I have a track and a vocalist...... Now what?

[jonistaken]

I recently produced an instrumental version of St james infirmary in dub -

http://soundcloud.com/jonistaken/st-james-infirmiry-dub-wip

and I found a vocalist who is willing to sing over it. She is studying journalism which means that she can check out some sound/video equipment which we can use to record her singing with. Even though I have been producing for a little over four years I have done very limited work with vocals and vocalists. In addition to looking for constructive criticism I am also hoping I can get good advice or links to good advice that tell me how I can deal with vocals. I feel like drums and instruments are fairly easy to compress and work with because they stay over a fairly limited range, their dynamics are predictable and follow simple ADSR envelopes, but the human voice.... it kinda goes all over the place. I am concerned that what I typically do to instruments won't work out for vocals. I also have no idea how I should actually go about getting a good recording or situating that vocal in the mix. I am basically looking for a crash course on this stuff because we are planning on meeting up next weekend to record.

[passive]

Firstly,Do you have a vocal booth or room with decent accustics.your surroundings make all the difference for what background noise you end up with?
its ok saying that its fine you'll just remove the noise,but,it dont work like that really.You can remove so much but if you have alot to get rid of you will end up taking bits of the vocal away also.

[jonistaken]

I pretty much just have a bedroom. Based on my reading the best thing I can think to do is turn my matress on its side and then build a fort out of blankets and sheets and have her sing inside of it. I am also inclined to believe we are recording using a camera with a built in mic designed for professional journalists (I know the quality won't be terrible but I also don't know how suited it is for anything but talking). I still don't know the best way to position the camera to achieve the best sound.

Recording outside or somewhere on campus is also an option

[passive]

Dude trust me.DONT WASTE YOUR TIME!!
If you have no real mic I wouldn't even entertain the idea.For a descent vocal recording you need a condensor mic or at least a dynamic but even they arnt the best for the job.
You can easily build a small booth just like you said with matress pillow etc but without a half decent mic I feel like you may be wasting your time mate.
But as always this is just my opinion and some of the guys or here may totally disagree with me.
You can get a cheap condensor mic from around £40 +.They plug straight into your pc these days with usb.
See what everyone says before you make a choice.

[jonistaken]

Its a pro grade mic, just more for broadcasting than music production. Are broadcast mics no good for production?

[passive]

Ive personally had no expierence with whem so I cant give an honest answer.I used a pretty good dictaphone years back for just phrases and really when I look bk now they sound crap.lol
I suppose it also depends on what plugins your gonna use on your vocals,plus the style of vocal also.
What DAW will you use as I'm on cubase myself?

[Sedna]

the best thing I can think to do is turn my matress on its side and then build a fort out of blankets and sheets and have her sing inside of it.

I can think of a few more uses for your mattress fort and your singer before you're done with it.

[thehadgi]

I can think of a few more uses for your mattress fort and your singer before you're done with it.

:bing:

[jonistaken]

:bing:

Yes, this is true. And now that you can see where I am coming from I hope you can see the importance of making sure that I am able to maker her sound good in a mix. Now help a bro out and give me good advice!!

I use FL but I trashed all the terrible stock plugins and samples. I use pianoteq, NI's B4, NI's Massive, Sir2 for Convultion reverb, wow and flutter, izotope vinyl, analogic delay and a bunch of other random freebies. I posted a soundcloud link to the track in question in my original post.

I also spoke with her today about sound-quality, she has the option of checking out what she described as a "boom mic" which are typically used for shooting commercials and movies and stuff. Its pro grade but not made for a studio. I asked her what kind of mic and she said she had no idea but that her work making advertisements and short films suggests that the sound quality is pretty damn good.

[thehadgi]

I'm familiar with entry level boom mics from my film classes. Yes, you record audio for movies and such. But those are meant to pick up a certain area of sound, from a distance. In a pinch, sure I guess. But I don't think anyone can really recommend it. If you're bound and determined not to spend any money, see how it goes I guess. I imagine that'll be some intense post-work to get it to sound halfway decent.

As far as mics, I'm probably going to be purchasing one soon, and from what I've read on gearslutz and other places, I'd think this is your best option for the money. I'll be picking up probably two of these over the summer:


Shure SM57 LC Cardioid Dynamic Microphone (http://www.amazon.com/Shure-SM57-LC-Cardioid-Dynamic-Microphone/dp/B0000AQRST)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412059NBKEL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Very good response for vocals and instruments, and only 99 bucks (or see if you can rent one). It really is worth the money, especially if vocals are something you'd want to keep working with.

