Advice on my mixing/recording (Especially the vocals)

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brandmansam

New member
I've been recording me singing and playing guitar for some months but today I had a girl in my ''homestudio'' singing. It was really diffrent recording and mixing her singing and now I'd need some advice and/or opinions on the mix. Tips on plugins to use/use more of? My one opinions is that the vocals are a little bit too ''weak'' and it feels like something is missing. Any opinions/advice?

 
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I really like her voice!
Aside from that, I don't think the reverb on her voice matches the room that the guitars are in. It's almost like her voice hits the back wall before the guitars do, making the room sound short.
 
Well, probably not.
Did you record them in the same space? Was it treated?

If so, you might use the same reverb on both the guitars and her vocals to make them sound like the same space, but also give the vox the sense of space that isn't going to be in just the mic (typically because the mic is so close to the mouth). The level of verb on each might be a bit different, but that's similar to yelling in a room, and whispering in a room. The yelling will show the room way more, but would still be present in a whisper to some degree.

I'm no pro though, hopefully others will chime in.
 
Both the guitars and the vocals are recorded in my bedroom so the room is probably not treated (I don't even know what that means). Now that i think about the guitars are recorded in one of the corners and the vocals more in the middle of the room. I've used one of cubase LE 5's standard plugins on the vocals( Roomwork reverb or something) while i didn't use any plugins at all on the guitars.

I'm a noob so I have no idea where in my room i should record and what plugins i should use etc.
 
Ah I see. Yeah, place in the room and the room itself is a massive part of the sound you'll end up with. After all, the microphones hear your room too!

I would start by trying a little of the same reverb on the guitars that you used on the vocals. It might make them fit together better. But you probably wont want as much on the guitars (use the "Mix" control to turn the effect up and down, because i assume to verb is in an insert slot?) But then again, maybe you do! It's all up to you, you're in control!
 
i agree with Sixers advice on the reverb. To me, the song would do well with just a small bit of small/med room reverb. I'd use the same reverb on all the tracks. Maybe longer decays on the backing vocal.

I'm detecting a low end rumble in spots.

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I also thought the guitar had a somewhat "sterile" sound to it. Just a bit brittle in the high midrange - like maybe 2500hz to 3000hz.
 
It's an acoustic guitar with steel strings. I recorded it with two mics, the built in guitarmic trough the built in pre amp and a mic placed in front of the guitar. I recorded it directly into cubase. It's an Ibanez Ew20asent.
 
I would also throw in that you should use the reverb on an FX channel, and roll off the low end (HPF) of the reverb around 250-400HZ. You don't need the 'muddy' part of the reverb cluttering your mix. I myself am not a big fan of reverb, but it is necessary most times. I find that the stereo delay in Cubase, used on an FX channel with vocals, can add space better than a reverb at times. Pan hard left and right (delay time song dependent), with one side kind of a slapback, the other side exactly double the ms of the the first. Mix 100%. Feedback set low so that is doesn't get redundant. Pull up the delay until you just hear it in the mix. Much less mud will come from that than typical reverb will.

By the way, LE 5 reverb leaves much to be desired. I am not sure of any IR (impulse/response) type reverbs that are free, but I would advise looking for one, or purchasing one. I can't remember the last time I even bothered using the Roomworks reverb. It just is not very pleasing IMO.
 
Good advice Jimmy. I knew that should be said at the start but I was afraid of losing him in the chaos that is being so new to all this.
BTW, SIR 1 is a free IR verb. I use it all the time.
SIR Audio Tools / SIR1 / SIR1

You'll want to get some impulses for it too (I don't think they come with it). These ones aren't too bad, and free! Free Reverb Impulse Responses - Voxengo
Just put them in a convenient folder on your machine, then point SIR 1 at that folder. It will load them all and you can just go through each one. Easy as pie.
 
I really appreciate your both helping!
I didn't really understand too much of what you said but I'll try to learn to use fx channels at first and then see if i can apply everything you said.
I'll dowload SIR1 and see if it sounds better than using Roomwork Reverb.
 
Yeah man, sorry. I remember when I first started using Cubase, and everything I heard sounded like flybsi5836&& %%829@0.

It gets way easy, or at least understandable once you get the basics down. Look at the manual first. Setting up an FX channel, and subsequently sending to it from any track is quite basic, once you get past the 'WTF' stage. It will all make complete sense soon man.

Many of us will be here to help along the way. Trust me, you will have questions like I did. I'm not even sure I could count the ones I asked myself.

Keep plugging away, and watch every Youtube, or Steinberg posted video about Cubase. They usually don't make sense the first time, but soon you will look at them and go "What the hell was I 'NOT' thinking?". It happened to me man.....
 
brandmansam said:
It's an acoustic guitar with steel strings. I recorded it with two mics, the built in guitarmic trough the built in pre amp and a mic placed in front of the guitar. I recorded it directly into cubase. It's an Ibanez Ew20asent.
Click to expand...

My first reaction is to take out the built-in mic from the mix. That's probably what's giving it that "glassy" sound. What external mic did you use?
 
Try retracking the guitar. Just for starters, put the mic at about where the neck of the guitar meets up with the body. Position the mic so it's maybe ~12 inches out away from the guitar and angle it so it's pointing toward the sound hole. That's kind of a standard way of tracking an acoustic guitar. Track it that way, and see what it sounds like.

And again, if it were me, I'd leave the internal mic out of the mix.
 
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