anything too bad. How well do you know that mic ? You say its a tube mic ? All I hear is what sounds like an enhancer type sound in the highs, it sounds fine but it could get annoying hearing it on every track, its like a mic pre effect you can never change. Maybe you would prefer to use something flat like an AKG 440.
 
So there I was, steeling myself for this awful high pitched voice that was going to cause me to need my jaw and teeth reset and make me see little purple circles for the weekend.............and it never happened ! So I listened to three of the other songs that Arah Crystle has listed up on the toob..........and the same thing happened ! I've got a voice that's hung like a bass guitar or the low end of a piano and I hit higher notes than the ones she does. I didn't find any irritating notes. At all. Sure in the actual linked song, there are a couple of notes that veer towards being off ~ although they never get there. And I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that she needs to be more consistent in her breathing. Aside from that, I think she's got a neat voice, the kind of which has been more and more popular with females since the mid 90s, that husky kind of voice that could belong to someone from the US or UK, Hispanic, Oriental, Black, White, mixed race, late teens to early-mid 30s, in pop, rock, R&B, folky type excursions.
If she was my friend, niece or neighbour, I'd be enlisting that voice to sing leads, harmonies and backing vocals on multitudes of my little ditties, forthwith.
 
grimtraveller said:
I think she's got a neat voice, the kind of which has been more and more popular with females since the mid 90s...
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Yeah...it's a singing style, and while it can sound good for some singers, it also has gotten a bit irritating to listen to on some occasions and with some singers. Like that real young girl lately here on the forums who always posts up her singing vids, won't mention her name (hope she doesn't read this :) )...her singing style is irritating as nails on a chalkboard to me...yet she sings on-key and has a decent singing voice...but there is this strong nasally quality that's annoying to me, plus the overall style of singing.

It's something in the phrasing...and how notes are extended and carried out to other notes that are not part of the actual melody....kinda like frills-n-flourishes being added rather than just singing the basic melody. I wish some female singers would go back to just singing the song instead of exercising their vocal chords. :D

Just 'cuz Carey and Aguilera do it ...it doesn't mean everyone has to. ;)
 
Basically, I like the sound of her voice.
I do think, however, that there's quite a difference in the way she produces her voice; the lower note G, for example, is produced perfectly. If she could produce the rest of her vocal range in the same way, I don't think you'd have a problem.
 
jerberson12 said:
...my singer when she sings at high pitch, it gets irritating like it will poke a hole on your eardrum. How do I fix this?...Is there any other technique...?
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Put some lead in your singer's left ear. It will cause her to lean to the left, and being off-balance will cause her to sing in a much more pleasing voice.

How to put lead in her left ear, you ask?







Wait for it.








Keep waiting...








Almost there...







With a .44 :D
 
There's always the chance that this has nothing to do with mic or EQ but simply it's just how she sounds, and that you happen to find it irritating
Since numerous people already listened to the clip and didn't find any major technical flaws I'm not going to comment on her voice myself as one mans "irritating" is another mans "lovely"

what I would say is if you and she both find her voice in some registers to sound "irritating" then write or arrange songs to avoid singing in those registers as much as possible.
If she likes how she sounds you may just have to bite your tongue and go with it
 
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oh right ty guys.
I also think its just how she sings, coz if you listen to her singing in front of you, her voice is too powerful. I think she also need to control her dynamic. She sings often on videoke so she probably also lack this kind of experiences in recording. I think the best way I can fix this is just have the mic off axis. I was afraid about any equipment problems that causes this. I will also try to use a different mic pre amp just to make sure my current pre amp is not deffective. I will try to post a raw audio vocal and let me think if theres really a problem TY
 
miroslav said:
Yeah...it's a singing style, and while it can sound good for some singers, it also has gotten a bit irritating to listen to on some occasions and with some singers.
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But you could say that about any singer in the known universe. Whitney Houston is a magnificent singer but I can't stand her voice.
miroslav said:
her singing style is irritating as nails on a chalkboard to me...yet she sings on-key and has a decent singing voice...but there is this strong nasally quality that's annoying to me, plus the overall style of singing.
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Again, that's a personal thing. Sometimes that nasally sound is annoying, but other things like the song and possibly subject matter play a part in the overall irritation.
miroslav said:
It's something in the phrasing...and how notes are extended and carried out to other notes that are not part of the actual melody....kinda like frills-n-flourishes being added rather than just singing the basic melody. I wish some female singers would go back to just singing the song instead of exercising their vocal chords.
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Well, that's just a very melismatic way of singing. You know something I've noticed over the last 15 or so years ? In England, very "English" singers of a certain age and over that tend not to listen to popular music, if you get them to sing, they tend to stick religiously to the notes of the melody. No extras, no flourishes, no improvisational expressions. When I've tried to show people melodies that I write, those kind of singers just can't get it. If a syllable has four notes to it, it's like they can't compute. On the other hand, younger singers that do listen to music of the last 50 years have little trouble catching it. Interesting.


Bristol Posse said:
There's always the chance that simply it's just how she sounds, and that you happen to find it irritating

one mans "irritating" is another mans "lovely"
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I think ultimately this is where it's at. You get lots of it in various threads. Ocnor thinks Dylan is a tone deaf hack and that Stevie Nicks was a shitty singer. I happen to think they have grand voices. Rami felt that Ozzy Osbourne couldn't sing. I think over Black Sabbath's first six albums he was one of the best British vocalists in heavy rock. One man's lovely is truly another's irritating.

jerberson12 said:
I also think its just how she sings, coz if you listen to her singing in front of you, her voice is too powerful. I think she also need to control her dynamic. She sings often on videoke so she probably also lack this kind of experiences in recording.
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No argument that her technique needs improving. I'm not surprized that she may be lacking experience in the recording studio. But it seems to me that the problem is with you. You find her voice irritating. That's not a criticism of you. Just a statement of fact. We had a thread a few months back where this guy in a band that had just recorded an album wrote in because he hated the sound of his bands' vocalist. But almost everyone that responded felt the opposite to him. That's just the way it goes sometimes.
 
I don't mind embellishments when the song really calls for it...but I think for many young singers it has become the norm to try and embellish the crap out of everything. :D

A great example of overdoing is the now "classic" (infamous) Star Spangled Banner rendition by Christina Aguilera, who I think has a great voice and one that is not irritating in any way AFA it's tone/timbre...yet when she goes over the top with the embelishments...it is annoying...to me (so yes, it is a personal thing).
Another one...Beyonce...who has a great voice, but most times I don't care for her style, yet I found her singing in "Cadillac Man" to be some of the best she's done. She got away from that overdone style that so many follow today (though she's not as bad with it as some).

Of course...everyone has their taste, so there's no right/wrong about it, though I think when you see many people copying the same style...it's just that, copy. There's not as much originality or a defined personal style.
 
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