easing up the harsh vocals

  • Thread starter Thread starter jrlemonz
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jrlemonz

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I play guitar in a hardcore/metal type band and our vocalist has a very harsh scream. we like the whole sound of our music live, but i tried recording us live through my mixer into the computer and his vocals are REALLY harsh. I have no better way to describe it. But I need to lighten up the screams somehow, I don't know if it will just take turning down the gain, holding the mic farther away or what. He uses a Shure SM58 and holds it really close to his mouth. Heres a sample of what we've done, any other comments on the mix is welcomed.

We recorded it all at once by micing the drums and running the guitars through the mixer along with the vocals. We tried multitracking but couldn't get it to sound good with my equipment, My soundcard ahs an awful buzz to it and I have to go through extensive noise reduction on every track to kill it and that gives a weird flanger noise so we went with recording live. Any ideas are welcome.
Jake
 
Try making him sing through a pop screen. =) Some cymbal crashes sound harsh as well. If you can somehow fix the cymbal crashes, you can probly fix the voice too.
 
jrlemonz, man, you're right... pretty harsh.

I wonder if you might wanna try this:

(I'm not sure how you're recording his vocals, but...)
If you're recording his vocals direct, then turn down the gain on his channel and have him scream his wild scream, and make sure it isn't harsh or distorted after going through the board... if it is, turn it down somemore.

Then after recording the song, take his track and run compression on it (you're multitracking on a computer, right?)... after running the compression on his vocal track, stuff should be evened out...

I don't really know what I'm talking about, but that's how I would try it.

Good luck.
 
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