<<< Holy Grail Of Recording Vocals >>>

I plug a SM57 into motu interface. If the singer hits and bad note, pops, enunciates poorly, then I slap him in the back of the neck.

Then I find a place on your record where the vocalist is sing'n solo. I match eq it.

Saves me thousands on gear.

I plug a SM57 into motu interface. If the singer hits and bad note, pops, enunciates poorly, then I slap him in the back of the neck.

Then I find a place on your record where the vocalist is sing'n solo. I match eq it.

Saves me thousands on gear.


Hey, that was funny... 🙂

SteveDjokes,

With that signal path, you better be getting a good quality vocal sound...:-)

My dream mic would be a Brauner VM-1, followed closely by a Neuman U47 or U49. Until I'm in a position to spend between 5 and 10 grand on a mic, I have "settled" for a Mojave M-200. Designed by David Royer, of the ribbon mic fame. When A/B'd with a Neuman U47 it was VERY close, and actually had a bit more top end (above 8k). This is one excellent mic for the money.

I run it through a Brent Avrell Neve 1272 mic pre, into a Universal Audio 1176 compressor.

I can usually avoid a de-esser all together by making the vocalist stand at least a foot to a foot and 1/2 from the mic. I put gobo's around them to minimize room reflections, and I get a VERY consistent, even frequency response vocal tone. No crappy build up at 150 to 250 Hz, because the vocalist think it sounds "cool" standing so close to the mic, and I eliminate most, if not all sibilance.

A well placed microphone will always, ALWAYS beat out a vocal that has to be de-essed and EQ'd to pull out "boominess".

I allow 3 takes, from which I comp. Any more than that tells me the vocalist isn't ready to sing the song just yet.

Good grief, Steve! Why so complicated?

Jim hits it right on the head:

A well placed microphone will always, ALWAYS beat out a vocal that has to be de-essed and EQ'd to pull out "boominess".

So true. In 30 years of recording rock vocals - bloody h*ll - I'm that old 😟 - I've never used a de-esser. With a singer I'm not familiar with, I might start out with 3 mics, equidistant, running into a Focusrite Red range pre and then an old 1176 or Fairchild. Depending on the singer, I might start out with and old tube U47, U67, Røde Classic II or a dynamic and hear all three or four individually which gives me the direction. In very few cases, I might swap the preamp for something else depending on what I hear from my first tests.

I too build a little booth around the singer to cut room effect and luckily I work with good vocalists who understand, and stick to, mic positioning. If they're inexperienced, I'll teach them. I always have two mics in front of the singer, and I don't usually tell them which I'm using. They're 6-8 inches apart, and they're told to sing into the gap.

As far as compression goes, it entirely depends on the material and the performance, and I couldn't begin to offer any canned settings suggestions, as they vary wildly from singer to singer, and I'll even tweak ratio and gain 'live' during the performance at various parts within the song. With EQ, I rarely use any - I'd rather pick a different mic or pre, and get it sounding right, left flat, relying on mic position, mic choice and preamp choice to change the sound.

Nice microphone technique. But concerning Hip Hop vocals, I've spoken to numerous U.S. Hip Hop producers and engineers (Premier, Pete Rock etc.) and they said they don't de-ess vocals to keep a raw feel to the voice. Many R&B records have vocals that aren't de-essed too.

If you listen to many records producced by RZA, Pharrell etc., you'll notice the sibilance.

I think it depends on the project/artist/label your working for.

Sometimes I de-ess, sometimes not.

Also, I was told by a Dancehall/Ragga engineer/producer from Jamaica who said that many vocals are recorded using handheld dynamic mics, so to keep that live feel to the vocals.

Hey John,

Do you use a pop filter or do you find they take something away from the performance?

X

Hi, X

Depends on the singer, but usually yes, just in case they move too much during the performance. Always the really thin nylon/stretched frame type, at a slight angle - not parallel to the front of mic.

Thanks John!

Seeing as how I mostly record Rock, Hardcore and Punk, my usual do to is a Rode K2 (normally det to "omni") sent to a Focusrite VMP Platimun (hey, I'm on a budget) using the built in comp set at 2:1 to not squash the vocals and the tube drive set up half way for a little grit. Depending on the project and singer I'll run the preamp gain a little hot for some extra "distortion".

As far as de-essing goes, I'll normally avoid it, I'm just not too fond of the artifacts that it leave in the track, I'll normally just notch an annoying "Q" with a narrow band EQ filtering, usually using the basic channel eq found in logic 'cause it has that really handy monitor feature so I can see what I'm messing with.

