Recorded some vocals for our album today...

digitalscream

...and, more by luck than judgement, we came up with this arrangement while we were setting up:



That stereo pair (AKG C1000S x 2) picked up some lovely ambient natural reverb, and it sounded bloody fantastic mixed in with the main Rode NT1A you can see there.

My conclusion is that the conventional wisdom amongst most bands that vocals have to be recorded in a dead-sounding room is absolute bollocks. We've recorded like that at studios any number of times, and these vocals sounded so much better it's no comparison.

I've had my smug face on all day, because our singer was convinced it'd never work and that everything we were doing would sound shit because we're not paying £200/day for the magic professionals to do it...

guitarfishbay

It depends on so many factors.

We use quite a treated, but not dead, room. However I generally don’t have our singer that close to the mic - and the further back the more the room reflections and tone influence the sound. So the room has to sound decent to begin with. It looks like you have curtains behind the singer - that’s going to help a decent amount.

Also I’m guessing you’re panning those ambient mics - that’ll sound bigger than just a mono mic assuming everything is in phase.

To be honest much as the technical side matters it’s pretty much 90% in the performance of the singer themselves... my own philosophy is my most important job is to not screw up capturing their good stuff.

Macca_25387

I love trying stuff like this you can fall on some great sounds. the only down side of course is you're stuck with the reverb indefinitely. Recording vocals dry gives you the option to add and remove as required.

guitarfishbay

digitalscream said:

I've had my smug face on all day, because our singer was convinced it'd never work and that everything we were doing would sound shit because we're not paying £200/day for the magic professionals to do it...

Being fair tone isn’t the primary reason you’d do vocals with a pro. Or at least not the reason I’d do it anyway.

In my mind the vocals matter an order of magnitude more than every other instrument, so getting the right performances and arrangements down are pretty much what makes or breaks the song.

Someone charging £200/+ a day probably has done a bunch of albums and know what’s good enough and have a good idea of how to pull it out performance wise from the singer.

Not discounting that it isn’t possible to get this out of self produced stuff, we self produce too, but I personally don’t think it’s that easy. Takes being both brutally honest and also tactful/constructive as so much of it is psychological with singers. 

digitalscream

Macca_25387 said:

I love trying stuff like this you can fall on some great sounds. the only down side of course is you're stuck with the reverb indefinitely. Recording vocals dry gives you the option to add and remove as required.

That's the thing - the main mic picked everything up pretty much flat, so the reverb is 99% coming from the AKGs and can be mixed in exactly as much as we want. The real miracle here is that it got exactly the result we were looking for at the first try. They're even in phase, without measuring anything!

guitarfishbay said:

digitalscream said:

I've had my smug face on all day, because our singer was convinced it'd never work and that everything we were doing would sound shit because we're not paying £200/day for the magic professionals to do it...

Being fair tone isn’t the primary reason you’d do vocals with a pro. Or at least not the reason I’d do it anyway.

In my mind the vocals matter an order of magnitude more than every other instrument, so getting the right performances and arrangements down are pretty much what makes or breaks the song.

Someone charging £200/+ a day probably has done a bunch of albums and know what’s good enough and have a good idea of how to pull it out performance wise from the singer.

Not discounting that it isn’t possible to get this out of self produced stuff, we self produce too, but I personally don’t think it’s that easy. Takes being both brutally honest and also tactful/constructive as so much of it is psychological with singers. 

Yeah, I totally get that. The thing is, we've never got the results we wanted from any of the five studios we've used, hence doing it ourselves. Even when we managed to get the stems (only the last two), the recordings just sounded lifeless.

This band's been going for about 7 years (I took a three year break in the middle due to throwing my toys out of the pram) and three of us have known each other for way longer. We've got a very solid idea of what the songs need to sound like, and we're all comfortable enough with each other to be able to be honest without problems...also, I seem to have a knack for getting good performances out of people. Very likely more luck than judgement, but this will be the third band I've done this for and every time all involved have said the results were exactly what they wanted it to be.

I'm no professional, but...for me, 90% of it is understanding the core sound of the band. None of the professionals we've worked with have taken the time to properly "get" that part and tried too much to force their own sound on us, and consequently completely missed the point of what we were trying to get across.

spark240

If it works.....use it...that the way I work,......I’ve used loads of dodgy acoustic guitar recordings on final mixes, they just sound good to me.

guitarfishbay

digitalscream said:

I'm no professional, but...for me, 90% of it is understanding the core sound of the band. None of the professionals we've worked with have taken the time to properly "get" that part and tried too much to force their own sound on us, and consequently completely missed the point of what we were trying to get across.

Absolutely.

To an extent this depends on luck and budget if you can find someone within a reasonable distance who gets the sound you're going for.  If you can't, you might as well do it DIY unless you can justify paying to travel for the right person, which realistically most smaller bands just can't.

darcym

so to take a slight tangent on this thread @digitalscream is this towards your concept album style music you where working on, or are you back with a more traditional band ?

Stuckfast

The idea that vocals have to be recorded in a 'booth' is certainly bollocks of the highest order. Like most other instruments, vocals sound best in a large, well-treated live room. Most people also mic vocals too close in my view, you're often best off having the mic a foot or more away in a good space.

However, I wouldn't usually bother recording ambient mics for a vocal, I'd just add artificial reverb later.

digitalscream

darcym said:

so to take a slight tangent on this thread @digitalscream is this towards your concept album style music you where working on, or are you back with a more traditional band ?

I had to be realistic with myself...I simply don't have the time to write and record 50+ songs at the moment, so I'm afraid the concept album is shelved (for probably the next 5 or 6 years, the way things are going...or until I win the lottery).

So yeah, this is a traditional band - http://www.blackhawkdown.org.uk

darcym

heavier than your old stuff, I'll certainly be following and having a listen, I like that you managed to get out with your gilmour N4 already and have the photos up

digitalscream

OK, this won't be up for long, but...

<link removed>

It's not all heavy

Bear in mind that I'm still in the early stages of learning to mix stuff, and I'm still working out the best way to use the ambient mics (they're far too prominent in some places).

darcym

is your singer doing both the vocal tracks on that ? or is it two different people ?

digitalscream

Singer does two of them in the second chorus, then the other guitarist and the bass player do the rest.

darcym

so the main vocal that's double tracked harmony thats the singer ?

digitalscream

Ah, I see. The harmony under the first verse and the second verse is the other guitarist (as is one of the harmony parts in the chorus, and the other is the bassist). The pushed second vocal under the second verse is the singer.

darcym

it's a cool part, it works really well, I couldn't work out if it was the same guy or not, and was impressed you'd got the voices to blend so well.

digitalscream

Ah, awesome - cheers!

darcym

had a real listen now, quite enjoyed a lot of it. Sounds like this will end up another good band.

spark240

digitalscream said:

OK, this won't be up for long, but...

<link removed>

It's not all heavy

Bear in mind that I'm still in the early stages of learning to mix stuff, and I'm still working out the best way to use the ambient mics (they're far too prominent in some places).

Nice mix dude...personally I would bring those opening guitars slightly closer to centre, seem a bit too separated or a nice trick is to use reverb on the Left guitar panned right and vice versa...

I would also try a compressor on the heavy guitars side chained from the vocal....that would allow the vox to cut through a lot more.

Great mix anyway...

digitalscream

@spark240 - good suggestions. Took 'em both, as well as a fair few tweaks here and there to give it more air. What do you reckon?

<link removed>

Bear in mind I'll probably delete them tomorrow, 'cos nobody's supposed to be listening to these yet