Tips For Recording Vocals!

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emostrung

New member
Hey Guys, Just Recording Vocals To Some Acoustic Stuff where vocals really stick out..

anyways.. yea ... just post whatever u know about recording great vocals, in any situation, cuz im having a hardtime getting mine to sound right... mostly im concerned with the post recording stage i beleive (i.e. eq, compression.. and what not..).. but.. go nuts with ur tips, if u got any tid bit of info. post it itll really help me out..

thanks joe.. p.s. using an Apex 435 Gold Diaphragm Condenser Microphone
 
The voice is one of the only tracks I usually do no or little EQ'ing on. Many large Diaphragms have a kind of a boost around 3kHz (no experience with the Apex though), so a high lift is not often necessarry in my cases.

Of course compression is a must (I use a pretty high knee setting), ratio depends on music style. Use a pretty slow attack to get the pronounciation right!
 
BrettB said:
The voice is one of the only tracks I usually do no or little EQ'ing on. Many large Diaphragms have a kind of a boost around 3kHz (no experience with the Apex though), so a high lift is not often necessarry in my cases.

Of course compression is a must (I use a pretty high knee setting), ratio depends on music style. Use a pretty slow attack to get the pronounciation right!
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I will add that you should also double track the vocal. Either sing it twice or cut and paste it if you are mixing via your pc.
 
emo. could you list your recording chain. ie; mixer and sound card your using with the apex.
also ive posted a number of tips in last year on vocals and many other techniques. just search under my name.
peace.
 
i position the mic between the mouth and nose, unless i'm going for a more sultry sound in which case i position the mic between the mouth and chin. for the lead track i stay close to the mic (1-6" from the pop filter), then i back away from the mic for the lead support track (12" with no pop filter), and go back a little further for the background vocals.

hey Rokket, don't cut and paste. Sing it twice. If you are just going to copy/paste you may as well just put the vocal through a delay processor or just turn up the volume on the single track. its the differences between the 1rst and 2nd vocals that add the depth.

how fast your compression attack is depends on musical style as well. for hip-hop you'd better have that compressor attack set for a fast setting, or you wont compress the vocals at all. for acoustic rock, i would assume that your vocals are fairly controlled so you would want a slower attack to control those hum-to-a-roar moments.

audio technica 4033 --> RNP --> Tascam FW-1884 --> Sonar2

I rarely ever compress vocals (or anything else) on the way in, unless i have a vocalist who has no mic savvy.
 
manning1 said:
emo. could you list your recording chain. ie; mixer and sound card your using with the apex.
also ive posted a number of tips in last year on vocals and many other techniques. just search under my name.
peace.
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That's where I got the idea to double track them! :D
 
crosstudio said:
hey Rokket, don't cut and paste. Sing it twice. If you are just going to copy/paste you may as well just put the vocal through a delay processor or just turn up the volume on the single track. its the differences between the 1rst and 2nd vocals that add the depth.

I rarely ever compress vocals (or anything else) on the way in, unless i have a vocalist who has no mic savvy.
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Good advice! I tried to cut and paste my vocal and it came out as a twice-as-loud thin vocal. I take it back. Sing it twice!
 
um im going from the apex --> behringer ultragain pro (tube pre amp) -->behringer modulizer pro ---> M-Audio Audophile --> PC (Cool Edit, Or Cubase SX)


.. um.. as of right the m-audios being replaced with a turtle beach santa cruz computer card, i just didnt feel like installing the m-audio card.


.. any more tips.. PLEASE.. still sounds like poo.. makes me sound like a worst singer then i think i am, either that.. or i just suck.. lol..

thanks again
 
Can you describe what makes it sound so bad to you? Does it sound muffled? Does it sound weak?

When you record do you give yourself some reverb in the headphones so that you get a better feel for staying on pitch and for how loud you are?
 
