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Post by Blackdawg on Dec 2, 2018 21:54:03 GMT -6
I tried everything under the sun. A cardioid facing away from full range speakers in a well treated room works about as well as anything. One pass with the singer in place but not singing gives you a file to mix in out of phase. My first experiment was the lead, followed by backgrounds for Rare Earth's "I just want to Celebrate." I used a handheld Shure SM53 in the control room with the monitors pretty loud. It was the solution to the problem of an artist who wasn't very excited about the tune. This might be a stupid question, but when you record like this do you mute the recording of the vocal while it's recording so it's not playing back in realtime on the monitors? If the artist is using a floor wedge generally its because they can hear themselves better without cans. So ideally you will NOT play back themselves into the monitor. If they can't hear themselves, then the wedge is too loud.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Dec 2, 2018 22:10:53 GMT -6
I've done it both ways. The voice just sounds like it has a touch of delay if it is in the monitor.
I hate floor wedges. Side fill works much better on stage. I'm amazed at how few people seem to know that. Ear level is what I always use in the studio.
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Post by dror520 on Dec 2, 2018 22:26:28 GMT -6
Thanks for your answers! In my case, the vocalist will be in the same room as me listening through the studio monitors.
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Post by wiz on Dec 3, 2018 0:25:46 GMT -6
I've done it both ways. The voice just sounds like it has a touch of delay if it is in the monitor. I hate floor wedges. Side fill works much better on stage. I'm amazed at how few people seem to know that. Ear level is what I always use in the studio. Love side fill on stage....especially smaller club stages...band hears much better and plays better cheers Wiz
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Post by donr on Dec 3, 2018 2:02:13 GMT -6
One obvious thing you can do overdubbing vocals is put one headphone behind your ear so you can hear your voice in the room. That's what you need for pitch and intonation. Or you can slide the cans back not quite off your ears so your ears hear you sing but you're still getting some stereo cue if that's what you want. Don't make the cue mix too loud, just loud enough to sing to.
Bob O is right, singers sing better when they hear themselves in the room. But you can still do it with cans for monitoring the track.
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Post by jazznoise on Dec 3, 2018 4:01:45 GMT -6
I just recommend avoiding headphones when possible. Sometimes you can't, such as vocalists for loud bands who sing quietly so then my advice is to have a room mic for the singers headphone feed. Room mis can also be great for using for vocal FX inserts. Putting a modulated echo on the room and leaving the close one dry gives a lot of. Depth.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 3, 2018 4:31:28 GMT -6
One obvious thing you can do overdubbing vocals is put one headphone behind your ear so you can hear your voice in the room. That's what you need for pitch and intonation. Or you can slide the cans back not quite off your ears so your ears hear you sing but you're still getting some stereo cue if that's what you want. Don't make the cue mix too loud, just loud enough to sing to. Bob O is right, singers sing better when they hear themselves in the room. But you can still do it with cans for monitoring the track. This is how I have been working up to now, either cans on fully (HD600s which are open back and do let you hear quite well what's in the room), or only on one ear, but both are having severe drawbacks on my ability to relax and perform, compared to not having them on at all. It's also pretty easy for them to slide off completely, not what you want during an otherwise great take. BTW, no vocals here at the moment, just drums and two acoustic guitar parts, I'll be sending off this backing track for the singer to add vocals to later. Thanks again for all the tips, what I'm gonna try is having only one speaker on as low as possible, then the KM84 with it's back to the speaker, and see how I get on.
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Post by jcoutu1 on Dec 3, 2018 7:53:13 GMT -6
Just play the music loud in the next room like the good Captain.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Dec 3, 2018 8:35:23 GMT -6
I've done it both ways. The voice just sounds like it has a touch of delay if it is in the monitor. I hate floor wedges. Side fill works much better on stage. I'm amazed at how few people seem to know that. Ear level is what I always use in the studio. Oh great bearded one, the last paragraph makes the old monitor mixer in me cringe, but after thinking about it I’ll qualify your statement a bit, sidefills can be better if everybody on stage uses the same mic with a very linear off axis response or goes completely against conventional wisdom and goes Omni. The problem with just using side fills is moving mics and the peaky off axis response of most stage mics, you just find you are fighting all the mics with EQ cuts. I hate Badly designed floor monitors! One of the biggest problems with floor monitors is who ever designed the thing forgot all about the floor. The other thing is most just look at all wedges as being the same and small cabinets that the lay on the floor! End of rant!
