Trying to get that mellow sound...

[miroslav]

They don't want to hear what they don't want to hear.

They really just have to figure it out for themselves.

Yup....I know the type all too well.
You try to present objective reality to some, and they get down right pissed off at you because you're indirectly bursting their balloons with the reality check.



Of course, for the advice givers....we all have our slightly different ways of looking at the same situation, so there may be 10 different answers to the question (all valid to a degree), and still not what the OP wants to hear....which manages to piss off the OP even more!!!

 

[60's guy]

Hi friends
So i started to record a few demos of my song with a low cost gear i borrowd from my friend. A dynamic 'samson' mic........and when i'm trying to record like this, im singing pretty close to the mic, straight towards it, but all im getting is a muddy, heavy sound.

You gotta start somewhere with or without borrowed low or high cost gear and I give you credit for doing that but.......

I'm sort of surprised that no one has bothered to inform you of proximity effect. It is kinda basic info that you should read up on here and everywhere else on the interwebs before you even think about approaching a microphone.

just saying

 

[Massive Master]

I don't know if he was being smug, and maybe the "source=95%" thing is a bit extreme, though I think he was saying that more for effect.

Sort of (for effect - not the 'smug' part).

For instance -- "Back in the day" had a band come into the studio and we recorded for a few days some of the worst-sounding - everything (drums, bass, guitars, etc.) I've ever had the displeasure of recording. These horrible Crate amplifiers, some (I don't even remember the brand) bass, a drum set that should've had a picture of "Animal" from the Muppets on the kick head...

Spent days trying to get usable mixes. This is all analog stuff here, so no tweaking and saving and tweaking and saving... Eventually wound up with a semi-listenable, yet "small" sounding CD.

A year later, they're back. "We really like what you did last time and we were hoping that you'd sort of be the 'producer' on this one - Whaddya' think?"

I asked them if they brought all of their gear again. They replied in the affirmative. I told them to leave all their gear outside and c'mon in.

We spent a couple hours restringing and strobing *my* guitars and properly tuning the house kit and we proceeded to pound out death-metal's answer to Metallica's "Black" album in probably two days. Laney AOR amplifiers with G12M70-loaded cabinets, Tama kit with fresh Remo Pinstripes tuned to E pentatonic friendly notes (just on the sharp side - I've always preferred that for some reason), my drummer's cymbals -- But otherwise, the same rooms, the same mics, the same recording and mixing gear (decent stuff, but nothing spectacular) as the last album.

It was huge. It was dynamic. It almost mixed itself. A little reverb, a little compression on the kick and snare, 17ms between the left and right overheads (I still do that on the rare occasion that I'm mixing), barely any EQ on anything. Did so well regionally that they ended up doing a lot of gigging and made enough money to turn their passive marijuana use into hard-core heroin addictions (that's really for another forum).

It was all about the source.

Granted - that's more about instruments. But the same thing applies to vocals. And although it's far too late to "long-story short" anything, most of the "I can't get my vocals to sound good" issues wind up being the vocalist more than the gear.

And don't get me wrong -- I'm not disagreeing with RAMI by any stretch (I threw in the 'gear snob' thing for fun against his "Now, I'm not a gear snob or anything..." or whatever that was). It's evident that he's using the bottom-of-the-barrel as far as gear is concerned (that interface looks like a "counterfeit" of an already freakishly inexpensive Focusrite unit) and --- uh --- where is it...

Also i have 2 30x30 acoustic foams right behind me. The room is quit big but has suprisingly decent acoustic "as is". It's about 4x5, and has one window aprox. 2meters from me.

There it is. His room is probably terrible if it's a 12x15 rectangle with two completely useless 30x30 sheets of foam on the wall when he actually needs a dozen broadband panels to control that space. Add to that a mic that's going on CL for $15 and a knock-off interface and I can totally see RAMI's point from page one.

But I'd wonder if he has a decent voice also.

 

[RAMI]

I'm sort of surprised that no one has bothered to inform you of proximity effect. It is kinda basic info that you should read up on here and everywhere else on the interwebs before you even think about approaching a microphone.

just saying

I'm surprised you'd make a stement like that without actually reading the thread first.

