My Harmonies and reverb, sounds not professional

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Dimuthu_DeeJay
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2006/09/06 05:48:39 (permalink)

My Harmonies and reverb, sounds not professional

Hi,
I've been learning couple of years to produce music and recently i released my first song to local radio stations. The language of the song is "Sinhala" and its kind of a R n B.

Song is composed, mixed and mastered using Sonar 4 and waves plugins bundle.

song


My problem is this..

I can see that there is a problem with settings. (I'm not mentioning the rest of the song is 100% correct, there should be lots of improvements) Specially with the harmonies. I'm seeing that there is a bit different about the harmonies when comparing to commercial songs. Sometimes they are affecting the claity of my main vocal, and not clear enough for me. There were several male and female harmonies so it was very hard for me to bring it to this level. I was working more than 2 weeks to mix and master this.

Basically I think its the reverb. Because everytime I feel my reverb settings are like "shouting inside a cathedral". I always cut the bass end, and comes helpless. They are not sound like professional.

Here is the reverb setting I used for the main vocal
[img=http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/3605/mainuc3.th.jpg]


Guys, how u comment on the production of this song? I need to improve my self, but its so difficult to do it alone...
I used waves R-Verb for reverb, Sonitus delay and Antares Autotune for vocals.
#1

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    boten
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    RE: My Harmonies and reverb, sounds not professional 2006/09/06 06:38:37 (permalink)
    For vocals I would use a plate reverb (instead of a hall) because of its clarity in the high frequencies and also because it gets damped much faster in the reverb tail than that Hall, which will improve vocal definition. I've also seen that you have a 100% ratio between wet and dry, I hope you have send insert, other wise I would start with 0dB dry and about -8 dB wet. Sometimes I found that a short predelay helps voices with lots of high frequencies content so for example sibilance and transients are not duplicated. Also, the amount of reverb is correct when you can hear the reverb only when the track is soloed.
    #2
    Dimuthu_DeeJay
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    RE: My Harmonies and reverb, sounds not professional 2006/09/06 06:50:10 (permalink)
    In this mix I used it as a send effect. What about the delay time for vocals as you think? Sometimes i saw on the web they should be 1.2 to 2.2 and might depend on the track. But in this mix I found its very clear if I reduce the reverb time. And what about my reverb eq and damp?
    #3
    boten
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    RE: My Harmonies and reverb, sounds not professional 2006/09/06 09:47:15 (permalink)
    I'm not able to hear the song at the moment. Based on the settings the EQ seems to be in the right direction if you're looking for getting the vocal standout in the mix (avoiding muddy vocal due to the reverb effect). The dampening is something you need to tweak along with the size of the reverb and the dry/wet mix ratio to get it to the point you want . I ususally start adding no damping at all and fixing the size and the effect mix ratio. Then I tweak the dampening if I feel I need to change the tails based on what I'm hearing in the overall mix. Unfortunately there is no "right" solution for every case.
    post edited by boten - 2006/09/06 10:01:19
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    DonnyAir
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    RE: My Harmonies and reverb, sounds not professional 2006/09/11 19:59:52 (permalink)
    Giving a quick listen, I'm not hearing verb as much of a problem as you mentioned.

    What I am hearing is that you have recorded (or processed) these voc tracks in stereo, and while you have a nice wide spread (L/R), there is little - to - no definition in the center.

    Also, you might consider a compressor for the female vox that do seem to "jump out" when they come in.

    I would also consider adding a bit of top end sparkle, say around 8k or so, and attenuating the area around 300-400hz which is where "muddiness" can occur.


    Just a thought or two.

    D.

    http://www.donnythompson.com
    #5
    muires
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    RE: My Harmonies and reverb, sounds not professional 2006/09/14 06:41:05 (permalink)
    If I'd heard the song without any of these technical questions I would have enjoyed it fine. Now I can hear some of what you are worried about, but I must ask why try to do it "right", meaning the way everyone else does it? The way it is sounds great. There IS a lot of space in the vocals, but that's great (and a tiny bit unusual).

    Very nice song.

    http://www.guitarlight.com
    #6
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