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Post by Ward on Dec 3, 2018 8:44:51 GMT -6
Just play the music loud in the next room like the good Captain. Well that was just 1 minute of agony that will need hours of counseling to get over.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Dec 3, 2018 9:00:08 GMT -6
One method is putting the phones on in front of your ears. For years I wondered why some singers needed their headphones so loud. I finally figured out that's what they were doing. The bleed was just as bad as speakers! One on, one off is the most traditional way.
As for why, just cup your hands over your ears while singing a tone and listen to what happens to the pitch. Another factor is that interval perception decreases as you increase the volume. Flat sounds perfectly in tune loud. People listening at different volumes on cans are likely to never really play or sing in tune. Different 'lectronic tunas also rarely agree. When the track isn't in tune, the singer won't be!
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Post by donr on Dec 3, 2018 9:29:54 GMT -6
My own experience, I've gotten very comfortable with in-ear monitors performing live. I'm currently using Shure 846's with Comply isolation tips which provide about -30dB of isolation. I'm listening to a band mix with my voice and guitar a couple dB louder than the band. I sing better than I ever did with wedges and side fills, and I'm not killing my ears every night.
But recording, I still want to hear my voice in the room. And I like playing guitar overdubs in the control room listening to the monitors.
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Post by svart on Dec 3, 2018 9:41:57 GMT -6
Figure 8 in a completely anechoic room. The back pickup will be 180deg out of phase so you can place the speaker behind and null it out if you nudge the track into alignment afterwards.. It works probably better than the rest, but you'll never get all the bleed out, especially the phasey reflections in a live room. Er, no.
A completely anechoic room is not a natural listening environment (it bugs the HELL out of most people.)
Set up a reasonable distance from the monitors and don't turn them up any louder than necessary. Just loud enough to cue off of seems about right to me.
A little bleed is OK as long as you don't indulge in funny sounding tricks that might make it sound not OK. Bleed should be in phase and tonally balanced.
Well say that if you want, but it's the phasey comb filtering of the early reflections that I always hear in stuff done with monitors in a room. Singers always want loud, and they always want extra reverb so they can harmonize with themselves because they always practice in the shower or other live places because it makes them sound better. That's why they have a hard time with headphones, because they've spent all their time practicing in places that flatter their voice.. And then in the studio they hear what they actually sound like, and it's a tough lesson. I typically send them a hard compressed reverb'd version of their voice to emulate their shower practice environment and it works pretty well. Bleed from room monitoring is always out of phase and out of polarity to some degree, so when you start adding compression you get comb filtering and nasal sounding reflections. I think older generations were OK with the muddy room sounding stuff, as I've seen many invoke fond memories of old crooners in this thread (and honestly the recordings sound bland and, well, old), but it just doesn't work for modern works that demand clarity and perfection.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Dec 3, 2018 14:33:22 GMT -6
I was taught that performance always trumps "sound" and I've never found anything to contradict that.
I always had the cleanest bleed with full range speakers. The side of a figure-8 or out of phase speakers gets very phasey. This approach normally requires way less compression.
I had the pitch interval perception with loudness backwards in the previous post. It stretches and that results in a flat sounding performance at normal volume.
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Post by johneppstein on Dec 3, 2018 18:01:36 GMT -6
Er, no.
A completely anechoic room is not a natural listening environment (it bugs the HELL out of most people.)
Set up a reasonable distance from the monitors and don't turn them up any louder than necessary. Just loud enough to cue off of seems about right to me.
A little bleed is OK as long as you don't indulge in funny sounding tricks that might make it sound not OK. Bleed should be in phase and tonally balanced.
