Recording A Very Soft Voice

Singers MUST learn mic technique, breathing, singing from the gut, not popping the plosives. You can boost them, and de-ess them, and reduce the plosives, but it is incumbent on the singer to work with the recording engineer to get the most out of it. Not easy to do with a young child. I recommend choir? And vocal warm up before the performance. 

Jablowmi19Singers MUST learn mic technique, breathing, singing from the gut, not popping the plosives. You can boost them, and de-ess them, and reduce the plosives, but it is incumbent on the singer to work with the recording engineer to get the most out of it. Not easy to do with a young child. I recommend choir? And vocal warm up before the performance.

I'll definitely recommend she start taking choir lessons. (Maybe even pay for them, since her parents aren't well off, financially.)


Several years back I had a father bring me his 9-year-old daughter to record a couple of Christmas songs. She had already had a few years of vocal training and classical violin. It was apparent, too. She had power, control, nailed the tuning, etc. An engineer's dream. (And I'm certainly no professional sound guy.)

When you are in the position where you can't turn her voice up any more.... you have but ONE direction to go.....
 
Turn everything else down. 
 
Either go back to square one.....delete the envelopes and pull everything down and start over..... or .....take a short cut to get there.
 
When I run into this situation, I insert a new stereo bus and route "the band" to it. That allows me to keep the mix balance I have set up...envelopes, plugs, and such, and with the level control on the new bus, I can lower the instruments to let the vox shine through.  Also, using compression and other such tools are fair game. I have used Cake's "Boost"  on occasion to get a vox up a few more db, because what matters is hearing that voice. As long as you don't ruin the delicate voice in the process, it's all good.

Listen to my song called Give Me A Chance ( http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10977017 ) I have a strong female singer followed by a 7 year old female child singing the chorus solo .... forward to approx  3 minutes into the song to hear the comparison. I used compression/boost,  and production to let the child's voice stand out well in relation to the music.
 
That's my 2 cents and an example of what I did in this situation.

How about some saturation? I've found that the Softube saturation knob in the ProChannel is great for giving vocals a bit of extra beef and weight in a mix.

The big problem that many people have with a situation like this and even with more normal vocal situations too is that they mix all the music in first and then try to cram the vocals in last and wonder why there is no room for them.
 
If you are mixing any music that involves vocals you should start with the vocals. Not everything else. Vocals first! Then you get that vocal sound happening, get the dynamics right and even, get the VU meters showing about -3 to -4 on the scale and then start building the rest under. That is how it is done. At the end of the day you end up with a great sounding vocal track with the vocals still prominent and the rest supporting them nicely and the VU meters will be all at the right level too!
 
Does not matter if the vocalist is a great strong singer or a quiet little girl. Makes no difference. In the case of a quiet little girl, well you make sure you record her obviously in the quietest space you can and once you have got her down then you get in there and edit her track. Even things up level things out and so on.
 
Then you will have the same starting point as above for a great vocal mix.
 
If you are mixing a Kenny G track you DONT mix all the music and then try and cram Kenny's sound in. You START with Kenny and then build the rest in.
 
Simple rule here. If you want something to be prominent at the end of a mix then start with that in your mixing.
 

Jeff Evans
 
 
If you are mixing any music that involves vocals you should start with the vocals. Not everything else. Vocals first!
 
Simple rule here. If you want something to be prominent at the end of a mix then start with that in your mixing.
 

I did not know that!
 
I start mixing this afternoon a substantial production which often comes back to just the acoustic piano and a solo woman's voice. However, there are 59 other tracks embellishing the production.
 
But the song lyrics and the vocals demand the voice to be the main thing.
 
I was going to feed the birds (brutal, brutal winter again) and then begin mixing out the drums.
 
But now, I will see about mixing the voice first.

Ricebug
Right now, her volume slider is set to 0 db. All the others are really low (-18 thru -6 db). This is the girl's first time recording anything. I'm going to let her listen to it and suggest a second attempt. Reason being, it sounds as if she's singing to herself. Maybe one of those dog collars that send out a low voltage shock via remote control will help her enunciate better. Hmmm...
 

Did she sing with headphones on? That's really hard for a first timer, be it an adult or a child.
I don't have better ideas than the others. Boost the main frequency area of her voice, and maybe create a parallel compression track of that main frequency area alone.
Then cut a little of that same frequency area (or a little wider) of all the instruments in the project.