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Post by tonycamphd on May 6, 2016 20:49:08 GMT -6
I do need to improve my handling of the bass. It's either boomy/muddy or too light. The stridency on consonants is my fault, my voice is just that way, and I'm working on it. I thought it was my mic, so I jumped through hoops to get the newly designed Blackspade UM17R Mk II. It is one of the least sibilant mics I've ever heard, yet it still had the sound I was trying to avoid. Same thing with the $3,500 Soyuz 0-17, the 2k Soyuz 0-19 FET, and the Avantone CV95 I just tried, so it was me all along. This was about as good as I could get it at home, all things considered. I'm looking forward to recording in other places again, hopefully :-) actually..., it's definitely not you, it's almost never the singer, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record..., I'll say again... excluding a weak mic/pre/converter/room, there are really only 2 major things that cause the essy, hard consonant thing, 1. being too close to the mic, 2. adding too much mis applied compression, both acts give too much energy to those frequencies that nature didn't intend them to have. Think about it, sib freq's are weak, they are easily obstructed, and do not travel well through atmosphere, think about a person whispering in your ear, lots of ess's, t's, lip smacks, and mouth noises, pretty gross unless it's a beautiful woman 8) Then think about the sound of someone talking to you from across the room, virtually no sibs or above, it's all midrange, bass doesn't really apply considering it's voice, the only thing that can give those weak sib freqs equal power to the more powerful freq's is proximity to a mic, or compressing down the more energetic freqs to the sib level, and then turning them all up! FAIL! Now lets exacerbate the problem by reverberating/effecting those wacked out sibs even more! and now you have a slice fest stew on your hands. As far as bass, thats a bit less obvious, but consider filtering off elements that are panned hard L/R a bit higher than you'd think, bass likes to mono up, and once multiple low freq's are competing for attention in the center image, things get rough.
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Post by Martin John Butler on May 6, 2016 21:46:39 GMT -6
Thank you Tony. I am happier to know that perhaps it isn't me :-) I have tried finding a middle ground, where I'm pretty far from the mic, but then I get so much ambient noise from my environment, and have a stinky sounding room to work in, I probably unconsciously lean back in a bit too much. But I think you may be right that compression is probably the main culprit. I didn't use any compression at all when tracking this vocal, but do usually put a plugin compressor on the vocal track to handle peaks after tracking, and then use The UAD Ampex, then the Slate VBC on the 2 bus to get some tone and vibe. I'll do some more experimenting until I find I'm at least getting the best I can get from within my current boundaries.
I'll try your recommendation regarding low frequencies too, it makes perfect sense.
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Post by Martin John Butler on May 7, 2016 11:15:08 GMT -6
OK, I'll tuck my head in the sand after I tell you guys of a bonehead error I made here. This song has a few unusual measures that can be counted 2 ways, either it's 6/8 with a few 3/4 measures, or 12/8 in some places. So, when the Sammy Merendino sent me the drum files, I lined them up, and thought it was a little unusual, but maybe cool, so I kept it as is. It turns out I'd placed the drums one measure late. It wasn't completely obvious because of the extra measures throwing things off a little. I just ran the track with the corrected drums, and hope that Jesse hasn't lost all the settings and can rerun it for mastering.
Who knows, maybe I'll keep the misaligned drums anyway, and call it a happy accident, but it does make more sense, now that I've run the corrected drums mix.
If it all works out, I'll post the new version.
AARRGGHH ! :-(
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Post by M57 on May 7, 2016 13:11:06 GMT -6
Keep your head high, Martin. I'll take fortuitous every time I hear it. The chord/lyric file you sent was just the ticket. Best thing to do with a tune like this is to learn it until you feel it. From there, the bar lines and changes in your head always trump the ones on paper..
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Post by Martin John Butler on May 7, 2016 14:08:23 GMT -6
Just heard from Jesse, and he'll run a new pass on Tuesday, he's away now. The good news within the bad is I'll always have the skewed version now, and if for any reason I just prefer that, once the corrected version is mastered, then it'll be a cool story to tell.
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