Well say that if you want, but it's the phasey comb filtering of the early reflections that I always hear in stuff done with monitors in a room. Singers always want loud, and they always want extra reverb so they can harmonize with themselves because they always practice in the shower or other live places because it makes them sound better. That's why they have a hard time with headphones, because they've spent all their time practicing in places that flatter their voice.. And then in the studio they hear what they actually sound like, and it's a tough lesson. I typically send them a hard compressed reverb'd version of their voice to emulate their shower practice environment and it works pretty well. Bleed from room monitoring is always out of phase and out of polarity to some degree, so when you start adding compression you get comb filtering and nasal sounding reflections. I think older generations were OK with the muddy room sounding stuff, as I've seen many invoke fond memories of old crooners in this thread (and honestly the recordings sound bland and, well, old), but it just doesn't work for modern works that demand clarity and perfection. God abhors perfection.
Seriously, today's technically "perfect" music annoys the hell out of me. It ruins the feel.
Also, see Bob O's comments about how to deal with that pesky leakage.
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Post by johneppstein on Dec 3, 2018 19:47:19 GMT -6
I've done it both ways. The voice just sounds like it has a touch of delay if it is in the monitor. I hate floor wedges. Side fill works much better on stage. I'm amazed at how few people seem to know that. Ear level is what I always use in the studio. Oh great bearded one, the last paragraph makes the old monitor mixer in me cringe, but after thinking about it I’ll qualify your statement a bit, sidefills can be better if everybody on stage uses the same mic with a very linear off axis response or goes completely against conventional wisdom and goes Omni. The problem with just using side fills is moving mics and the peaky off axis response of most stage mics, you just find you are fighting all the mics with EQ cuts. I hate Badly designed floor monitors! One of the biggest problems with floor monitors is who ever designed the thing forgot all about the floor. The other thing is most just look at all wedges as being the same and small cabinets that the lay on the floor! End of rant! Er, well.... no. Sidefills may or may not be better, depending on the size and geometry of the stage, as well as the requirements in the spot mons.
I SERIOUSLY doubt that the majority of members of the band would be very happy to get blasted by a level of lead guitar that the lead guitarist needs in his wedge to be able to get his feedback effects at the front of the stage.
What appears in each monitor mix depends on the position of the speaker and its attendant musician onstage depending on musician requirements, stage geometry, volume, and musical rfequirementys.
Mixing stage monitors is a finer art, MUCH more difficult than FOH in many ways. All the FOH guy has to do is create a good mix that is (depending on the act) a fascimile of the acts recorded work. The monitor guy has to juggle 10 or 12 mixes at the same time to give everybody what he needs in the spot mons plus gived a decent onstage balance in the fills.
It's like juggling a dozen flaming torches and a dozen swords at the same time.
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Post by johneppstein on Dec 3, 2018 20:00:42 GMT -6
Er, no.
A completely anechoic room is not a natural listening environment (it bugs the HELL out of most people.)
Set up a reasonable distance from the monitors and don't turn them up any louder than necessary. Just loud enough to cue off of seems about right to me.
A little bleed is OK as long as you don't indulge in funny sounding tricks that might make it sound not OK. Bleed should be in phase and tonally balanced.
Well say that if you want, but it's the phasey comb filtering of the early reflections that I always hear in stuff done with monitors in a room. Singers always want loud, and they always want extra reverb so they can harmonize with themselves because they always practice in the shower or other live places because it makes them sound better. That's why they have a hard time with headphones, because they've spent all their time practicing in places that flatter their voice.. And then in the studio they hear what they actually sound like, and it's a tough lesson. I typically send them a hard compressed reverb'd version of their voice to emulate their shower practice environment and it works pretty well. Bleed from room monitoring is always out of phase and out of polarity to some degree, so when you start adding compression you get comb filtering and nasal sounding reflections. I think older generations were OK with the muddy room sounding stuff, as I've seen many invoke fond memories of old crooners in this thread (and honestly the recordings sound bland and, well, old), but it just doesn't work for modern works that demand clarity and perfection. Are you speaking from experience with completely anechoic rooms or are you just talking out of "Theory"?
