Immediate, Intimate, Intense Vocal Sound - How?

  • Thread starter Thread starter bongolation
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bongolation

bongolation

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To save my life, I can't get the sort of sound I want for a project.

Baritone male vocal, semi-spoken-word, almost slam-poetry vocal over music.

Immediacy and intimacy in vocals in recorded music is one of the go/no-go issues for me and always has been.

You know the sound: As if someone is grabbing you by the hair, looking you straight in the eyes and preaching directly to your soul from about 14" away from your nose. The wall separating the vocalist from the listener is gone.

It seems to me that this requires a fairly low SPL, close-micing a LDC microphone and fairly high playback volume with the vocal upfront in the mix, but beyond that, I got nothin'.

Assume nothing (such as my engineering experience or competence, as I have none) in your explanations; let's start from the plugging in the cable into the board and take it from there...what FX? What EQ? What secrets?

Where's the magic? He'p a brother out!
 
To get the best "immediate, intimate, intense vocal sound", the single most important thing you need is an immediate, intimate and intense vocalist.

Having said that, think about radio announcers: generally voice about 20cm from an LDC. You may or may not need a pop filter depending on how controlled the person's plosives are. I'd expect a fair bit of compression on it, but be aware of background noise that's likely to be dragged up by it. As for Eq . . . that's impossible to say without hearing the actual voice. The drier (reverb-less) the vocal is, the more intimate it is likely to sound. And as you said, keep it well to the front of the mix.
 
There's no secrets. Normally you set all your faders on infinity(0 db) and turn up your preamp gain to where you get a little feedback and then back off a notch or two, usually about halfway.

It's hard to tell what sound you're looking for but try running your vocals through a compressor.

A common problem which may be your problem or not is that you are trying to mix your vocals over prerecorded samples and beats that are already compressed to the max.

Using a combination of reverb and EQ may help you overcome that problem.
 
Having said that, think about radio announcers: generally voice about 20cm from an LDC.
Click to expand...
Just in case it was a typo, LDD. Specifically, SM7b and RE20. Nearly universal in broadcast (easily used more than all other mics combined) and both are fantastic vocal microphones for nearly any application short of distant use (opera, choir mic'ing, etc.).
 
Immediate, Intimate, Intense
Close mic (relative), compression fast release comes to mind.
 
Massive Master said:
Just in case it was a typo, LDD. Specifically, SM7b and RE20. Nearly universal in broadcast (easily used more than all other mics combined) and both are fantastic vocal microphones for nearly any application short of distant use (opera, choir mic'ing, etc.).
Click to expand...

D'oh I was gonna say that.

SM7b through a nice pre are some key ingredients for a nice vocal recording. Now I just need to learn to sing
 
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