Vocal FX directly on recording track?

canus.inferni

New member
I've been exploring my singer/songwriter side lately and I've come to the point of recording my vocals for a couple of songs I wrote. I use a studio mic hooked up to a digital interface complete with professional monitoring headphones in a somewhat decently treated room, however no matter what technique, mic distance or gain staging I use, I do not like the sound of my voice when I hear it back in real time through my headphones while I'm recording and it is not because of pitch or because I don't know how to sing, but rather because I find it sounds nothing like what it sounds in my head (shocking, I know). I might be off on terminology here, but I find it sounds dry, thin and lifeless and that is really affecting my performance.

From the studio footage professional artists post on the Internet, I've noticed studio engineers always apply massive reverb (maybe some other FX too?) to the artist's input recording track so it makes their voice huge as if they're singing in a cathedral or arena. So I guess my question boils down to: How are you supposed to hear yourself back in your monitoring headphones and what effects/plugins are normally used on the artist's track while they're recording? Any tips on how to get your voice to sound closer to the way you're used to hearing it in your head while recording are also welcome. :p

P.S. New guy here, both the forum and home recording world, so I apologize in advance if I'm not up to speed with the jargon or if I'm taking too long to get my point across. =D
 
a few thoughts:

1 just about everybody hates the sound of their voice when they hear it played back. Some get used to it. Some (like, for example, John Lennon), never do. There is a reason for this. When you sing (or speak) you hear your voice partly externally through your ears, and partly internally through your skull and eustachain tubes, and partly as your brain thinks you ought to be sounding. When you listen to a playback, you only hear it as it is. Which can be disappointing.


2 Many vocals on recorded music have a noticeable amount of reverb on them, and this indeed gives body and depth. This is generally added after the event. It can be added while recording, and can help with confidence and the singing performance. However, it has its drawbacks, one of which is that it can cause you to lose pitch, and your vocals can be pitchy, or, more commonly, go flat.

3 However, it is worth a try. I don't know what DAW you are using, but most will provide a monitoring function that will allow you to hear what you are doing whatever effect (e.g. reverb) you have on the voice track that's being recorded. But if you can become comfortable recording without effects, you will have better vocal control, and you can add these after.
 
Thank you for your thoughts, gecko zzed! :)

I don't know what DAW you are using, but most will provide a monitoring function that will allow you to hear what you are doing whatever effect (e.g. reverb) you have on the voice track that's being recorded.

I use Presonus Studio One simply because I love the UI design. My reverb plugin of choice is FabFilter Pro-R.

But if you can become comfortable recording without effects, you will have better vocal control, and you can add these after.

I feel like there's a long way to get there. :) I assumed that if most big names in the industry use these effects to give dimension to their voice while recording, it was common practice and it's just something you do for voice recordings.

One more question (and I'm sorry for being a complete n00b): When recording vocals, is what you hear in your headphones supposed to drown how you naturally hear yourself through the resonance chambers of your head? I ask this because I kinda hear both and it's slightly confusing, which sometimes make me take the headphone cup off one ear. I am using a pair of Sennheiser HD 280 Pros which offer a decent amount of passive noise cancellation, so I'm not sure whether to crank up the signal in my headphones or not. :P
 
It's very common to provide reverb for the headphone feeds. I never apply it to the input channel, but to the recorded track, and then route that reverb send to the bus I'm using to feed their headphones - then they can have it as weird or swampy as they like - and probably not be remotely the kind of reverb you will apply to the finished track. For your own voice, it's easier because slapping a church reverb on the headphones usually does the trick. It's not just beginners who need this. I've been asked for it by people who can really sing, and of course on stage, for live sound I would always have a reverb setup to do just this - give the singers reverb in their floor monitors, or into their IEMs. Some have it as a requirement in their riders. You can actually spend so much time, muting and unmuting this to keep them happy.
 
which sometimes make me take the headphone cup off one ear.
This is not uncommon. Many singers do this when recording to get a better sense of their pitching.

But there are no universal truths, each singer is different and will work best with their own way of recording . . . some with reverb, some without, some with headphones down low, others with very loud and so on.
 
The transition to IEMs is a shock for live performance. The first thing my own band had to do was add a reverb channel to the personal mixer, as the first thing users say is that they hate them because of the isolation. Reverb and for some, a room mic (although I don't use that) is essential for pitching. I sing harmonies and find I cannot pitch accurately with a clean mix of the voices in my ears. I don't know why - maybe it's the smearing effect of reverb that does something when you gently raise or lower what you sing? It also makes pitching with my double bass harder too - the same cause? I don't know. Providing PA for others, it's a rare day for IEM users to not want reverb in them. In the studio, with headphones, I find the same thing happening - perhaps linked to why so many only work with one ear covered? Is this the same phenomena?
 
Just a little update after experimenting with some stuff... I've found that for me having reverb on the vocal recording channel (I replace it with proper reverb settings later on when I mix) helps tremendously with the delivery. I still keep the headphone cup off my right ear to hear myself in real time as otherwise it gets confusing, but that's just a personal preference I guess.

Anyway, thank you so much to everyone who contributed with an answer. You guys are the best!
 
The transition to IEMs is a shock for live performance.

This guy told me that when they first went to IEM they found it a strange and uncomfortable experience. What they did is set up another mike on stage to feed into the IEM system so that they could still get a sense of the performance ambience.