Because I've done listening in a few completely anechoic rooms (they're not at all common) and I've without exception found them to be UITTERLY HORRRIBLE listening envirionments. The total deadness makes it impossible to judge pitch. You can't judge dynamics at all.
I also disagree strongly with your comments about singers - unless the singers aren't very good.
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Post by ericn on Dec 3, 2018 20:24:41 GMT -6
Well say that if you want, but it's the phasey comb filtering of the early reflections that I always hear in stuff done with monitors in a room. Singers always want loud, and they always want extra reverb so they can harmonize with themselves because they always practice in the shower or other live places because it makes them sound better. That's why they have a hard time with headphones, because they've spent all their time practicing in places that flatter their voice.. And then in the studio they hear what they actually sound like, and it's a tough lesson. I typically send them a hard compressed reverb'd version of their voice to emulate their shower practice environment and it works pretty well. Bleed from room monitoring is always out of phase and out of polarity to some degree, so when you start adding compression you get comb filtering and nasal sounding reflections. I think older generations were OK with the muddy room sounding stuff, as I've seen many invoke fond memories of old crooners in this thread (and honestly the recordings sound bland and, well, old), but it just doesn't work for modern works that demand clarity and perfection. God abhors perfection.
Seriously, today's technically "perfect" music annoys the hell out of me. It ruins the feel.
Also, see Bob O's comments about how to deal with that pesky leakage.
John I was trying to figure out where Bob was coming from on this all day and then how to put it into words looking at it from the prospective of somebody who lived in monitor hell so here it goes. I think Bob is coming from the perspective of being in the wings where your probably more or less on axis with a side fill. In general side fills are probably the most generally balanced mix on the stage. We look at fills like a lighting wash and specific wedges like spotlights. Unless you have lived the life that is mixing monitors you don’t get it. You and I both know how often aesthetics have trumped what would be a good set up and how a generic set up for a multi act gig isn’t a compromise it’s trying to pull a miracle out of the gates of hell. Honestly I see a all IEW set up and think how spoiled these guys are. Like I said you gave to have lived it to get it my friend and we have. Just told my wife I was writing about wedge world and she asked if It was PTSD flashback.
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Post by jazznoise on Dec 4, 2018 6:59:34 GMT -6
Well say that if you want, but it's the phasey comb filtering of the early reflections that I always hear in stuff done with monitors in a room. Singers always want loud, and they always want extra reverb so they can harmonize with themselves because they always practice in the shower or other live places because it makes them sound better. That's why they have a hard time with headphones, because they've spent all their time practicing in places that flatter their voice.. And then in the studio they hear what they actually sound like, and it's a tough lesson. I typically send them a hard compressed reverb'd version of their voice to emulate their shower practice environment and it works pretty well. Bleed from room monitoring is always out of phase and out of polarity to some degree, so when you start adding compression you get comb filtering and nasal sounding reflections. I think older generations were OK with the muddy room sounding stuff, as I've seen many invoke fond memories of old crooners in this thread (and honestly the recordings sound bland and, well, old), but it just doesn't work for modern works that demand clarity and perfection. Svart, I get that we live in pretty much opposite land of recording philosophy but there's a few key points I disagree with in what you're saying. 1) I don't believe singers always want "extra" reverb, especially in the heavier music we work on. Getting the driest vocal possible to then add a lot of additional reverb to seems me seems counter-intuitive. It doesn't matter nearly as much as if the vocal was left dry, since the 2 reverbs will merge. 