I don t get it

[danieleinad]

Thanks Mazz
Maybe to call my problem with the sound of my voice : It doesn t sound deep
Daniel

[danieleinad]

I tried something and it seems to sound better (to me)
I put my microphone (Rode M3 ) quite far ( I was sitting and my microphone was near my knees)(maybe something like 15 inches)
Makes sense?
Daniel

[rnrmachine]

I tried something and it seems to sound better (to me)
I put my microphone (Rode M3 ) quite far ( I was sitting and my microphone was near my knees)(maybe something like 15 inches)
Makes sense?
Daniel

Hey Daniel,

No, that would not be a good mic positioning for a singer. Typical positioning should be about 10-12" from your mouth and slightly above so you do not drop your head while singing. This causes constrictions in your throat and will cause vocal stress... IF your head is not slightly upward. When you stand to sing you should feel like the top of your head is being held by a hanging hook and the rest of your skeleton is freely hanging. This is the relaxed state for proper singing. If you find the mic is too bright then try cutting some higher frequencies to allow the lower ones in the mic to stand out more.

Also, IF you are finding that you are not capturing your voice well enough, which has been my problem for years, then you might need a different mic or you can try a secondary mic. Have one mic like I said... then have a second mic positioned at least 3-4 feet away from you and use it as a distance mic. This will help pick up overtones. The only problem here is if your room sounds like crap.

With all the questions you are asking about mixing it is apparent you need to buy a book. There are a TON of books and my best advice is find a book written by someone who did music that is at least close to what you want to accomplish.

Rob

[brandonamatias]

The Mixing Engineer's Handbook by Bobby Owsinski is a GREAT BOOK! I highly recommend purchasing it. I still use it

[mojobone]

I'm gonna disagree, slightly, with Rob on this one; yeah, singing with your head tilted down isn't recommended, it's bad vocal technique, yes, but it might be the only effective mic technique in a particular situation. Or as Joe Meek was famously quoted, "If it sounds good, it is good."

Every voice is different, and achieving a workable vocal sound can be a very personal thing, particularly if you have only one voice and one mic to work with. I'm wondering why the downward angle seems to work, and I'm thinking the mic is possibly picking up off-axis reflections from the floor; in a lot of cases this will tend to reinforce the vocal sound-might sound better or worse, depending on the room, (and also on the mic's off-axis response) because of how sound gets reflected and bounced around an interior space, having some frequencies absorbed and some reflected by each surface it hits. There could also be some boundary effect; you can hear this by moving a loudspeaker-place it where the floor meets the wall, you double the bass output, stick it in the corner, where two walls meet the floor and it more than triples.

I use this stuff all the time at ranchomojo; my mix room is very balanced, (unless you're standing near the fireplace) the kitchen's very bright and reflective, (but not too reverberant) and the living room's fairly dead, yet also balanced, frequency-wise. (I haven't recorded anything in the bathroom as of yet, and the bedroom's off limits per the wife's instructions-I'd probably need to engage the -10dB pad, in there, anyways, I'm kinda noisy) The upshot is that a room's dimensions, surfaces and objects amount to a sort of EQ+early reflections combo, which is most of the reason we have a science of mic placement; in olden times, if the sound wasn't happening, we didn't reach for the EQ or the compressor, cuz there weren't no such animal-we moved the microphone.

I'm going to recommend that Daniel walk around his recording space while clapping his hands to hear how the sound changes while he moves about. It may even be useful to walk around the mic while clapping or jingling keys at different distances and angles to hear how the mic responds, cuz it's a filter, too, after a fashion; all cardioid (directional) mics tend to have increased bass response as they're moved closer to the source. (this is part of what makes an announcer's voice sound the way it does, but condenser mics are so sensitive, you have to be aware of the sound your lips make when they peel away from your teeth-working close to such a mic involves learning some techniques, like not drinking milk the day of your session)

Didn't mean to write a novel here, and books won't help you hear how it sounds, they can only help explain why it sounds how it does, which is maybe the less important thing to grasp first, dig?