Also, getting good converters and a sound card are obviously important for translating the vocals into digital, so the question is what do you want your 'sound' to be? If you don't want to spend money, just use whatever you have and see how it works out I guess. But just know, if you want to get more serious in the vocal arena, you're going to want to pick up a mic designed for recording for music. Good luck either way

[thehadgi]

Also, remember the mic is probably the most important part of capturing vocals, but converters/sound card you use to pipe the mic through to your computer will also have an impact on the sound. Granted at this point there's only so much you can account for, but just letting you know what you can expect as you go into recording vocals. (Seems you're already making do with what you have for acoustic treatment as best you can).

As always, the last stage in the vocal process will be how you handle and tweak the vocals in post, so you can bet you'll have more work ahead of you if you don't get good source material. Again good luck :tup:

[jonistaken]

Well I am determined not to spend any money on account of being more concerned about finishing my degree and eventually landing a paying gig so that I can use to support my hobbies. One day I will have plenty of awesome shit, just not in the near future.

I have come to the same conclusion as you have based on my reading as well, that Shure seems to sound as good or better than most mics that come even close to the same price and there also seems to be a pretty strong consensus on this issue as well.

I guess your right, ill just have to try it and find out. The track kinda has a lo-fi sound to it so the recording does not have to be perfect for the track to turn out. She also has the option of checking out several different kinds of mic's from the journalism school. Some of the mic's also have built in harddrives or connect to cameras that do. The school has a list of the following equipment available for check out.... It would be great if they provided more details....

Digital voice recorder
PA system, portable
Microphone, USB
Microphone, wired
Microphone, wireless

Anything in particular I should be looking for on any of these when I ask her to go check them out?

[thehadgi]

Hm... I wonder if you could maybe get her to email the people asking for the brands or whatever for each of those? It appears you'd probably want the microphone; although I'm not sure if it's a boom mic or not. Forget wireless, it'll be an unnecessary headache most likely. As for wired or usb, what kind of sound card do you have? I'd avoid the USB one if you can use whatever the other one is, I'm assuming XLR.

The digital voice recorder... I'm guessing that's one of these?
http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/public/epGPyDMwXPy5milHWB2ic2UCFOj9hsHZ6OCYAFenUsEI--0mtCZFBixk511wqBxuje7JgtysS2A-gQ1dejAtT3E2Qih3pCFPDImziXntACtYA_IR-Mi4oLPsBeSC4NQ5OZCLaZ1eyPD5Id4fNIldY4ft-xWSGth2iEq4AFf-jZlSvAAfTc6rnkwisgZjMqqufIhbF0PQh15x_A

Or maybe some not as good as that one. I guess if that's all I knew, maybe just try to go for the standard wired microphone (provided you can plug it in to whatever you have) and use it. The PA system, I think that mean a headset or something; someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think you'll want that.

One thing you maybe can think about is if it's lo-fi like you said, the more you effect the voice the less you'll be able to hear the source quality. You could try to cut out higher frequencies and lower ones (I'm blanking on the exact freq's, maybe test it out) to give it some lo-fi. Maybe even add some alight distortion or run it through a vocoder a bit a la Calvin Harris. That could really improve the perceived quality of the voice.

One more thing: even once you get one good take for the parts you want, try to get second good takes of the same parts, either the exact same notes, or maybe some kind of harmony. Even if it's the same notes, you can get some cool chorus going without have the 'plugin-sounding' chorus :tup:

[jonistaken]

Depending on how good of a cut I can get I was either going to try to keep it natural sounding (maybe with sporadic dub echoes and verb) or try to make it sound like 50+ year old recording with a combination of EQ, Isotope vynal, milli vynili, wow and flutter, subtle tube/tape saturation ect, maybe vocoding with the vocal panned hard right and white noise panned hard left then filtering the vocal through the noise and layering it with the original at a very low volume. It will probably end up sounding kind of like the piano in that track though probably not as aged or degraded. I am kinda hoping for a sam cooke or elvis presley sound, kind of tinny but with enough harmonic content to sound decent. I am going to worry more about that after I have vocals to work with.

I am going to write the equipment checkout people and ask them to send me the make and model of all the mics, he has no way of knowing that I am not in the journalism program. Ill get back with more info on that.

Yes, I have seen those style digital voice recorders at her house before. They are likely as good or better than the one you posted, the journalism program at my school is frequently rated the best or close to the best in the country and one of its selling points is that they train you to use industry standard technology. My school does pretty good on not skimping on technology. The playback speakers on those are kinda terrible but even on the bad play back speakers I remember being impressed with sound quality.