2) You point out that artists practice in places that flatter their voices, but according to you they don't record in them and it's a hard lesson that they have to take on. Why not? Why would the space you choose for their vocal take not be an acoustically flattering environment? Taking into consideration that you also commented on poor sounding reflections that mean the artist has to use headphones - it sounds like the space in question is the problem. Now there's always tweaking to be had, and I typically insert a limiter on the "Band" track as the singer sings and I'll probably change the loudness of some elements for the singers comfort but I should be able to get it sounding good. I'd really consider this - if they sound better in their bathroom, why not use that? I've a big bathroom on the 2nd floor of my house, it's an old Victorian place, and I often end up dragging my interface and my preamps up the stairs to have a go in there. If they want to sing through monitors, it's downstairs and if we go upstairs it has to be headphones unfortunately. I'm no expert on studios where you are, but the big issue in my local area is everyone has these shitty dead booths and rooms for vocals where they go in and sing through headphones and the performances often sound really poor, the sonics aside. Live many of these vocalists are much more in control, and sound better - I consider that a failure of the studio engineer, and not the performer. Some of my workflow is undoubtedly a reaction to that, but I don't see what the alternative is. You need good spaces to work. 3) Monitoring: Sending someone a compressed, reverb'd version of their singing as the headphone mix and complaining they've tuning issues seems problematic to me. There's a number of prominent engineers who state that compressing the vocal on the headphone feed will cause tuning issues, especially for inexperienced vocalists, because they start trying to push against the threshold of the compressor. Sincerely, I think you're giving them a hard time with this approach. Why don't you give them a facsimile of what they're used to? Giving them a room mic which will provide the early reflections they're used to is a much more effective approach, and again will take an artificial reverb much more easily. Else just take the headphones off if all they're doing is eating a close mic. Again the phase cancellation trick to cancel the bleed will also make light work of this. Singing is hard, and I think making it a comfortable experience so you can explore ideas productively and not lose those first takes on setup is super important. I'm not meaning to come down on you, this is a philosophy I see a lot, but I think it makes the singer work harder in recording and the engineer work harder in post when ideally you're both working hard on Day 1 and everything after that is easy. 4) Lastly, I don't think it's crooner nostalgia and I think separating recordings by time like that is dismissive, ahistorical and a bit smug seeming. Musical trends moving linearly are an illusion, a totally ahistorical narrative. The biggest vocal effects in use now are the same ones we had in the 50's. It's rare you get something breaking the mold, but here's an interesting example: Bowie's Heroes is a series of room mics that get turned on as he gets louder. Totally unique sounding, has nothing to do with his contemporaries or anything outside of the classical tradition. Was he being modern, or not? If he wasn't being modern, then how can it sound 70's to us now? Compare that to the current craze of gated verbs in pop, and the tedious hardon for distorted slapback in "Indie Rawk" and it's deeply nostalgic in nature. Are they being modern, or not? Should that answer be reflected in my production decisions? In my view it's just done because artists are insecure and pressure themselves into doing what they think others will like. Culture is mercurial, trying to treat it objectively makes life harder than it needs to be. Why don't we do: whatever we want? We can dictate what's modern. As for the superiority of modern fidelity: Look at how modern Trap artists record, like Future: some meh LDC on a tour bus with a 2i2 and a single version of the beat. Plenty of compression there, is definitely the most popular style of music of the last 5 yeas. You mightn't like the music, but it's as contemporary a production style as you can get.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Dec 4, 2018 8:44:52 GMT -6
I tried everything under the sun. A cardioid facing away from full range speakers in a well treated room works about as well as anything. One pass with the singer in place but not singing gives you a file to mix in out of phase. My first experiment was the lead, followed by backgrounds for Rare Earth's "I just want to Celebrate." I used a handheld Shure SM53 in the control room with the monitors pretty loud. It was the solution to the problem of an artist who wasn't very excited about the tune. I have been playing “ I Just Want to Celebrate “ since Bob posted this because I wanted to Er evaluate his results and he planted the ear worm in my head. Damn it I can’t get past the groove, ear worm and performance and that says a lot. It’s about the performance, the emotion it brings that makes you want to move. That if you open the car door on a 30 something wet drizzling day brings a smile to peoples faces and you see there lips singing that hook. The thing is the little fully covered Muslim ladies who couldn’t keep them selves from singing along in the ALDI parking lot could careless how Bob got that performance, just that he did.
