Bryan316
New member
Allright folks... self introduction, and my first question.
So I'm the 'vocalist' of my band. Heh heh. We've got a little Tascam HD recorder, a Shure PG81, an AKG D790, a DBX 266XL compressor, a DBX 1215 EQ unit, and lotsa time. Now, as the singer, I've never really had time to experiment with vocal recording. Usually, just run the tape so we don't forget how we played the song since last month. Or we're jamming a gig and who cares about the sound quality, as long as it's heard. So now that we're concentrating on getting good recording tests to do a demo/practice/remember-how-the-hell-we-played-it CD, we're realising we've never recorded vocals before!
We're doing the classic heavy metal style here, kinda Bruce Dickinson meets James Hetfield. So we set up a soft amount of compression, get all the syllables to sound the same volume, keep the pops cleaned up, use the dynamic mic first, blended the levels so it's not too loud in the mix, but still hear the consonant sounds to make out what the words actually are, and then sat back to hear it.
My voice doesn't even blend in with the rest of the song! It stands out like a sore thumb! Fake, karaoke even, like it's not even in the same room as the rest of the music.
Now, you're all gonna say, "Use a condensor mic! Use some reverb! EQ that sumbitch!" Well, I know that's what is needed. We've got the built-in effects in the Tascam recorder, and I'm used to playing with reverb and tweaking EQ's to make things work better. Yeah, this weekend we'll try the condenser mic instead, and maybe run the EQ and compressor first then into the recorder. So I know that it's gonna be a chunk of tweaking and experimenting in order to get it right.
So my question is: What has worked for you? Mind you, metal vocals, so it's strong, loud, not death metal growling, we're just doing this in the basement, no soundproofing, and this is for practice so we can start to listen to our own music as we drive around. We're usually burning a new CD each weekend to listen to it and critique, "...the kick drum's too weak now, the guitar's got this nasty frequency that sounds funky, the bass is great but let's bring up the midrange to see how it sounds..." and as we get better results, we can understand how we want ourselves to sound.
So, if you've found a certain frequency should be cut out, or you like a style of reverb, or you think doubling the track and echoing it a little, or using compression after the effects are put in, or any other cute secrets, lay them on me. So far, we know these vocals are clear, noise free, no micstand vibration, no wind popping, no feedback, just good clean recording. But like any other instrument, it needs tweaking.
Allright, let the insults fly!
So I'm the 'vocalist' of my band. Heh heh. We've got a little Tascam HD recorder, a Shure PG81, an AKG D790, a DBX 266XL compressor, a DBX 1215 EQ unit, and lotsa time. Now, as the singer, I've never really had time to experiment with vocal recording. Usually, just run the tape so we don't forget how we played the song since last month. Or we're jamming a gig and who cares about the sound quality, as long as it's heard. So now that we're concentrating on getting good recording tests to do a demo/practice/remember-how-the-hell-we-played-it CD, we're realising we've never recorded vocals before!
We're doing the classic heavy metal style here, kinda Bruce Dickinson meets James Hetfield. So we set up a soft amount of compression, get all the syllables to sound the same volume, keep the pops cleaned up, use the dynamic mic first, blended the levels so it's not too loud in the mix, but still hear the consonant sounds to make out what the words actually are, and then sat back to hear it.
My voice doesn't even blend in with the rest of the song! It stands out like a sore thumb! Fake, karaoke even, like it's not even in the same room as the rest of the music.
Now, you're all gonna say, "Use a condensor mic! Use some reverb! EQ that sumbitch!" Well, I know that's what is needed. We've got the built-in effects in the Tascam recorder, and I'm used to playing with reverb and tweaking EQ's to make things work better. Yeah, this weekend we'll try the condenser mic instead, and maybe run the EQ and compressor first then into the recorder. So I know that it's gonna be a chunk of tweaking and experimenting in order to get it right.
So my question is: What has worked for you? Mind you, metal vocals, so it's strong, loud, not death metal growling, we're just doing this in the basement, no soundproofing, and this is for practice so we can start to listen to our own music as we drive around. We're usually burning a new CD each weekend to listen to it and critique, "...the kick drum's too weak now, the guitar's got this nasty frequency that sounds funky, the bass is great but let's bring up the midrange to see how it sounds..." and as we get better results, we can understand how we want ourselves to sound.
So, if you've found a certain frequency should be cut out, or you like a style of reverb, or you think doubling the track and echoing it a little, or using compression after the effects are put in, or any other cute secrets, lay them on me. So far, we know these vocals are clear, noise free, no micstand vibration, no wind popping, no feedback, just good clean recording. But like any other instrument, it needs tweaking.
Allright, let the insults fly!