Instead of messing with lots of overdubs to get a fuller vocal (and avoid the "Ozzy Osbourne" effect) I'll run the vocals through space designer and find a convolution, usually thin with a long tail, that fits the particular song.

lastly if it seems to be lacking some punch I'll send it out to one of my DBX comps and use the returned track to thicken up the original, usually set about
6-10 db lower than the original.


If it's a vocalist who is better off not standing in front of a mic at all, my mic of choice is a SM-57 & D-112 set about 2" apart, no pop filter and will run them though a Mackie pre to the DBX set to ganged operation with a good amount of compression. Then I will delay the D-112 track a few MS, flip the phase, send the pair to a stereo bus where I'll eq the two together, space designer and done... I'm not a fan of pitch correction, bad singers or wasting an afternoon trying to fix bad vocals, this it the best they'll ever sound.

sometimes over doing ( EQ, de-esser, compress, limit, slapping the singer ) kills the mood or the feel of the song

not every thing have to be EQ or use De-esser on em

Most Hip Hop Producers don't even know what that is

For Hip Hop, try not to make it sound like Orchestra or RnB because it kills the the performance abit

many rappers from south don't even EQ their whole song or de-esser any vocals

because they want their people to hear how raw they are

Most from West ( Dre and Eminem and such ) Use De-esser on alot of their vocals where you can actually hear it, especially you can Hear the Enhancer brightens up their vocals that you can hear lil bit of weird sound when you put the volume low

Many Use Double Pop stopper and get the artists to get close to the mic and rap soft so they can get more of the vocals and less room verb

then go on to add reverb when mixing, no de-esser needed

For Me:

I've got a small Booth , about 2m x 2m and height is 3.5m and mic is hanging so there is no vibration from the floor when my people wanna move around abit like on stage

the Pop stopper has its own stand ( don't attach the pop stopper to the mic stand, not a good idea ) so only the pop stopper's stand shakes when it vibrates abit

MIC (Rode NTK)--->RODE POWER SUPPLY---->SAMSON C-VALVE (tube mic pre)---->ALTO COMPRESSOR / LIMITER / GATE (for controlling the levels and gating unwanted sounds before it hits the drive )----->LOGIC

so before it gets to logic i have to do a test or mic check 1-2 1-2 first for about 5 mins and set up the artist position and mic position and ratio and threshold on the compressor before we even start recording

you gotta make sure the artist is comfortable then you fix things around them not the other way around

when thats done all they need to do is sing or rap like they do normally and you just watch the compressor and logic do the work

now this is only good for one vocal at a time

after recording many vocals, especially on top of each other, more bass or trebble starts to build up

thats when the EQ and Compressor in logic comes in to control few of the tracks

most of the times i live the main vocal free and then i side chain the rest of the vocals on to the main vocal

so the main vocals always stands out

the side chain is the Compressor, and i make sure it has a slow attach and slow release so it doesn't full drop fast like a voice over

then i pick 4 Bus channels

Long Vocal Reverb
Short Vocal Reverb
Delay
Chorus / Flanger

all this is only for vocals

alot of people inserts reverb on each channel, with different settings

now we all know if we go to a hall to record you only get two kinds of reveb

long or short, depend on where people are standing

so the main vocals usually has short reverb bring that person closer to the audience and long for the backups so it makes them sound like they are behind the main vocal just like on stage

there no point of given the main vocal church reverb and each backup different reverbs ( it mess up the pic when you listen to it )

also

this is what i do most times

if some one sings a hook, i record 1 for the main and have it sit in the middle

then i record 4 more tracks of the same thing, and i try to get the artist to try and match the first one

now this is the catch

its impossible to match the first one but they can get close ( its better than recording one then duplicating it ) because you get phase sometimes when you do

so now mixing

Main Vocal---> CENTRE
back up 1 ---> Hard Left
back up 2 ---> Hard Right
back up 3 ---> left -30
back up 4 ---> right +30

then i put the back ups about -3db below the main track

listen to how it sounds in Head phones and in Cars

and Home stereos

its not the as good in the club because of the space between the speakers so back ups 1-2 will sound abit far out

but on headphones sounds like the people are around you

front, Back left, back right,front left and front right

thats how you can get surround sound with stereo

there is more ways to mess with vocals but basically it depends what type of song, style, and feel

but the best thing i can say is

<<< Less Is More >>>>

just because something is there doesn't mean it should be use

oh this ain't going to just SteveDjokes


this is my trick for people to pick up as well

stash

by the way check out ma songs on my space, i loaded up 11 songs, i'm loading up 9 more 2night
http://www.myspace.com/stash_productionz

$ta$h,

where'd you get that mp3 player for myspace?

X

Africa hehehe

http://www.coshed.com/generators/mp3player.php

be-careful with the annoying sound that pops up when u click the link

stash

rofl doug. brilliant.