Fletcher Munson Curves and Grim Vocal Issues...

listen to that same boston album, "hitch a ride", and the vocal is mixed completely different.


and, the music is much lighter.
coincidence?
no.

Vox at low levels, high levels (up front)........
It's all a case by case basis. Can vary per artist, producer, microphone, song/mix....
And even then it's all subjective anyway.......

Again, hate to play the "it is what is it" theme and the "if it sounds good, it is good" mantra. But it's true.

I have heard some releases where the vox are very up front, and it sounds great. And some where the vox are low, but work. And some mixes, even major releases, have me scratching my head.

Oh and like others. I'm not sure what King Phillip is getting at. But he's an interesting writer nonetheless.

The first trick is to get a good recording, which includes many things.  writing/arranging the song so there is room for it and the performer's take on it is the most important thing.  A place for everything and everything in its place.

Next up is the mic and placement and room and preamp.  All of these help (or hurt).  Lately I've been able to use some really nice preamps here at home and the difference they make is a good thing.  Even better "prosumer" interface preamps often fail to deliver enough gain to back the singer away from the mic so the vocal can "breathe," w/o crapping out slightly.  Really good electronics operate well at the extremes, which lower grade ones strain at.

Once you reach a certain level of recording craftsmanship you crave that little extra bit.  I've got a producer I've worked with and she got a focusrite One.  Now she complains that on her own stuff she has to watch her own recording performances, esp. w/ pitch, since she can hear the small flaws better now.  And she's been making a living at music for 20+ years, band success in Europe, bla bla bla (tho she has only been doing other's recording for a few).

A quality mic, some attention to your recording room and a high gain preamp will make a lot of the struggle to "fit" an instrument or vox into a song go away while leaving some air or space between each element.  Something like the Focusrite w/ up to 80 dB of gain and some transfomer gooeyness for $500.  Lately I've been playing w/ the new RND Portico II channel strip and my home brewed stuff sounds like it came out of a big studio - as long as I do it a single line at a time.  A little compression and EQ going in helps settle the instruments, too.  Hopefully I can get a drummer over here and see if a single mic technique can work.  All other things being equal, $6700 will get you a hell of a stereo front end and mixing through set up.

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One of the problems here is simply getting the vocal to sit at the right level compared to the music. This is one area many get wrong.

You cannot do this on your normal monitors up loud. It is just too hard. The only way to do it is you need a small mono Auratone type speaker. You listen to your mix through that at quite a low volume level. eg 75 db SPL or less. It becomes so obvious that the vocal is either too soft or too loud. Once you get it sitting nicely in the small speaker it will sound perfect and great in the big speakers. They used Auratones for years in many many studios producing many many big hits where the vocals are sitting nicely. Everyone forgets this.

I can see where Phiilip is coming from. And what about the music itself. Maybe there is just too much going on and it needs some serious editing. In situations where the vocals sit really well in a mix , usually the music is also perfectly edited behind.

Vocal compression also needs to be pretty strong and really keep them at a very constant level. Many well known engineers use a lot of compression on vocals and push the vocals hard with the compressor. It does not matter if you do because you want the vocals to be level most of the time and only a good compressor can do it right. And it is usally a pop scenario wher the vocals need to be even and heard all the time.

And if you want  vocals to be heard through a wall of guitars it may be necessary to EQ the guitar buss to allow for them a bit. Be careful with other things pushing hard right in the same frequency range of the vocals. Masking will tend to take over if you dont allow for them.

But the small speaker is just excellent not only for vocals but for getting your mix right too. I just dont know how I would ever survive without it. (like VU meters for example)

I am about to mix a track for a friend in Indonesia. It is sort of heavy metal and Indonesian rap if you can imagine that. I have talked about this before but you need to do some serious editing on the vocal track in another editing program before you even mix the track. The vocal track is OK but a bit over the place level wise. I am going to trim all the peaks down and do rms normalise so I end up with a very consistent vocal track. (every word) And all this before I even mix in Sonar. Further compression will go on. The vocals will end up being very clear all the way through. This pre editing work is necessary because I know they are going to want to hear all the vocals all the time. The original dynamics of the vocal track is totally unimportant in this situation. The other good thing about pre level vocal editing is the compressors have a much easier time of it and also if you have a very even vocal level then you can afford to turn them down a bit in the mix without loosing them at all.