Singing against a bass has its own problems. When there is a very strong bass line to can push singers flat. Some singers are able to compensate for this, but then come to grief in the studio when recording with the bass not so dominant, and they find themselves singing sharp.
 
channel 16 of our monitor mixers has the audience mic. Oddly I'm the only one who doesn't use it. The worst thing about live stuff with IEMs is the quality and lack of spill mean you have your own great mix, with panning to help you identify or discriminate, and then the guitarist wanders over and tries to shout in your ear - like SKIP THE NEXT ONE, or YOUR FLYS ARE UNDONE and you haven't a clue what he said!
 
In most indoor spaces there's a natural slapback delay that acts as confirmation of the sound you make with your voice. Our brains are conditioned to it and IEMs take that away. I find that a touch of delay or a short reverb can really help.
 
Singing against a bass has its own problems. When there is a very strong bass line to can push singers flat. Some singers are able to compensate for this, but then come to grief in the studio when recording with the bass not so dominant, and they find themselves singing sharp.
So many of my songs have involved singing against just the bass part and I find the pitching relatively easy once I know where the words fit because I'll usually have the bass going with the drums or something percussive. What I find difficult is the melodicism of the bass part. Whereas it's easy to sing against a guitar or piano, a melodic bass part can be so confusing ! With perhaps one or two simple exceptions, I've never been able to sing/play harmonica and play bass simultaneously in 39 years, yet it's second nature with a guitar.
Originally Posted by canus.inferni:
which sometimes make me take the headphone cup off one ear.
This is not uncommon. Many singers do this when recording to get a better sense of their pitching.
I've always done this from time to time over the years but it's a lot more common for me nowadays. At the end of 2017 I had my thyroid removed and the first thing I noticed when my throat stopped hurting and I was able to try to sing was that I could no longer reach medium and high notes ! Overnight my range had just gone. I used to be able to sing from low to high which was why I used to enjoy backing and harmony vocals. Suddenly all I could sing were the low notes and the low part of my voice has never been my preferred singing sound. I utilized it in the past because it was there, but I never cared for it. Now I have to because it's the only voice I have left. Last summer, I took tentative steps to get back into singing and I did about 7 or 8 vocals in the end. I was quite pleased with them but I really had to change my approach to singing and recording a vocal, part of which involved taking it much more patiently than I ever used to. And that meant that I really had to listen with a depth and intensity that I never seemed to before, even though I rated my listening. When doing the vocal, although sometimes I could have both cups on, I found I could hear so much clearer with just one cup on, even if the music was down fairly low in volume, which also seems to be the case these days.
Interestingly, while I'll happily record various instruments with effects, never the vocal anymore. I used to when I started back in the early 90s. And many of my vocals were a mush. Even before I got a reverb unit, for 'verb, I'd place the bass drum between the mic and I {it was both awkward and painful !} and sing through the bass drum. I can understand why many vocalists love to sing with reverb because that drummed vocal sound sounded wonderful in my phones while I'd actually be singing but listening to the playback was like putting my head in bowl of honey.
 
Ive always been confused on the bootlegs and raw tracks we get to hear so commonly these days, and I agree with the OP....so many times its lathered in REVERB.....like beatle tracks come to mind, the talking between takes and solovocals are reverb'd big time...but on the finished tune hardly even noticed.
I know they had the old school reverb rooms and all that but was it live in that huge studio room or was it only applied later?

I think I read if theres a bunch of different reverbs going on it can make things muddy pretty fast too.
The other thing we know is the vibration of our heads and inner ears, so the playback of your voice doesnt have any of that, so the voice can sound odd on playback. Is that why we slap on eq and compression and reverbs to "polish" up the vocal track?
 
The voice that others hear is not the voice that we hear when we sing. That's because not only is sound travelling to our ears externally, it's also travelling through the Eustachian tubes and via bone conduction. What's worse is that our brains lie to us: they make us hear what we want to sound like, rather than what we really sound like. So we can be taken aback when we hear ourselves played back. (But even that doesn't always work if our brains continue to lie to us when we are listening.)

As for EQ, compression and reverb, there are two main functions they fulfil: the first is remediation, i.e. to overcome flaws and deficiencies in the recording (for example, if the recording is done in a dry, anechoic studio, adding reverb compensates for its lack). The second is for effect: to treat audio in different and creative ways.
 
What's worse is that our brains lie to us: they make us hear what we want to sound like, rather than what we really sound like
When I first started recording, the voice I had was really not the voice I wanted. It took a while for me to get to the point where I could actually say that I liked my voice. But I got there. And now I can't even think in those terms ! I'm just happy if I'm in tune, sound as though my vocal flows and I'm not rivaling Barry White !
 
Oh yeah....what grim says is so true. In the early days I really had trouble accepting my voice sounding like it does.....even though others didn't seem to feel the same way. Over time I "learned' to like it and began to write songs that fit it. Now.......people actually comment on how well my voice fits the song...............whatever that means.
 
What is more common on vocal FX, A- slow Atk/Rels compressor speed a low ratio ie 2-3:1 , or B- Fast and hi ratio 20:1 +?

A

Voice gate I slow down the attack to open , it cuts the plosives. No hold. I slow it to close but adjusted to keep pressure clamping down just about the thresh.

No reverb. Some delay.

I do some vocoding, and keyboard guided voice. Lets call it mixed results.
 
Processing to address plosives is a last resort. Use a pop screen and/or learn to control your consonants. If I do have to apply effects to address plosives it wouldn't be a gate. For the usual booming P and B I would apply a high pass filter just on the short section with the boom, perhaps by automating an eq.

Compressor settings are custom fit to the signal. Ratio, attack and release are all set independently.
 
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