[danieleinad]

With your help I start to get it a little bit more . I still didn t try what Rob wrote to put 2 Mics ,one far. I did try 2 Mics , but at the same place (I saw that in a video of my today s favorite band Muse)
Mojobone , as you advised me before , I did try a different place , but it is quite hard for me to go out of my...bedroom (the opposite of you )
I feel that my bedroom is crap, but what can I do. I ll see

But I realized that my singing itself is not good. I am preparing a piano ballad song, soft stuff; and I listened to some artists , and I sang much louder than them ;they almost seem to whisper (not really whisper, but a kind of whisper style or something like that)
Daniel

[mazz]

Just got this announcement in the e-mail from Mix Books. They are releasing several new e-books every month and it seems like this might be a good resource to beef up the knowledge base around mixing and recording:

http://www.mixbooks.com/ProductsList.as ... &PK=EME013


Part of that whispery sound you're hearing from those vocalists could be because they are singing very close to a very nice microphone in a great sounding, or at least neutral sounding, room. The microphone is going into a high end signal chain of great preamps, etc. These same singers also have a lot of experience singing in studios and live and have good control over their voices and also have developed mic technique, a lot of that based on hearing themselves recorded and then doing things to influence that recorded sound, like moving back, moving in, turning their head on certain sounds, etc.

I've had good luck putting the mic above a singer's mouth and pointing the business end of the mic down by angling the top of the mic back towards the singer's forehead. This would allow the mic to get very close but without recording air blasts such as popping "p"s. The only downside to this is to keep the singer from lifting their head to sing into the mic. This can be cured by putting another mic directly in front of them. This mic could be "live" or not, it's basically there to keep the singer focused forward. It could be a Radio Shack mic if that's what you have.

There are also things you can buy to cut down on the reflections off of your walls in a small room like a bedroom.

This, for instance:

http://www.primacoustic.com/voxguard.htm

or this:

http://www.primacoustic.com/flexibooth.htm


Keep at it and keep asking questions, you will learn. Have patience.

Mazz

[eeoo]

Yeah, have to agree with Mojo, if it sounds good it is good. I did a lot of recording with a very good, very unique singer and when we set up a mic in a traditional way, about 12 inches away, standing up, slightly above his mouth, tape on the floor to mark his position, the whole nine yards, he could never nail anything. When we let him hand hold the mic and curl up in corner somewhere he would get these amazing one of a kind takes. He played the mic like an instrument. The performance is king and whatever it takes to get that performance is paramount. No rules...

eo

[danieleinad]

I continue
In my room I can be next to one wall , and I am facing this wall , and my voice doesn t have a lot of reverb . If I have a pillow between me and the wall,there s even less reverb
If I face the wall that is far , I have more reverb, and with the pillow,very slighly less
Pillow or not? Facing which wall?
I have a feeling that the pillow is a good thing , but why? Isn t one add some reverb after recording?So why not getting some reverb from the beginning. I have a dilemma here, because I don t like my voice in the shower, and there s a lot of reverb

Daniel

[rnrmachine]

Daniel,

I wrote up a LARGE post with a bunch of techniques and I just got fed up with it and deleted it. All I am going to say is this.

There are proper mic'ing techniques/ways of doing things and those are the norm... just because one person had to curl up in a corner holding his baby bottle/mic don't make it right. (he obviously sang live a lot but rarely, if ever, in a studio) Also, what sounds best to you isn't always best when we're talking mixing. With as much of a beginner as you obviously are... buy a reputable book dude before you get advice here that takes you YEARS to undo. You don't even have enough knowledge/experience to sift through info given to you on this thread and decide which is pertinent to you and which isn't.

I don't even know what sort of equipment you are recording through (other then the mic) or more importantly listening through... it might be junk and anything you hear out of it isn't going to tell you squat about what you truly have recorded... if you want general advice on how to record vocals then buy a book that teaches these general things... THEN after learning the book find out what works best for you. As inexperienced in recording/mixing as you are. Anyone telling you, if it sounds good it is good, is poor advice imho. After all, how many people thought something sounded good only to have it rejected/returned because it didn't sound good to the person that mattered. I have thought plenty of things sounded good, but I was wrong... time and time again. We all have.. and we all have the returns to prove it. Some of us on the forum now, are at the point where we just get returned on "Stylistically off Target" because we're so used to getting it sounding right/correctly... well balanced!!

If Mojo and I are talking to each other and he says, if it sounds good then it is good. That is a totally different context then him telling you. Him and I both have been at this for YEARS.

If you really want to get good at recording and mixing, just buy a book or two.. or three. It/they will teach you a lot of proper, common, successful technique. Or at least look it up on the internet.

Finally, I would be happy to give you advice on something you have recorded... I'd be happy to tell you what I THINK you need to do to it to make it sound better but I am not going to guess anymore. It's a waste of everyone's time.

Rob