I also do most of my production on a 6 year old PC using a stock sound card and ipod headphones. I have a halfway decent commercial speaker setup at my house that is pretty close to flat though not perfect. Also my school has studio monitors in lots of classrooms which they almost always leave unlocked that I sometimes use to check my mixes on. It sounds pretty ghetto but I have been using these for so long I have a pretty good idea of how my mix sits on those shitty headphones or my home speakers. I am pretty sure that they also have whatever equipment is needed to plugin whatever type of mic I end up choosing to my PC available for checkout as well so that should not be too much of a concern.

I recently posted a pic of my setup on the stickied thread here.

[drumpusher]

Get a condenser mic. If it's a decent one you'll also need phantom power on your mixer to run it.

[jonistaken]

Alright, I was able to get some information on some of the equipment they have available. Of the "digital voice recorders" they have the Zoom h2 and the Zoom h4n as well as some inferior tascam models that provide similar functions. They also have other microphones that supposedly can plug into the Zoom although they do have their own built in microphone. I know for sure that the Zoom h4n has condenser mics built in.

Zoom h4n
https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQMU4HT5HNMMJIt3t0qL-0NLORgrIaPcWI9IMtuspOkdsyWLsRCGw

Zoom h2
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/416shQDX8hL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

[DjDisArm]

I can think of a few more uses for your mattress fort and your singer before you're done with it.

:lol:

[mostapha]

So…skimming through this thread.

First priority is to get a room that doesn't suck…it makes a huge difference. You can try the pillow fort idea, but I'm not sure I'd be all that hopeful. You're at least going to need a mic stand…and I'd probably get a baffle for behind the mic before I'd do anything that weird with pillows and junk.

As for Mics……I've heard passable recordings with the Audio Technica AT2020, which sells for < $100. I'll probably own one at some point.

As for processing…get your levels set. If the vocalist is good, you can do everything else later. More often than not, vocalists suck at singing at the right dynamic range to neither clip nor amplify audible noise. Most people seem to get around that by running a compressor/limiter after the preamp but before the converter. People differ on opinions…I've had better luck with limiting on vocals…YMMV. But doing it that way gets expensive quick.

Honestly…your best bet would be to use any microphone to record a rough version of what you want…figure out kinda how you want it to sit, how you want it to work in the mix, get her to be able to perform it quickly and correctly…and go to a recording studio to actually record it. If you live in a city, there will be a lot of them about. If you tell them you're an indie and on a budget with such simple requirements…they'll probably cut you a break of some kind, especially if you're flexible with your schedule. You could easily record the vocals for that track for a lot less money than buying the stuff to do a half-assed job of it at home. And you might learn something in the process.

In the long run, that costs more……but it takes a lot of 2-3am recording sessions with whatever assistant engineer is available in a studio's 3rd room to equal the cost of a good mic/preamp/compressor……let alone building a room that good.

Or you can get really close with an AT2020 in an okay space and a lot of patience. And you'll learn more. And maybe have more fun.

It really depends on whether you want to start learning to record voice or actually get good results with this song. They're about the same price (an AT202 vs. an hour in a decent recording studio that likes working with indies), but they're very different paths.

[jonistaken]

Well, the thing is that I am intent on spending no money but because I am a student at a school with a very large journalism department that allows us to check out industry standard audio equipment. They have lots of options available but I am not sure what is best for what I want.

You think its a waste of my time to make a ghetto mattress and blanket fort/booth?

There are also some rooms on my campus that may be well suited for this including soundproofed rooms for piano practice, or lecture halls with carpeted ceilings and walls.

My goal is both to get this song to sound as good as possible as well as to learn how to record a vocalist.

[mostapha]

A camera with a built in mic is not industry standard audio equipment no matter what the idiot journalists will tell you.

Check and see if you school has a music department and whether they have stuff to loan. My school has a PT HD3 Studio hiding in one of the rooms with a fairly decent mic closet and SSL pres. They're a little lacking on a tracking room, which confuses the f*** out of me, but my school does everything wrong in the weirdest ways…so that actually makes sense.

[jonistaken]

The music department in my school restricts access to their studios to those that are studying music (which I guess makes some sense) however the Music school still requires music students to record performances for various assignments and music students are forced to check out equipment from the same place that journalist students are required to check out audio equipment. They have lots of microphones/cameras/recording devices available, just trying to figure out my best bet. I am probably going to end up going with the Zoom h4n and one of their "wired" microphones. For a room I will probably go to the soundproofed piano practice rooms.