How do i get nice warm/round vocals?

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inittowinit

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So i have be recording hip hop vocals for a while now and there pretty good but i just cant seem to get them as warm as i would like. What i do most of the time is first a peek track( real natural vocals), than a high pass track(rooling off the lows via eq) and than back ups. I pan the high pass 75 right and left to hug the main track than apply eq,verb etc effects as needed. i just cant seem to get them very round. I am mixing in pro tools and do some effects in wave labs as well. any help would be great. thanks
 
Read up on here on how to actually use your effects etc homie. For one your high passing for what reason
 
Mindset said:
Read up on here on how to actually use your effects etc homie. For one your high passing for what reason
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I have did my research and thats why i thought i would through a line out and try to get some help. I have seen the hight pass method done with some other artist that i work closely with, and these tracks have came out with great results! like i said this is working rather well but i would like to know how to get them a little warmer thats all
 
How do i get nice warm/round vocals?

Hire a nice warm round singer. I think Ruben Studert is available. :D
 
yeah, that's probably the biggest contributer, the person's voice. Also, what's your mic choice/pre-amp choice, vs. theirs. It's possible that your mic or pre-amp has a different charactor than theirs.
 
Neumann U87 ---> Neve 1073 ---> LA-2A

That chain is nice and warm!
 
ya i use a few different mics according to how is singing.
 
I don't know about hip-hop vocals, but I know that the few vocalists I've heard in person who sounded like that, didn't sound like that from the mic, pre, or a compressor, but they sounded like that naturally. I don't know how you'd go about doing it artificially. Probably by using the appropriate mic, pre, and compressor. :D
 
How about just try trimming back a little on the sharp spots. That'd be the first line low-ball fix.
 
danny.guitar said:
I don't know about hip-hop vocals, but I know that the few vocalists I've heard in person who sounded like that, didn't sound like that from the mic, pre, or a compressor, but they sounded like that naturally. I don't know how you'd go about doing it artificially. Probably by using the appropriate mic, pre, and compressor. :D
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well im working with a few guys that have good mic skills. They have spent some time in the booth. i guess i am just going to have to do some trial and error untell i get this right. Its a lot harder than it sounds though
 
There's no one way of making vocals sound good. Even with the same singer you often have to do different things for different songs or even parts of songs.

Warmth generally implies a slight distortion and reduced high-end. Try that if that's the sound you are going for.
 
Here's an example of some good natural sounding vocals. Maybe not "warm" and "round". But I'd call them very smooth. It's my friend and his mother. He hasn't been recording long, and I think he did the infamous over-use-of-reverb on everything.

You won't believe how it was recorded either. Both guitar and vocals (she isn't playing the guitar) were recorded at the same time with a single microphone. An omni Naiant MSH-1A microphone that I gave him. Definitely not the mic you'd want to use on vocals.

Into an AUDIO BUDDY. Then into a SoundBlaster XTreme or something like that.

The Greatest Gift
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=644639

I was there at the time and her voice sounded just like that, except without the reverb obviously.

Just trying to say that it will depend entirely on the vocalist. There may be some things you can do to "fatten it up" or "smooth it out" but really, it comes down to whoever is singing...or rapping I suppose...
 
inittowinit said:
So i have be recording hip hop vocals for a while now and there pretty good but i just cant seem to get them as warm as i would like. What i do most of the time is first a peek track( real natural vocals), than a high pass track(rooling off the lows via eq) and than back ups. I pan the high pass 75 right and left to hug the main track than apply eq,verb etc effects as needed. i just cant seem to get them very round. I am mixing in pro tools and do some effects in wave labs as well. any help would be great. thanks
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i'm a hip-hop vocalist myself.......

my voice is naturally deep but at times it can thin out and if it's a percussion heavy track, my voice can damn near be so deep in contrast to the track that it's almost drowned out, so i just use one of a few different plug-ins specifically for warming like my PSP Vintage Warmer, not saying it's the best but it does work for me when needed.... then again i have like 3-4 different kinds of waves compressors, t-racks, ozone, and all types of other good shit!!

actually i have a nice variety of plug-ins intergrated into my Adobe Auditions v2, and hopefully they will work in my AA v3 i should be getting by 2nite...
 
Sinistah said:
i'm a hip-hop vocalist myself.......

my voice is naturally deep but at times it can thin out and if it's a percussion heavy track, my voice can damn near be so deep in contrast to the track that it's almost drowned out, so i just use one of a few different plug-ins specifically for warming like my PSP Vintage Warmer, not saying it's the best but it does work for me when needed.... then again i have like 3-4 different kinds of waves compressors, t-racks, ozone, and all types of other good shit!!

actually i have a nice variety of plug-ins intergrated into my Adobe Auditions v2, and hopefully they will work in my AA v3 i should be getting by 2nite...
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Sounds like you have frequencies fighting each other. To fix much of yalls problems, is to get a great take, and EQ everything together. It sounds like the poster had similar problems, so he hi passed, trying to bring the vocals above the mix, not to drown it out, but in doing so, he takes out the foundation of the vocal, and leaves just presence & sibilance. In your case, your having similar problems, but your simply trying to boost yourself above the mix, when you should be cutting some frequencies out of certain instruments & parts of the mix. Again, know how to really use your tools in front of you. Read Read Read, Visualize & do.
 
inittowinit said:
I have did my research and thats why i thought i would through a line out and try to get some help. I have seen the hight pass method done with some other artist that i work closely with, and these tracks have came out with great results! like i said this is working rather well but i would like to know how to get them a little warmer thats all
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Each artist will have a different mix on them. I have 5 artists, and none of the mixes can be similar for their vocals, just guidelines.
 
Mindset said:
Sounds like you have frequencies fighting each other. To fix much of yalls problems, is to get a great take, and EQ everything together. It sounds like the poster had similar problems, so he hi passed, trying to bring the vocals above the mix, not to drown it out, but in doing so, he takes out the foundation of the vocal, and leaves just presence & sibilance. In your case, your having similar problems, but your simply trying to boost yourself above the mix, when you should be cutting some frequencies out of certain instruments & parts of the mix. Again, know how to really use your tools in front of you. Read Read Read, Visualize & do.
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oh nah, of course once i find out the sounds are clashin i start/attempt to find good placement to start my eq'in from, and i usually don't have my instrumentals tracked out as seperate instruments but as one fully mixed file to really get in-depth with precise tracking of a song.......

if you listened to the songs on my myspace link, lmaooo those werent mixed by me, so take it in blood, jus kiddin :cool:

but i did post a recent mixdown in the Hip-Hop section that nobody wanted to comment on, but downloaded :D
if my vocals went up higher than the track somewhere on that mix, it was probably a plug-in i was using and forgot to adjust the post-gain, i havent mixed a damn thing in like 4-5 months....

and most likely my speakers might play a small part in it too, being default PC speakers not meant for actual monitoring may have it sounding good at certain levels, but really faulty with the precision of speakers meant to pick up on frequencies that monitoring-based speakers will pick-up....
 
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