Vocal Conundrum: Loud / Soft Punkish type conflicts.

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ShanPeyton

ShanPeyton

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Hey gang.

Got a question for you. It's probably been asked many a time but why not ask again right?

I laid down some vox for a cover song. It's sort of punk/rock and rollish, and the way i am doing it i can go from sort of a gravelly whisper type vocal to a full on loud bellow in the last part of verse.

I like the performance and stuff just the sound of the bellow part sounds really bad. Not bad. Just unnatural compared to those other more "normal". It could just be performance or the way i am singing it, i'm really forcing to get those notes becasue stylistically i have been doing singer songwriter crap in may apartment for the last 6 years. Now i got a man cave to rock out in. :thumbs up:

Should i be backing off the mic a bit in these instances ? or just stay where i am and deal with?

SET-UP:

I am using this mic (this could be the culprit. really cheap mic and a condenser at that)

not recording to hot. Signal goes in dry to process after the fact.

The vocal booth itself is simply a really beefy futon cover shoved in the corner of my room with my wifes black out curtains hung from the suspend ceiling frame in a basic 4'x4' (or close to) lay out. I left some gaps in the seams to keep some room life in there and it really surprised me in that respect.

Maybe compression or limiting would even it out. Speaking of, how much does one want to squash vocals when the performances dynamic range is up and down and all over the place?

Wrong Mic for this type of application?

looking forward to some suggestions.
 
Depending on how your gain is set, but if you are doing the vocals low and therefore are using a lot of gain, then when you scream, it is going to clip. Compression could help, but I think the better technique would be to back off the mic. Might have to be a bunch. Another option would be punch in those screams later (hell, it is digital, create another track) a do the scream with your gain lowered. I am pretty sure you are probably hearing digital clipping and that doesn't sound good.
 
That was the weird thing. It wasn't clipping. I did a few test runs on the louder parts and set my gain staging accordingly, so that those parts fell into the -12-10db area. Maybe that is the problem?

But those are great suggestions. About the seperate tracks. I am for sure going to try that (and probably continue that hence forth) what a great idea. And then move them all to one track afterwards? Or i suppose if am compressing and stuff in a send track it wouldn't matter eh?
 
ShanPeyton said:
That was the weird thing. It wasn't clipping. I did a few test runs on the louder parts and set my gain staging accordingly, so that those parts fell into the -12-10db area. Maybe that is the problem?

But those are great suggestions. About the seperate tracks. I am for sure going to try that (and probably continue that hence forth) what a great idea. And then move them all to one track afterwards? Or i suppose if am compressing and stuff in a send track it wouldn't matter eh?
Click to expand...

You can decide how you want to process it. Send then to a return or not. Keep them separate or merge them. Don't get hung up on that, focus on how it sounds, if it sounds right, it is right.
 
" if it sounds right, it is right. "

yup.

And I think I'd go with 2 separate tracks as well. It can sound just as natural but still leave you with the ability to process the loud tack and the soft track separately.
May be useful when it's in the full mix.
 
DM60 said:
You can decide how you want to process it. Send then to a return or not. Keep them separate or merge them. Don't get hung up on that, focus on how it sounds, if it sounds right, it is right.
Click to expand...

true true. six ways to skin and cat and all that jazz. I will try to back off a bit. I may also try and find a SM58 or something similar and try that. For fun. Why not. I gotta redo stuff anyways.
 
I tend to pull back a few inches from the mic when I know I'm going to belt out a louder phrase.

Also....I like using a limiter after my preamp for songs where I know I will have wide vocal dynamics.
I have this vintage AD&R F601RS limiter that was mainly intended for radio broadcast use, so it has unusual gain/threshold choices....like 0 -+20 dB gain, and +4 to +14 threshold. Anyway, will set it very often with 0 gain and threshold up at +14...then I'll adjust my preamp output so it's only making the limiter work on extreme peaks, and everything else is left untouched. So I can come up to the mic and whisper and get that close-up vibe, and then when I go louder, I back off a bit and the limiter pretty much rides that gain like you would with a fader.
It does a great job...so you don't get any pumping or clipping or hard squash....it just evens out the level on the peaks.

You might try something like that and see how it works for you. A compressor will work a bit differently, but it might also do the trick if you set it right.
 
Dogbreath said:
May be useful when it's in the full mix.
Click to expand...

Yea, that is what I was thinking as well.

I was working on a song, I had laid down the rough track and I was going back over it in another track to get the timing better, I had a phrase and at the end of the phrase, I was just going to say no, no, no. But it had to be quick, to hit the beat. As I was going through the phrase on the second pass, I was like a 16th late and the no, no, no kicked in on the other track. Long story short, as you stated, I ended up using the no, no, on a different track, totally different from the main vocal track and it really made it better. Happy accidents :)

So yea OP, to DG's point, it gives you some creative options that might turn out better than planned.
 
Thanks guys.

Thanks miro. I don't have one of those laying around but it sounds like a pretty good thing TO HAVE laying around. I could see the merit of the limiter as a preamp. I am going to experiment a little tomorrow with multiple tracks. Thanks everyone.

Also DM60 i checked out your soundcloud page! Brilliant stuff man. I really enjoyed that. Spun the whole thing during my last hour of work. Hope there is more on the way.
 
ShanPeyton said:
Also DM60 i checked out your soundcloud page! Brilliant stuff man. I really enjoyed that. Spun the whole thing during my last hour of work. Hope there is more on the way.
Click to expand...

All I can do is give a humble "thank you".
 
One possible reason for the differences you are hearing inthe recorded sound - when you are louder the mic is picking up more of the room reflections (sounds like a pretty bad 'vocal booth' you have!)
 
mjbphotos said:
One possible reason for the differences you are hearing inthe recorded sound - when you are louder the mic is picking up more of the room reflections (sounds like a pretty bad 'vocal booth' you have!)
Click to expand...

Honestly, for as hasty an effort i put into building that temporary booth the reflections were pretty minimal. After some more looking around and research i think it was more the mic i was using and how close i was and how loud i was hollaring.
 
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