Sparkling Vocals

  • Thread starter Thread starter Giganova
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Giganova

Giganova

gimmi your mic!
wassup?

I had my first female vocal session last night. I used a Sennheiser MD441 with pop-filter, plugged into a Focusrite Green channel strip, with slight compression (2:1) & de-essing, fed into my pc running Logic 5.5.

The female vocalist wasn't that great, to say the least, so after 4 hrs of recording we called it quits. Spent the rest of the night trying to make the vocals as "sparkling & fat" sounding as possibe, using some effects. Here's what I used:

o inserted more compression to add dynamics.
o a touch of a stereo pre-delay made the vocals sounds "fuller"
o reverb
o doubling of some parts of the vocals to emphasis them (same pitch & style of singing)
o in a copy of the same track, I added 40% of a pitches shifted take. I shifted the signal 2 semi-tones up to make it sound in tune.

Does that make sense to you? Should I eq and boost some frequences? What's a typical setting for eq? Any other ideas what I could do to improve the vocals? I wish I had an "auto-tunes" to play around with, coz some parts of the vocals are slightly out of tune, but don't know where to get a plug-in auto tuner.

One additional question: even though the Focusrite Green pre was set to max, the signal was only about -4 to -8dB if the singer was very close to the Sennheiser 441 mic. That's not a strong signal compared to condenser mics I used before. Is this low signal inherent in the dynamic mic?

I know that's a lot of questions, but I have to "save" the session.
Thanxxx!
 
Yes, the low signal in a dynamic is built into the design. Dynamics need a good clean pre to shine. As far as vocal processing, you probably know more about it than I do. I've been recording *great* vocalists with no EQ, no FX, no reverb, and occasional minimal compression, only when required by the dynamic range of the vocalist. I know absolutely nothing about using processing to make a poor vocalist sound better. Good luck-Richie
 
Thanks, Richard! If I had such great vocalists like you, I wouldn't have to come up with such un-conventional methods either. You are a lucky man! ;)
 
Don't I know it. I just dropped the two of them off at the airport to fly back to Denver and San Diego. Three solid days tracking angels. Ooh baby! If you're interested in what I'm talking about, check out www.mofleming.com. Mo's got a clip up on her web site and you can hear what I'm calling angelic here. For the other one, Carolyn Johnston, this is the first MP-3 from my project CD "Reunion". http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/?aid=3239/album680 It's called "Requiem". This is a house mix for guide tracks. In other words, no EQ, no reverb, no compression, no panning, nothing. We're about 2 weeks away from the whole thing going to the mixing engineer. Wait 'til you hear these 2 babes together! Jesus, 3 days of that, I'm running out of underwear.-Richie
 
Personally when i have to clean up crappy vocals i think a delay is the best thing for it. I like the delay around 160 ms with the volume at around -20--16db. Depending on the volume just depends on how much you want to here the delay. Lower the delay if its too obnoxious.

BTW using depression will not add dynamics but subtract them.

Danny
 
You are right, I mixed that up. By compression I could bring up some more subtle parts, though.
 
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