Singers

[john]

Hey

The perenial problem for engineers is how to record singers with poor microphone technique, and untrained voices. The latter can be the most frustrating as the voice tends to have high levels of dynamic variation. So, does anyone have any tips for other boards users on everything from microphone selection, microphone placement, dealing with plosives like 'p' and 'b' (pop blast), EQ, headroom and compression.

btw there are some articles covering some of this on Songstuff:

Recording Articles - Songstuff

Cheers

John

[Prometheus]

Well, the B's and P's are easy to sort out even if you're broke... Get a 25 CD spindle next time you're buying in CD-R's, take the cylindrical lid from it and cut the top out, then get a reasonaby thin pair of socks or a pair of tights and stretch them around both sides and fix them with staples and cellotape... You have a perfect dual layer plosive blocker that blocks out all air, but let's through frequencies that a cat wouldn't be able to hear (and that's not rhetoric by the way I checked the denier of the tights I used and did the maths!), eliminating all plosives...

On the other point, I think it's very much better to take it on a case by case basis, but if you have someone with an appalling microphone technique who won't listen to advice, my recommendation is to employ that old faithful studio tool, the baseball bat...

Seriously, what can you do but compress the f**k out of the vocal track if they have bad microphone technique and no dynamic control?

[Alistair]

Great advice but how do you fix the plosive blocker in front of the mic when it is on a stand?

[Prometheus]

Great advice but how do you fix the plosive blocker in front of the mic when it is on a stand?

I usually just tell the artiste to hold it 3 inches from the microphone... Surprisingly, singers tend to adapt to it very quickly, even when they otherwise don't have good microphone technique

[FinnArild]

Speaking as a singer, a good producers job is to try and find the character in the song and explaining it to me so I visualize it correctly. I tend to ask the producer what he wants, and go through the different "voices" I have for him to choose from.

Often it helps if he sets up some visualization pictures like "imagine you're singing directly into my ear" or "imagine you are shouting out to someone you hate" - visualization is very powerful.

It's a bit further than b's and t's, but ...

[Prometheus]

Speaking as a singer, a good producers job is to try and find the character in the song and explaining it to me so I visualize it correctly. I tend to ask the producer what he wants, and go through the different "voices" I have for him to choose from.

Often it helps if he sets up some visualization pictures like "imagine you're singing directly into my ear" or "imagine you are shouting out to someone you hate" - visualization is very powerful.

It's a bit further than b's and t's, but ...

It's not something I regard as being my remit... Although I have had to occasionally adopt a de facto producers role and make limited decisions regarding the character of a song, I always try to explain to people that I am an engineer / technician, and if they want to know the answer to questions along the lines of "if this song was a vegetable, would you characterize it as more aubergine or tomato", I generally tell them to ask a fellow artiste...

Edited September 30, 2005 by Prometheus

[john]

Well, the B's and P's are easy to sort out even if you're broke... Get a 25 CD spindle next time you're buying in CD-R's, take the cylindrical lid from it and cut the top out, then get a reasonaby thin pair of socks or a pair of tights and stretch them around both sides and fix them with staples and cellotape... You have a perfect dual layer plosive blocker that blocks out all air, but let's through frequencies that a cat wouldn't be able to hear (and that's not rhetoric by the way I checked the denier of the tights I used and did the maths!), eliminating all plosives...

On the other point, I think it's very much better to take it on a case by case basis, but if you have someone with an appalling microphone technique who won't listen to advice, my recommendation is to employ that old faithful studio tool, the baseball bat...

Seriously, what can you do but compress the f**k out of the vocal track if they have bad microphone technique and no dynamic control?

The thing is, most singers only have reasonable dynamic control, and microphone technique. I'll give the spindle a try. Sounds like an interesting tip.

So what about headroom, compression, EQ, placement for your industry standard singer? I'm interested in both the recording and the mixdown stages. I have my own way of working, but it's always interesting to hear others!

Cheers

John

[Prometheus]

The thing is, most singers only have reasonable dynamic control, and microphone technique. I'll give the spindle a try. Sounds like an interesting tip.

So what about headroom, compression, EQ, placement for your industry standard singer? I'm interested in both the recording and the mixdown stages. I have my own way of working, but it's always interesting to hear others!

Cheers

John

I've still yet to track any two singers who are alike, but very generally speaking, I've found a slight mid cut, and a boost from 1K up to the top (watching for the sibilants of course) and compression with a very high threshold at about 4 or 5 to 1 is a good general rule of thumb for the room and equipment that I work with, but the human voice is without doubt the least predictable instrument that I've come across... Of course, there are no hard and fast rules, and different studios are going to throw up different variations...

[BongStuff]

I remember recording a "wailing diva" type girl for a rave band. She just WOULD NOT stay back from the mike. In fact she got lipstick all over my best SM58!

So eventually, I put two other mikes ( 57's ) up higher and behind the '58, and basically just recorded them - without telling the singer that the mike she was fellatiating was switched off. Worked a treat.

BS

[john]

I remember recording a "wailing diva" type girl for a rave band. She just WOULD NOT stay back from the mike. In fact she got lipstick all over my best SM58!

So eventually, I put two other mikes ( 57's ) up higher and behind the '58, and basically just recorded them - without telling the singer that the mike she was fellatiating was switched off. Worked a treat.

BS

What a sucker!

:

[Prometheus]

I remember recording a "wailing diva" type girl for a rave band. She just WOULD NOT stay back from the mike. In fact she got lipstick all over my best SM58!