Vocal Micing

record one track (lead track) giving the vocalist a little bit of reverb or chorus but just in his headphones (monitors) so he or she wont be timid and will give a strong performance then copy and paste it to another track...here is were it gets tricky.. take the pan on the second track half way to the left or right and go to the second track in the arrangement and move it ahead about fifteen milliseconds..do it while you playback and u can head the stereo affect come in and add mutch fullness and brilliance. usualy this is enough to make the track sound great and if not u can record two more tracks and pan them all the way to either side then move the mic back 4 inches and tell the vocalist to sing along on the steresses of the vocals.
mix those tracks in so that they harmonize and are a lil lower than the lead...
now you have built a PREFESSIONAL QUALITY vocal track..oh and there is no substitute for a good tube preamp a good condenser mic and a good signal processor....the key is to never quit and to keep messing with what u got...your ears never lie. i made my first tape back in 89 with a 8 track player that had a record player and two tape decks and a radio shack mic from a garage sale..after a year of using that system me and my dj was makin some good stuff
 
I think people are trying to get him to run before he can walk with advice of double tracking and panning techniques (I'm not putting down the tips themselves, there is some good info in this thread... I just don't think it will help in his case).
If it "doesn't sound good", all the post production tricks in the world won't help. WHY doesn't it sound good? Signal chain, room, vocal tequnique, tracking technique...without all that taken care of, all the post production in the world is meaningless and might even make it sound worse.
 
A solo vocal, without any sort of fx, is usually pretty dry and flat. I don't know about y'all, but that doesn't sound very good to me. I like having some reverb or delay going on to get the vocal less flat. I don't tend to use much eq. I use compression just to bring the peaks down.

In the mixing section of this forum, there's a pretty good sounding tip about vocal mixing that Ford Van put up. I'm gonna experiment with that tip tomorrow.
 
A dry vocal should still not "sound bad". If you HAVE to put effects on it before it sounds good, there's something wrong in the tracking process. A lot of great vocal recordings don't have reverb or delay on them. They were just good singers with good recordings.
 
RAMI said:
A dry vocal should still not "sound bad". If you HAVE to put effects on it before it sounds good, there's something wrong in the tracking process. A lot of great vocal recordings don't have reverb or delay on them. They were just good singers with good recordings.
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All true! All true!
 
emostrung said:
Hey Guys, Just Recording Vocals To Some Acoustic Stuff where vocals really stick out..

anyways.. yea ... just post whatever u know about recording great vocals, in any situation, cuz im having a hardtime getting mine to sound right... mostly im concerned with the post recording stage i beleive (i.e. eq, compression.. and what not..).. but.. go nuts with ur tips, if u got any tid bit of info. post it itll really help me out..

thanks joe.. p.s. using an Apex 435 Gold Diaphragm Condenser Microphone
Click to expand...

The 5 Rules of Vocal Recording:

1. If you have to add EQ or compression for it to sound good, there's something wrong. Adding them to make it sit in the mix, maybe, but it should stand on its own without any processing.

2. If #1 fails, try a different mic placement. (See note below.)

3. If #2 fails, try a different mic.

4. If #3 fails, try a different preamp.

5. If #4 fails, try a different singer. :D

Suggested mic placement depends on the singer. If you put it above their heads a bit, the singers will tend to look up at it, resulting in a more open tone, but while this may be optimal as far as the vocalist's position is concerned, it may not be the optimal position for tone.

For guys with higher voices, for example, I tend to like the tone better if the singer actually sings out over the top of the mic a bit, as it makes the vocals naturally sound fuller. This is mainly because the less directional lower frequencies are picked up more (and it helps cut down on sibilance and popping as well). Secondarily, the entire chest is part of the resonance chamber when singing, so I -think- the chest's vibrations may actually emphasize certain parts of the sound when heard at close range.

A nice trick is to use a second mic over their heads and tell them that it is the live mic. :D

Your mileage may vary.
 
this maybe a newbie question...but im using cubase and wanted to know(even thou i would presume the same would be used in any other daw) what kinda thing eq or whatever i need in order to see the peaks on a certain track in frequency...let me explaing it better

i have a vox...i want to know, visually thougout the whole track as i play my levels in the different frequenzies to see where my vox is sitting at...in order to visually be able to see what freq of other instruments is messing with the vox or vice versa...

thanks
 
bigj said:
this maybe a newbie question...but im using cubase and wanted to know(even thou i would presume the same would be used in any other daw) what kinda thing eq or whatever i need in order to see the peaks on a certain track in frequency...let me explaing it better

i have a vox...i want to know, visually thougout the whole track as i play my levels in the different frequenzies to see where my vox is sitting at...in order to visually be able to see what freq of other instruments is messing with the vox or vice versa...

thanks
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Huh? If you're asking what I think you're asking, then usually in the para EQ window the program draws the frequencies of the selected track in realtime. I don't use cubase, so I don't know if it does. But I know n-Track does and it's a shareware multi-tracker, so I'd assume the higher priced ones would have it as well.
 
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