I didn't know there was anything to be fixed. Jeff said good things, which are all general rules of thumb and technique.

But King Philip mentioned grim vox and what not.

"getting the vocal to sit at the right level compared to the music" - this is still very subjective.  IMO.

I still hear in modern day recordings vocal levels all over the place (note: i do not listen to commercial radio/music).  And it's a case by case basis. Sometimes a less compressed, way up front vox, is right for a particular style and piece.
Sometimes, a more conservative, compressed, lower in the mix, is more fitting for a commercial style. Modern rock/pop, with all it's pieces, needs mass compression, it's the norm. I love to compress the hell out of my vox to get them to sit the way i want them to.
well I'm off to work on vox and compressing them.......

batsbrew

i think, most people listen to VOCALS, and simply expect them to sit on top of everything else, BECAUSE they have been focusing on pop music mixes. 



you can make or break a vocal performance, with a crappy or uninspired mix.

 

So true. 
I'm not sure what songs Fletcher and Munson did but there are
so many potent points in this thread by all.....(thank you)
 
Also AT's great notes on getting a good level is HUGE as saving a lot of ducktaping the rest of the mix.
 
I'm always amazed at how very different every vocal is in songs sung by the same singer.
For me, the one most determining quality to it turning out better than other mixes is that the levels are in a place that don't distort but have as much as you can get to pick up the character, emotion, psyche, DNA of the vocal and not just the notes.  A real good vocal track will convey just how much wine i've had and even whether it was Cabernet Sauvignon or pinot noir.
It's funny how compression can add a quality to a vocal but how it more often takes other qualities away in the process. 
How often a vocal (like one i'm ducktaping now) just doesn't have it.
 
I've also learned that even a very well mixed/performed vocal of a mediocre or average singer (me) is no comparison to even a mediocre mix of a voice that has real sparkle.   It's just not fair!

This is my first post (that I actually got in the right place), so please pardon my faux pas as I learn the ettiquite, etc. I really enjoyed reading the above posts, but I feel like I'd like to back up and get first things first. I guess the first thing after singing lessons is the microphone?

When do you get to diminishing returns as you're paying more and more for your vocal mic? Is a $10,000 mic really better than a $1,000 mic? a $300 mic? (do I dare even mention) a $100 mic? 

At what point are the music listeners (the folks we're serving, right?) going to listen and say "Gee, this could have been a classic - I wish they had recorded it with a better mic"? At what point have you lost your mind and become just a target for a slick microphone salesman? What is the majority opinion about a reasonably good vocal mic?

Can we name names? What is the cheapest AKG you would use? Cheapest EV? Cheapest Neuman?

Does a jazz vocal need a better mic than a country vocal? hard rock vocal?

Should we all just get an MXL-V6 and an SM7 and call it good? When does it just become snobbery as far as the end user of the music is concerned? 

The RND Portico II channel strip I'm using for a while makes my at home recordings sound like they went through a big board at a major studio.  So, $3300?

But nothing that makes the song/performance better once you reach a certain level.  A lot of the really high end stuff doesn't make much of a difference except to engineers and golden eared types.  It does make the job of recording/mixing easier tho - even if it is just mind games.  I've heard good stuff from the same singer at different times while at the same studio in the same room w/ the same engineer recording her voice on a $1000 mic (the discontinued cheap? Soundelux u 195), a  '47 and now they have a Sony 800.  They all sounded good and thinking back couldn't tell you which was better.  Probably the Sony, and hopefully I could tell the difference if I listened to them all at once.  So the answer is $1000.  I've gotten good stuff from the same singer here at home from a focusite isa one and an Oktava mc 012 (I got it for less than a $100 when guitar center was blowing them out years ago).  So, $500 for the signal chain?  But she sounded good on my interface preamps, too.

If you know what you are doing, shop around you can get good sound fairly cheap.  Still, I'd rather have the Portico and not have to worry about it.  I'll hate to send it back.

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