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Post by svart on Dec 4, 2018 9:31:41 GMT -6
Well say that if you want, but it's the phasey comb filtering of the early reflections that I always hear in stuff done with monitors in a room. Singers always want loud, and they always want extra reverb so they can harmonize with themselves because they always practice in the shower or other live places because it makes them sound better. That's why they have a hard time with headphones, because they've spent all their time practicing in places that flatter their voice.. And then in the studio they hear what they actually sound like, and it's a tough lesson. I typically send them a hard compressed reverb'd version of their voice to emulate their shower practice environment and it works pretty well. Bleed from room monitoring is always out of phase and out of polarity to some degree, so when you start adding compression you get comb filtering and nasal sounding reflections. I think older generations were OK with the muddy room sounding stuff, as I've seen many invoke fond memories of old crooners in this thread (and honestly the recordings sound bland and, well, old), but it just doesn't work for modern works that demand clarity and perfection. Svart, I get that we live in pretty much opposite land of recording philosophy but there's a few key points I disagree with in what you're saying. 1) I don't believe singers always want "extra" reverb, especially in the heavier music we work on. Getting the driest vocal possible to then add a lot of additional reverb to seems me seems counter-intuitive. It doesn't matter nearly as much as if the vocal was left dry, since the 2 reverbs will merge. 2) You point out that artists practice in places that flatter their voices, but according to you they don't record in them and it's a hard lesson that they have to take on. Why not? Why would the space you choose for their vocal take not be an acoustically flattering environment? Taking into consideration that you also commented on poor sounding reflections that mean the artist has to use headphones - it sounds like the space in question is the problem. Now there's always tweaking to be had, and I typically insert a limiter on the "Band" track as the singer sings and I'll probably change the loudness of some elements for the singers comfort but I should be able to get it sounding good. I'd really consider this - if they sound better in their bathroom, why not use that? I've a big bathroom on the 2nd floor of my house, it's an old Victorian place, and I often end up dragging my interface and my preamps up the stairs to have a go in there. If they want to sing through monitors, it's downstairs and if we go upstairs it has to be headphones unfortunately. I'm no expert on studios where you are, but the big issue in my local area is everyone has these shitty dead booths and rooms for vocals where they go in and sing through headphones and the performances often sound really poor, the sonics aside. Live many of these vocalists are much more in control, and sound better - I consider that a failure of the studio engineer, and not the performer. Some of my workflow is undoubtedly a reaction to that, but I don't see what the alternative is. You need good spaces to work. 3) Monitoring: Sending someone a compressed, reverb'd version of their singing as the headphone mix and complaining they've tuning issues seems problematic to me. There's a number of prominent engineers who state that compressing the vocal on the headphone feed will cause tuning issues, especially for inexperienced vocalists, because they start trying to push against the threshold of the compressor. Sincerely, I think you're giving them a hard time with this approach. Why don't you give them a facsimile of what they're used to? Giving them a room mic which will provide the early reflections they're used to is a much more effective approach, and again will take an artificial reverb much more easily. Else just take the headphones off if all they're doing is eating a close mic. Again the phase cancellation trick to cancel the bleed will also make light work of this. Singing is hard, and I think making it a comfortable experience so you can explore ideas productively and not lose those first takes on setup is super important. I'm not meaning to come down on you, this is a philosophy I see a lot, but I think it makes the singer work harder in recording and the engineer work harder in post when ideally you're both working hard on Day 1 and everything after that is easy. 4) Lastly, I don't think it's crooner nostalgia and I think separating recordings by time like that is dismissive, ahistorical and a bit smug seeming. Musical trends moving linearly are an illusion, a totally ahistorical narrative. The biggest vocal effects in use now are the same ones we had in the 50's. It's rare you get something breaking the mold, but here's an interesting example: Bowie's Heroes is a series of room mics that get turned on as he gets louder. Totally unique sounding, has nothing to do with his contemporaries or anything outside of the classical tradition. Was he being modern, or not? If he wasn't being modern, then how can it sound 70's to us now? Compare that to the current craze of gated verbs in pop, and the tedious hardon for distorted slapback in "Indie Rawk" and it's