Have just emailed it to you.... try not to have a breakdown with the sound quality!

ORIGINAL: Jonny M

The 'motown vocal' technique sounds cool. Would it be the best way of solving this situation?...

It might help. Whether you use this "multing" approach or not, there is value in looking at your tracks as multiple elements in and of themselves (very much like the way a mastering engineer works, in some respects). Before you do anything, play with the vocal track and an eq and a compressor and try to identify elements that you like more and ones you like less, and especially ones that you're not sure of. Keep notes, stuff like "6kh essy, breathy, intimate. too much? good/bad response to reverb?" or whatever. Look for frequency ranges that sound "pitchy." In the kind of music you cited, the "pitch" is not usually a primary component of the vocal sound, melodic though it may be. Look for frequency ranges that you can boost to increase or reduce clarity, or emotive content ("cracking" or "creaking" in the voice). Don't look to the eq to make it "sound better" (not yet, anyway), look at the eq as a way to divide the voice into its sonic raw materials. With practice, you can skip a lot of the note-taking, but it helps in the early stages. Leave little eq markers where you find useful frequencies. most parametric eqs will let you insert or remove little "nodes" for multiple bands-- you can leave them flat if you want, just put them in there to mark the spots that you identified as noteworthy.

Three tips for vocals:

1. Get in touch with your highpass and low-shelf filters. You need way less lows than you think you do. Shelf down as much as you can get away with, all the way up into the mids if you can. Do this with the whole mix going.

2. Try compressors that have an element of analog-style "saturation" to them, such as blockfish (freeware) or maybe cakewalk's included tape sim, or even a guitar amp emulator. High-quality tape and tubes and analog circuitry really do have a warm, crisp, airy "magic" to them that makes processors sound musical and alive. Take advantage of some of the great emulations that imitate this.

3. Try and "time" the reverb to the tempo and feel of the vocals, to fill out the sound without washing it out. Use a predelay as long as you can get away with before it starts to sound distracting or fake. Keep the reverb very low in the mix, and focus on trying to get an ambience that you "feel" more than hear (you never "hear" reverb in everyday life unless you're in a cathedral or something, it's just a kind of subliminal cue as to what kind of space you're in). Try combing reverb with some delay to get a bigger, more spacious feel without slipping into "reverb hell."

Cheers.

I know this thread is from many years ago, but therein lies the beauty of it, and in particular, yep's most colorful descriptions of his knowledge and experience.

It is not often that you see realworld experience transported to the often confusing and definitely flat and one dimensional medium of the written word transported into something that imparts instant understanding through painting a picture in ones head that affords one the ability to "visually hear", if you will, what technical elements can truly sound like.

I for one fully appreciate the ability you have of making words take on a life of their own. Your writings are like reading a good Stephen King or James Michener novel, but as applied to audio.

I would only add, in reference to my opening statement, that these words of wisdom are timeless.

Thanks, yep, for having a flair with the written word, and the education to use them well. It is simply a joy to read your writings, and they will most assuredly help me form my DAW foundations.

Basically, you take the vocal track and clone it, and then you apply severe bandwidth-limited compression to the cloned track, zeroing in on the upper presence range. You basically end up with a cloned track that consists solely of a very up-front, present, and clear signal that only contains presence range so you can hear the words and another track that has the whole vocal performance in all it's glorious dynamic motion and power. Mix the two together and you have the best of both worlds-- the musicality of the singer's performance is all there, and so is the clarity and impact that we expect from pop music.

Yep, I had to say thanks for this tip - I tried it last night on a song I'm working on, and *bingo!* - extra clarity on the vocal, without extra volume. Superb stuff.

Question for clarification:

What is presence? Where is it? I have heard the term used and am reading it in Dave Gibson's "Art of Mixing." But I don't get it quite yet. Is there a simple technique, and/or do I just need to keep reading until I get it?

Thanks

Tom

I dont think presence is so much a simple technique as it is a sound. Vocal presence is when you can "clearly" hear the vocals in the mix. Notice the emphasis on "clearly". I think a better word for it would be "clarity". I wish there was a magic button to achieve this, but it seems to me to be a process of experimentation to get the right presence on a vocal in a particular song. Each vocal, mic, preamp, enviroment, effect chain, other instruments, all come into play here I think. But, if I'm wrong, and there is an "easy button", I cannot wait to hear it.

Randy

Yep, please correct me. I'm hoping I'm wrong here.


edit: Yep, apparently I was writing this as you were posting. I have to say I am very pleased to see we used similar wording. Your stuff is very impressive, and I have learned alot from you. When is the book coming out?

Good greif Yep - I see your at it again

Cant beleive I missed this one -

As I have told you before - i have probably learned more about mixing from your post than any other place on the web

I love it when you hold court - class is in - sorry i'm late

ORIGINAL: yep

I want to BASH YOUR GODxxM HEAD IN

Uh, thanks. Maybe I'll just pass on this one...

Great bump Mike!

A gem from the past indeed.

Steve

Yep,

Extremely generous information you've provided (again).

I think I should testify: I've never absorbed so much technique, knowledge of music, recording, prioritization, quaint sayings, inspiration, etc. ... this seems my favorite thread at this time.

Lately I assimilated 3 books: 'Complete Idiots Guide to Music Theory', 'Complete Idiots Guide to Composing Music', and 'Complete Idiots Guide to Song Writing' (Barnes and Noble).

These are extremely potent books to be sure, but you've managed to teach me much more ... helping me bridge them into orchestral-rock and vocals. In the last year I've been working on 21 songs (4-8 hours/day) ... trying to incrementally strengthen my songs via your 'extremely keen mentoring' (if you will) ... and the generous help of my other mates here.

Everything you say (here especially) seems to really 'hit home' to me (on many levels).

I durst not ask any questions as they all seem 'pre-answered' here ... perhaps later I'll start a thread on 'critical vocal frequencies' and/or elaborating on a few 'dirty' ideas for 'bus strategies' (based on this thread).

(BTW, its interesting that you are able to critique us musicians without having to actually listen to our mistakes nor to provide show-in-tell demos, etc. I've always been curious to see U-Tube demos of your techniques ... but you're written words seem better, IMHO)