So eventually, I put two other mikes ( 57's ) up higher and behind the '58, and basically just recorded them - without telling the singer that the mike she was fellatiating was switched off. Worked a treat.

BS

I can empathise, I had a Diva recording for a rave song who dropped a very expensive capacitor mike, forcing me to go to the toilet and count to 500 so I could come back through calm enough not to kill her...

Good technique with the extra mikes though... I use that one quite a lot tracking acoustic guitars to give me some options for tweaking the timbre...

[Donna]

Those are good suggestions about the mics (plural), Bong.

Prometheus, the spindle...do you mean the thing the CD disc sits on, when the CD cover is opened up? Do you really have them hold it manually? Seems something could be worked out w/ wires, I'll have a go!

Am I doing something wrong? The signal seems too hot in my ear, etc; when I sing. Even with

others who know how to record, seems I rarely stay 3 inches away. And I'm not a wailing diva, I wish I was. But the engineers never correct me when I'm singing with my face closer to floor than mic for certain parts.

BTW, what I do in rec. the only voice I've ever done, is to try not to overcompensate with boominess, because things sound too bright in the first place. The little knobs I put kinda in the middle (the 2 knobs which sit on top of one another...threre are a pairof them for each track).

[Prometheus]

Those are good suggestions about the mics (plural), Bong.

Prometheus, the spindle...do you mean the thing the CD disc sits on, when the CD cover is opened up? Do you really have them hold it manually? Seems something could be worked out w/ wires, I'll have a go!

Am I doing something wrong? The signal seems too hot in my ear, etc; when I sing. Even with

others who know how to record, seems I rarely stay 3 inches away. And I'm not a wailing diva, I wish I was. But the engineers never correct me when I'm singing with my face closer to floor than mic for certain parts.

BTW, what I do in rec. the only voice I've ever done, is to try not to overcompensate with boominess, because things sound too bright in the first place. The little knobs I put kinda in the middle (the 2 knobs which sit on top of one another...threre are a pairof them for each track).

Yeah, I think it's best to leave the EQ centered and do any corrections later at the mixing stage... The only time I would ever use EQ at the recording stage is on a singer I had recorded a lot of times and knew the formants of their voice very well, and generally not even then...

When you say the signal in the cans is to hot, do you mean compared with the rest of the track? I have that problem too, but I'm spoilt for routing possiblilities, so if the backing track is too quiet and I can route it through a group and back into the mix, and basically slide the group faders up as far as double the original signals power, and vice versa if the singing is not hot enough in the cans... I'm not sure what kind of controls your desk has, so it's hard to think of solutions to this problem without knowing the layout. I've also got tape trim controls that can be used to attenuate or boost the level of the signal returning to the desk from tape which can be used to correct this problem...

Before I had the desk I'm currently using now, I used two small desks, one for recording to tape and one from monitoring from the tape, so I had a sub out on one of the desks sending a feed for monitoring what was being recorded going to the other desk, and this gave enough control to sort out any anomalies in the headphone mix, but I understand not everyone has loads of mixing desks lying around the place... Where I was lucky was that when I went to college, they gave me a cheque every three months that came to about £4000 a year, and I was working part time which paid for the rent and alcohol, so I just spent all my student loans on recording equipment...

[Prometheus]

Oh yeah, I forgot, I do make them hold the popshield... I was thinking of rigging up a contraption to hold it up, then I thought, "what for?" the thing only ways about a quarter of an ounce, so even the most egotistical primadonnas can hold it up without difficulty...

Just as a point of interest, you can see it in the picture to the left there...

Edited October 10, 2005 by Prometheus

[john]

Oh yeah, I forgot, I do make them hold the popshield... I was thinking of rigging up a contraption to hold it up, then I thought, "what for?" the thing only ways about a quarter of an ounce, so even the most egotistical primadonnas can hold it up without difficulty...

Just as a point of interest, you can see it in the picture to the left there...

It does make the promo shots for the album a talking point...

[Donna]

Prometheus, yes, it's too hot relative to the other tracks.

I also compensate by upping the other things, on my own small scale.

This is a good reference to ruturn to, as I come up in knowledge/gear.

[FinnArild]

But seriously guys - trying to get the most out of the singer _before_ the mic instance is really no'1 - You can have the best voice in the world singing, but if the singer and producer hasn't got an idea about how it's gonna sound (angry, sore, happy, sexy, ...) it's gonna be just sounds and words.

Work with the lyrics and melody - work with the words and the meanings. Communicate whith the listener. All the worlds' best compressors can't do this - but a good producer and singer can without them.

[Prometheus]

But seriously guys - trying to get the most out of the singer _before_ the mic instance is really no'1 - You can have the best voice in the world singing, but if the singer and producer hasn't got an idea about how it's gonna sound (angry, sore, happy, sexy, ...) it's gonna be just sounds and words.

Work with the lyrics and melody - work with the words and the meanings. Communicate whith the listener. All the worlds' best compressors can't do this - but a good producer and singer can without them.

This certainly sounds like good advice... I tend more to jabber on more about compressor settings and EQ and mike placement since lyrics and melody are someone elses (ie a songwriter or producer) problem... My job is purely to transfer sounds into signals tape and then into coherent songs on Discs, unless of course I am recording a composition of my own and then since I can't afford a producer I have to think about these things...

As an engineer you do have to get involved to a certain extent in "producing" other people's music, since you tend to be the only person in the room with an extensive knowledge in technical terms how the recording equipment works, but to offer to "produce" someones music opens up a can of worms and responsibilities that I personally don't want much part of. I prefer the signal processing side of things...