deeply nostalgic in nature. Are they being modern, or not? Should that answer be reflected in my production decisions? In my view it's just done because artists are insecure and pressure themselves into doing what they think others will like. Culture is mercurial, trying to treat it objectively makes life harder than it needs to be. Why don't we do: whatever we want? We can dictate what's modern. As for the superiority of modern fidelity: Look at how modern Trap artists record, like Future: some meh LDC on a tour bus with a 2i2 and a single version of the beat. Plenty of compression there, is definitely the most popular style of music of the last 5 yeas. You mightn't like the music, but it's as contemporary a production style as you can get. 1. It's just an observation. Most I've worked with ask for some kind of reverb on their headphone return. I've also noticed that most sing more evenly with some compression in addition to the reverb too. They instinctively harmonize with their own voice if they can hear the reverb too. It's a trick for a better vocal at the mic. As well all know, the source is where it's crucial to get the best performance. I don't understand what you mean by "2 reverbs merge" because the reverb on the headphone return isn't the one I might use in the mix, it's only on the headphone feed. I track the vocal itself dry, it's just what they hear that has effect on it. Another trick is to track the warmups and play them back with a little verb during the real tracking so the singer can harmonize with those. It makes them more even sounding and strangely enough it seems to calm them if they are jittery. Maybe it's like singing with a group and they don't feel so singled out? 2. Because I don't know what the mix will be like half the time, and it's best if the vocal is dry enough to be effected to how the mix turns out. I USED to record in spaces, but more often than not, it's either overdone or underdone or the tone doesn't work as the band changes it's mind and by that time it's impossible to change the tones in the mix (and they certainly don't want to pay to do it all over). It's the same as recording a fender twin and then the guitarist wants the mix to sound more like a mesa rectifier during the mix.. Which is why I always DI guitars and bass now, so I can change anything and everything later. It's all about the result and rarely do the bands/artists care about how we got there, they just want it to be bigger and better than any effort they put it. I've often heard mixes where everthing is super dense and lush and the vocal sounds like it was recorded in a shower and sounds nothing like the rest of the mix. To me it sounds like the effect was a poor choice but was baked into the track and the engineer had no choice. That's not me. I've been there and it sucks and I'm not being stung by that again. I'm leaving options open until the mix. 3. I never said tuning issues. Giving them a solid vocal with some effect allows them to hear themselves no matter how dynamic the other instruments are. Lots of vocalists complain that they can't hear themselves during loud passages, so the compression helps without them turning their headphones up. Headphones up ruins their ears during the sessions and they lose their tonal perception and it makes things much worse, as well as makes more headphone bleed. A nice even compression allows a lower headphone level for the same clarity, and thus less ear fatigue and longer sessions before tiring. Mind you, these are tricks I've worked out over the years to get better performances. These aren't just ravings, these are developed techniques that seem to work much more often than they don't, and such, I don't really care what others have done, nor do I care what others think about it. It works, if you have an open mind. 4. Well, with a thread full of folks telling us that "this is how vocals should sound" (my paraphrase), I can at least inject my opinion that I don't like that old style vocal sound, and a thread full of folks dismissing my thoughts as wrong for offering a differing opinion is the smug you truly seek. I mean, you did write a lengthy reply to essentially tell me I'm wrong for doing things my way.. But hey, critique away because I have good reasons for why I do things this way and I'm completely open to discussing them. All in all, I don't really care what others do, I only care that they feel the need to attack my way of doing work, which comes from decades of developing a workflow that is faster and easier for all involved at my studio and I'm not ashamed in the least. I've spent my years feeling inadequate and questioning everything based on internet opinions and I'm done with all that now. I feel that folks who've taken their time to reply to this thread have an overwhelming nostalgia for older sounds/tones, which I don't share. Remember, mixing isn't about just putting together the sum of the tracks and calling it a day. We're selling the illusion of being bigger than life. We need to be agile with the mix and avoid rigidly sticking to plans because that's how we end up with mundane results. We need to twist knobs and add effects and produce greatness from average input, and after all that's what the bands pay us to do. The bands and artists can get mundane results from their own garage and some mics and a 2i2 if they wanted.
