tweaking my vocal tracks

[Rusty K]

Good day,

I'm a vocalist as well as a player and have recorded many times in various studios. My very good but not great, voice has been rendered pretty well in the studios
but I've never felt that my stage vocals have been captured.

Now that I am attempting to produce myself on my PC I would like to learn to tweak my vocals. I have this mental picture of a plugin that would give me a visualization of the range of frequencies of my voice so that I could apply tools to strengthen the weak parts and smooth the strong ones.

Is this what a "spectrum analizer" would do? And if so is there a plugin, preferably free or at least cheap, that would help me accomplish this.

Thanks much,
Rusty K

 

[vox]

It would probably be easier and better to do it by ear.
If you have a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve just solo the vocal track and mess around with the EQ til you get it right.
If you cant get what you are looking for you can try using a different mic, go to a store and audition all the mics till you find the one that reproduces your voice the way that you want. Don't only audition the mega expensive LD Condensers, it may be that a humble little SM 57 Or 58 is the right mic for your voice!
If you find a mic that gets you pretty damn close but not quite there, then you can start auditioning preamps.

If you still want to try a plugin there is a shareware FFT plug here

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/NickWhitehurst/

Good luck.

 

[rj]

fft

I say use the fft.

 

[MONTE]

I don't know anyone who likes their own voice recorded. I'm not sayin' don't give a sh*$, but get some other more objective ears to listen before you tweek it to hell.

 

[Rusty K]

Monte,

I know what you mean but I'm kind of talking about the kind of tweaking I hear on the big-time stuff on the radio. They take any given singers voice and it's like they zero in and accentuate the strong areas or the unusual areas. For instance Brittany Spears, I know don't gag, but this is big time production. I nicknamed her "guiro voice". They have taken a certain area of her voice and actually turned it into a sound effect. It sounds to me like a guiro, latin rhythm inst..

I don't want to sound like BS (Brittany Spears) but I would like to be able to "shape" my voice a bit and accentuate the strong parts.

Rusty K

 

[MONTE]

That's cool dude. I don't know if an analyzer will help though. It'll tell you what frequencies are louder or softer than others with your voice. It really won't tell you which frequencies are more desireable than others. You'll have to use your ears for that. The other problem with using an analyzer for this is that whatever notes your singing the most (depending on what key the song is in) are going to show up as hot spots in the graphic representation. It'll be rather difficult to get much useable information out of an analyzer for this purpose. I'd say experimentation while get you farther faster. Good Luck and Happy Hunting!