recording harmony/a cappella

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onmoris

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Something weird is happening
I'm recording a CD for a female a cappella group and something weird is happening. when 2 girls sing the same harmony together, i'm getting a weird sort of ring modulation sound. this only happens when both parts are panned center. it doesn't happen when they are panned apart obviously. it happens less when they are further back from the mics.

is there a way to filter this out? should i have the sing on different mics if they'll be singing a harmony? has anyone experienced this before?
 
onmoris said:
Something weird is happening
I'm recording a CD for a female a cappella group and something weird is happening. when 2 girls sing the same harmony together, i'm getting a weird sort of ring modulation sound. this only happens when both parts are panned center. it doesn't happen when they are panned apart obviously. it happens less when they are further back from the mics.

is there a way to filter this out? should i have the sing on different mics if they'll be singing a harmony? has anyone experienced this before?
Click to expand...

This is quite common, especially if they're recorded separately (overdubs). As you suggest, it's a little out-of-phaseness. And the higher frequencies of female voices will make it more noticeable.

I have had this happen a lot in cases where I record myself singing with myself.

There is no useful way to filter this. As you say, panning is the only real solution after the fact; but ideally, we'd like to be able to have it sound good monaurally too.

It's one big reason why a cappella vocal groups are often better recorded with one mic, or two mics in a stereo configuration, at a fair distance from the source(s). If you do otherwise, each singer should have her own mic and recording track, with perhaps a room mic. But the phase problem will show up in any bleed that occurs.

In a good room with good singers, two parts sung will often create a "ghost" third part. That's the glory of good harmony singing. Try to capture it organically.
 
the way this (and many other) groups want their CD's recorded are individual parts tracked. in fact the most singers we have at the same time recording is 4. i guess my question applies both to this and "regular" settings (lead vocal and harmony) recorded separately. there's got to be a way to avoid that. The phasing is killing me...
 
agcurry is pretty much right though....ha

and of course, the artist will want to do it all seperate, so it's all perfect at the end...unlimited overdubs/redos/etc....

you can try flipping the phase by 180, you might get lucky and it'll be less noticable.

other than that, if you record everyone at the same time, and just do several takes, perhaps YOU can edit it well and cut any of the parts that either are phasey or have bad singing in them...and it could probably fit together nicely.
 
Do these two girls have very similar sounding voices? Or is it the same girl overdubbing the same harmony with herself? If it's either of those, there's likely not much that you can do about it after the fact other then differentiate the panning. Or you can have one of the girls sing the part in a different octave (although that might be entirely impossible depending on te arrangement of the song).
Also, try having the girls singing at different distances to their respective mics. This might knock out some of the phasey issues.
If you're set on keeping this harmony panned center though, try using a figure-8 mic and have each girl sing into one side. I'm not sure if that'll accomplish anything different but it's worth a shot. Then if it's good, it'll already be on it's own track and you don't have to worry about panning them together and it getting screwed up.
Just some suggestions.
 
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