It was mentioned at least twice in this thread. All you had to do was read. just sayin'

Singing close to a mic with a cardioid pickup pattern (most common dynamics) will result in what's called the proximity effect.

You say that you're up close to the mic and it's coming out boomy. That's called proximity effect (Steenamaroo described it above), where mics tend to accentuate the bass frequencies when very close to the sound source.

 

[RAMI]

Sort of (for effect - not the 'smug' part).

For instance -- "Back in the day" had a band come into the studio and we recorded for a few days some of the worst-sounding - everything (drums, bass, guitars, etc.) I've ever had the displeasure of recording. These horrible Crate amplifiers, some (I don't even remember the brand) bass, a drum set that should've had a picture of "Animal" from the Muppets on the kick head...

Spent days trying to get usable mixes. This is all analog stuff here, so no tweaking and saving and tweaking and saving... Eventually wound up with a semi-listenable, yet "small" sounding CD.

A year later, they're back. "We really like what you did last time and we were hoping that you'd sort of be the 'producer' on this one - Whaddya' think?"

I asked them if they brought all of their gear again. They replied in the affirmative. I told them to leave all their gear outside and c'mon in.

We spent a couple hours restringing and strobing *my* guitars and properly tuning the house kit and we proceeded to pound out death-metal's answer to Metallica's "Black" album in probably two days. Laney AOR amplifiers with G12M70-loaded cabinets, Tama kit with fresh Remo Pinstripes tuned to E pentatonic friendly notes (just on the sharp side - I've always preferred that for some reason), my drummer's cymbals -- But otherwise, the same rooms, the same mics, the same recording and mixing gear (decent stuff, but nothing spectacular) as the last album.

It was huge. It was dynamic. It almost mixed itself. A little reverb, a little compression on the kick and snare, 17ms between the left and right overheads (I still do that on the rare occasion that I'm mixing), barely any EQ on anything. Did so well regionally that they ended up doing a lot of gigging and made enough money to turn their passive marijuana use into hard-core heroin addictions (that's really for another forum).

It was all about the source.

Granted - that's more about instruments. But the same thing applies to vocals. And although it's far too late to "long-story short" anything, most of the "I can't get my vocals to sound good" issues wind up being the vocalist more than the gear.

And don't get me wrong -- I'm not disagreeing with RAMI by any stretch (I threw in the 'gear snob' thing for fun against his "Now, I'm not a gear snob or anything..." or whatever that was). It's evident that he's using the bottom-of-the-barrel as far as gear is concerned (that interface looks like a "counterfeit" of an already freakishly inexpensive Focusrite unit) and --- uh --- where is it...

There it is. His room is probably terrible if it's a 12x15 rectangle with two completely useless 30x30 sheets of foam on the wall when he actually needs a dozen broadband panels to control that space. Add to that a mic that's going on CL for $15 and a knock-off interface and I can totally see RAMI's point from page one.

But I'd wonder if he has a decent voice also.

Cool recording story. I don't disagree with anything said here. Just for the record, I wasn't calling anyone "smug". I was referring to a statement that many people throw around that is and isn't true, depending on weather it's true or not.

 

[Armistice]

I'd be asking to hear a clip. OP may not have that type of voice. Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as they say.

 

[RAMI]

I'd be asking to hear a clip. OP may not have that type of voice. Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as they say.

I think we lost the OP a few great morcels of advice ago.

Basically........

 

[IronWine]

I'd be asking to hear a clip. OP may not have that type of voice. Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as they say.

ok so i had a couple hours to record a demo for you to hear, thanks for the help!

note: this is a very raw, un-touched recording with bunch of mstakes. just for you to get a clue of how it sounds in my room. i only amplified it (7.0+) because i sang pretty far from the mic to avoid the boomie sound.
Miroslav, i took off the foams and cranked up the gain as you said, but it distorted the vocals so i set it on 0 again.

 

[Steenamaroo]

I'm listening on a boomy bose sounddock, but I don't really hear a problem here other than the occasional airblast.