Removing the sound of flem in vocal recording

You've tried the new speech enhancer?

There is a whole bank of De-Phlegming presets... one of them has got to work.

J

maybe i am totally dumb and ignorant but what is FLEM :-))))

Phlegm... as in mucus, loogie, road oyster or anything else you want to cough up... pun intended.

jord

Steve,

"Flem" is a term used for the mucus one gets when they have post nasal drip from their sinus cavity drain down into their throat. (Now isn't that a nice image... :-))

As far as eliminating it from a vocal recording, I seriously doubt it's possible. Mainly because it's probably occurring at the same time a note, or pitch is occurring. You can't eliminate one without eliminating the other.

That's the kind of stuff that needs to be addressed while recording, not afterwards. However, depending on the vibe of the song, it can severely add in the believability factor, as long as it isn't causing the attention to drift from the sung performance.

Is it just a little bit, and you've become obsessed with it, now that you hear it, or is it truly distracting?

Is it from a section of the song that is repeated elsewhere, and can be flown in place of it?

Wish I had the magic trick, but there really isn't one that I know of....

Since when does phlegm make a sound? I have tried to record mine but it just sits there. 🙂

If you're referring the fact that the vocalist has not cleared their throat when singing, that's another story. If it's embedded in a vocal inflection, then chances are anything you do to remove that raspiness will probably remove some vocal characteristics. Probably best for next time to tell the vocalist to gargle with salt water and/or take some Benylin 20 minutes before recording.

jord

try this :

see if you can find a spot in the file where u can hear only the FLEM....

copy the flem and make a separate audio file from it - not revert its phase and set it to the same volume - it may help - but I dont think so:-))))

Good Luck

or copy the flem, put it to a beat and release it in America for millions of dollars!

I thought that's what those human beatboxes were: a combination of asthmatics and mucus factories with a side order of acid reflux cases.

jord

If it's sitting right on a vowel or a sustained note, it may be more work to try to fix than it is worth. Makes me wonder what could be done creatively to "distract" the listener at that point so they wouldn't notice and figure that it's all a part of the song (hard to tell without listening to it, though).

jord

However, depending on the vibe of the song, it can severely add in the believability factor

Tom Waits has made a nice career with this affliction 🙂

Re tricks to de-phlegmogorize the track...

Use the De-Phlegmorizer plug-in. There's a continually variable control labeled: "most recently ingested food group, allergy, or illness". You can adjust (and even automate) between settings of:

Full-On Flu
Dairy
Hay Fever
Chocolate Bar
Sniffles (awwww....)
Chinese Take-out
Mexican

There's also a control for switching between De-Phlegming and De-Wheezing.

It's never worked for me tho...

On the more serious tip you could get creative by grabbing sustained, non-phlegmatic vowel sounds from one area of the vocal and replacing problematic ones, but it's going to be hit-or-miss at best and really tweezy to do.

The only other thing you can do is creatively automate (dipping the volume) around certain problematic areas, but not knowing your track, this may or may not be possible.

Really simple to get rid of the flem sound. Simply play your sound in a loop. play with a graphic eq untill you find where the annoying 'flemmy' bits are.

then simply compress those particular frequencies (try to be tight), and give it a hard compression - so to start with you should hear all flem...

and then bring the level of the flem down so you don't feel it so much. You might want to put a slower attack on the compressor to make it act like a bit of a deesser - deflemmer.... I rekon my flems at about 800, 400, and 200hz or their about

Other than that all I can suggest is otravin - but otravin can hurt - it does get rid of flem very effectivley.

Actually a formant editor/viewer should be able to get it too... When I was at music school I used this cool program on a mac which allowed you to open up a file in the formant view - then you could simply draw circles around particular formants, and choose to effect only that formant - delete it, enhance it, lower or increase volume - or move it around the pitch spectrum - it was cool you could just draw circles around the individual formants....

I can't remember the name of that audio editor though - do you know the one I mean?

have you got a recording I can hear - I wouldn't mind having a go at deflemming it if you send me a high quality mp3.... 😉 make it stereo, flemmy vocal in left channel, and monomix in right channel or something. put it on the web as a high quality mp3 and I promise to help.... or at least try too.... i may laugh....

You go girl....