4 Guys, a microphone, and a guitar

First off, I'm lstening on iPad speakers, so take that into consderation.

I love harmony, and this is decent, but the blend is not great. Baritone/bass voice is a bit unpleasant and pierces through. Might want to back that down a bit. Tenor solo is pretty much out of the vocalist's range. I don't catch it in the harmonies, but it is very obvious in the solo. Not sure what you can do there.

Guitar sounds pretty good. And the vocalist carrying the lead part has a nice voice. All in all, not bad. I'd play with the blend, both volumes and eq, to try and sweeten it up a bit.
 
dachay2tnr said:
First off, I'm lstening on iPad speakers, so take that into consderation.

I love harmony, and this is decent, but the blend is not great. Baritone/bass voice is a bit unpleasant and pierces through. Might want to back that down a bit. Tenor solo is pretty much out of the vocalist's range. I don't catch it in the harmonies, but it is very obvious in the solo. Not sure what you can do there.

Guitar sounds pretty good. And the vocalist carrying the lead part has a nice voice. All in all, not bad. I'd play with the blend, both volumes and eq, to try and sweeten it up a bit.
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I agree on all the points, particularly about the vocalist who is carrying the lead (guess who??). :D

We really just played around the microphone. Frank (the tenor solo) has a bit of a harsh edge to his vocal ... and I tried to get a lot of it out ... but the balances/blend are what they are ... due to where folks stood when they sang ... and how loud.


Perhaps I'll individually mic everyone next time and gain a better level of control over the whole production? This took us mebbe 20 minutes and a couple passes to lay down. I did spend some effort attempting to tame some of the frequency build up in certain areas.
 
Good performance of an under-rated song. I agree about the baritone voice, it could come back a bit. Not in dB's, but in steps backwards from the mic. :) I can hear a lot of the room during the lead vocalists part. The guitar sounded a little thin, but I'm used to hearing the original with several guitars playing. If you were to do redo it, I suggest using m/s recording of the guitar. That would be sweet.

Cool. Great job for a 20 minute step-up-to-the-mic-and-sing kinda song.
 
Chili said:
Good performance of an under-rated song. I agree about the baritone voice, it could come back a bit. Not in dB's, but in steps backwards from the mic. :) I can hear a lot of the room during the lead vocalists part. The guitar sounded a little thin, but I'm used to hearing the original with several guitars playing. If you were to do redo it, I suggest using m/s recording of the guitar. That would be sweet.

Cool. Great job for a 20 minute step-up-to-the-mic-and-sing kinda song.
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Thanks man!

It really was just an impromptu pass. We're actually singing at the top of my stairs ... which accounts for all the room sound. Carl (baritone) would have stepped back ... if he had room to.

:D
 
For one microphone, it was very good.

A bit of a boxy sound in the vocals. And a very distant sound on the guitar. But with one mic, it's kind of expected.

Doesn't sound like the room was the best.
 
TripleM said:
For one microphone, it was very good.

A bit of a boxy sound in the vocals. And a very distant sound on the guitar. But with one mic, it's kind of expected.

Doesn't sound like the room was the best.
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It's great ... if you're looking for just that muddy long stairwell reverb to be an integral part of your recording! :D

It's a signature sound.
 
For what it's worth, when my group recorded stuff like this we woukd start exactly the way you did. Everything captured in one take. But afterwards I would have everyone re-sing their part individually, singing along to the original track. That provided an isolated track for each vocalist. No bleed from the other singers (except maybe headphine bleed), and allowed you to blend, eq, etc., to your heart's content. Also allowed you to patch any individual mistakes if need be. But still retained a lot of that live feel.
 
dachay2tnr said:
For what it's worth, when my group recorded stuff like this we woukd start exactly the way you did. Everything captured in one take. But afterwards I would have everyone re-sing their part individually, singing along to the original track. That provided an isolated track for each vocalist. No bleed from the other singers (except maybe headphine bleed), and allowed you to blend, eq, etc., to your heart's content. Also allowed you to patch any individual mistakes if need be. But still retained a lot of that live feel.
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Exactly.

---------- Update ----------

That's how I'm doing it next time.
 
Live takes on one mic are tough because there's no individual balance control when mixing. It is what it is. I usually stand a foot or more back from my mic on backups and it's still tough to discern the blend when you hear your voice in your head louder than the monitors. That said the guys did a good job. I'm digging the swell and tail on the effects.
Check your 4K area if you think there's a brittle edge to the mic. Kudos for doing Eagles harmony :D:D:D:D
 
sounds like there were quite a few clipping spots. did you catch those? guitar once or twice, and then some weird ones near the last minute.

great vocals dude. i'd like to hear it with the track sung individually, then mixed, as suggested above
 
andrushkiwt said:
sounds like there were quite a few clipping spots. did you catch those? guitar once or twice, and then some weird ones near the last minute.

great vocals dude. i'd like to hear it with the track sung individually, then mixed, as suggested above
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Good ears. We got very close at spots and I feared we'd done so.

We will be redoing this on individual mikes tonight ... but for the baritone, a national sales director who is traveling on business. I will post up the new version when complete.
 
K-dub said:
Good ears. We got very close at spots and I feared we'd done so.

We will be redoing this on individual mikes tonight ... but for the baritone, a national sales director who is traveling on business. I will post up the new version when complete.
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Right around 1:55 was when the clips got really bad on the Soundcloud version.

I think you're aware of the limits of this technique and where it's hindering your "mix" specifically.
+1 on what everyone else has said. The guitar is weak; the room is very audible, especially during the tenor solo; the tenor's voice is a little harsh; the low voices are dominating. But this is an excellent performance, and for one mic you got really good results.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
Right around 1:55 was when the clips got really bad on the Soundcloud version.

I think you're aware of the limits of this technique and where it's hindering your "mix" specifically.
+1 on what everyone else has said. The guitar is weak; the room is very audible, especially during the tenor solo; the tenor's voice is a little harsh; the low voices are dominating. But this is an excellent performance, and for one mic you got really good results.
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Thanks man! Yeah ... we thought we might be able to pull off a quick take simply ... but though the performance was good, the recording was not. We'd just gotten done tracking the instruments on a new piece, and had time left over. I didn't want to break down the mics and set up for recording individual vox ... as we'd then run out of time to actually record something. So I set up the omni and we took a quick whack at it. It is what it is.

We do do this live ... and I've got folks coming over to do not only the vocals for this piece, but to track the vocals over the instrumental tracks we laid down last Thursday. I'll post that up when it is done, but it is coming out really well.

Accordingly, I'm currently in the process of setting up mics to do vocals tonight ... so it will be a night where new individual tracks are laid down for this piece ... but for the baritone part ... as mentioned above.
 
Sounds good for one mic though. I gotta say that. What makes this cool to me is that what you hear is what you get. Great for a demo cd or something. But I agree with the tenor solo being out of place a little. It sounds like he's struggling a little. If it were me, I'd get closer to the mic for that part. He sounds distant in my ears.
 
I recorded new parts last night. He has a major cold. His already raspy voice was kind of ... well ... it's weird.

He had a terrible problem w/ tone ... but he was dead on pitch.
 


Carl got back from his business trip and we finally got to add his 4th harmony to our assemblage.

We are no longer singing around one mike as we did when we first attempted to capture our performance live. We now sound like what we sound like when we play it out.

Any/all comments warmly welcomed.
 
Good performance man.

What are your input levels looking like on your DAW? It sounds a bit fried to me. (I am also sick right now so maybe it's me).
 
Plenty of room. You can download the file and look at it. The download arrow is in the upper right of the player.
 
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