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Post by svart on Dec 4, 2018 9:56:42 GMT -6
Well say that if you want, but it's the phasey comb filtering of the early reflections that I always hear in stuff done with monitors in a room. Singers always want loud, and they always want extra reverb so they can harmonize with themselves because they always practice in the shower or other live places because it makes them sound better. That's why they have a hard time with headphones, because they've spent all their time practicing in places that flatter their voice.. And then in the studio they hear what they actually sound like, and it's a tough lesson. I typically send them a hard compressed reverb'd version of their voice to emulate their shower practice environment and it works pretty well. Bleed from room monitoring is always out of phase and out of polarity to some degree, so when you start adding compression you get comb filtering and nasal sounding reflections. I think older generations were OK with the muddy room sounding stuff, as I've seen many invoke fond memories of old crooners in this thread (and honestly the recordings sound bland and, well, old), but it just doesn't work for modern works that demand clarity and perfection. Are you speaking from experience with completely anechoic rooms or are you just talking out of "Theory"?
Because I've done listening in a few completely anechoic rooms (they're not at all common) and I've without exception found them to be UITTERLY HORRRIBLE listening envirionments. The total deadness makes it impossible to judge pitch. You can't judge dynamics at all.
I also disagree strongly with your comments about singers - unless the singers aren't very good.
I've worked in anechoic rooms before, but not for recording. it was for EMI/RFI and FCC/CE compliance testing. It IS crazy how it can ruin your balance and such. Wearing earplugs helps a lot. But then again, it's semantics. I didn't mean a truly anechoic chamber, just a dead room in general. I know nobody is going to work in a truly anechoic chamber, so it's a figure of speech. Hell, even a very large room can work as long as there aren't a bunch of high-amplitude early reflections adding to the comb filtering. I think singers are much more sensitive about their performance and more easily demoralized in the studio than other musicians, and most are NOT professional caliber and never pretended to be. They are just regular people who want to do something with/in their lives. I try very hard to keep them upbeat, and part of that is to figure out ways to get them farther, faster, and today's singers are less practiced and less trained than those before. There's also a lot more of them out there who think that they can make it big through studio trickery. Unfortunately it's a fine line between placating them for money and helping them find their weaknesses to help them improve. I at least try to get them a decent product without draining their cash with tons of retakes, while trying to help them by coaching as much as I can. Often I stop and give them pointers that I've learned from other singers and I try to tune in to each singer's personality during the sessions so I can recognize when they're having troubles because most want to do better and please myself and/or the band so they rarely admit when they're having trouble. I find that if I'm the one seeing these things and making sure they have water and time to rest and critique, they are more at ease and do better work because they don't feel so behind the eightball. I also tell jokes, short stories and generally try to keep them from focusing unnecessarily on small stuff. Again, it's a process that I've found works better than just being a stoic bump on a log continuously telling them to do another take. One other killer is taking a bunch of time to "try" stuff like monitors instead of cans. If we have to try a bunch of stuff to get something that "works" that's also wasted money and artists generally see this as me either not knowing what I'm doing, and/or they take it as they're not good enough and it makes the rest of the session harder because we need to gain that confident sounding vocal back. I don't know what kind of singers you work with on a regular basis, but I don't work with "professional" singers most of the time. They're just part timers who want to record in a studio because they know that I can produce a better result than they can, and I'm going to do my damnedest to give them that even if it takes doing things that are unconventional or things that others consider wrong. There is nothing better than seeing someone love the results, and the end justifies the means in this business.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Dec 4, 2018 13:41:49 GMT -6
Back in the day we'd put a delayed EMT plate in the phones and that helped intonation. When you tried that with a Lexicon piece of sh!t, the damn chorusing threw the singers' intonation all to hell.
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Post by chessparov on Dec 4, 2018 16:58:15 GMT -6
Hmmm... I wonder how the UA version would do? Chris
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Post by Quint on Dec 4, 2018 18:26:47 GMT -6
Just play the music loud in the next room like the good Captain. Love Captain Beefheart.
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