Vox glue?

JohnnyGoodyear

So, here in the woods, writing a wistful little love song

Face down in the river
these dreams clear as mud
the bar girls come free
with each pint of your blood

and I have a three part vocal, not exactly harmony, each part being very similar, but not exactly similar, and have them panned a little and so forth, but what I need to apply (it feels like) is a little glue to fudge over the edges. I like the vocal line, quite like the vocal, but I would like the three voices to sound like two and a half somehow. Poor way to put it, but I'm guessing some of you will get what I'm talking about.

Any suggestions what effects, either here in Auria, or outside it, might glue this a little?

skiphunt

Are there any sea lions in that river?

Kaikoo2

@skiphunt said:
Are there any sea lions in that river?

Face up in the ocean park
these dreams clear as thirst
the sea lions come eating
with each pint of fish blood

Are you saying this, Skiphunt?

skiphunt

@Kaikoo2 said:

@skiphunt said:
Are there any sea lions in that river?

Face up in the ocean park
these dreams clear as thirst
the sea lions come eating
with each pint of fish blood

Are you saying this, Skiphunt?

That's it! You're a genius!

theconnactic

@JohnnyGoodyear said:
So, here in the woods, writing a wistful little love song

Face down in the river
these dreams clear as mud
the bar girls come free
with each pint of your blood

and I have a three part vocal, not exactly harmony, each part being very similar, but not exactly similar, and have them panned a little and so forth, but what I need to apply (it feels like) is a little glue to fudge over the edges. I like the vocal line, quite like the vocal, but I would like the three voices to sound like two and a half somehow. Poor way to put it, but I'm guessing some of you will get what I'm talking about.

Any suggestions what effects, either here in Auria, or outside it, might glue this a little?

Hey, @JohnnyGoodyear: try sending all three vocal parts to the same subgroup and use a stereo reverb effect in the said subgroup. use a small tail for the reverb: if you intend to use the built-in convolution reverb (my personal recommendation), keep the room size control at a small value for a shorter tail, even if you select the impulse response from a huge place. Hope it helps.

All the best,
Dimitri.

u0421793

Let the three part layering be partially implemented.
For example, on each line, come in one singer at a time to end with all three singing.
Or alternatively, start with all and end with one of them.
Or even more alternatively, start with all and end with all but at the midway point there’s only one singing.
There’s no requirement for all to sing an entire word, either.

richardyot

The standard procedure (if standard is what you are after) is to send all three channels to a mix bus or a sub-group and apply some bus compression. If you want more transparent results (ie less audible distortion of the sound) then use Pro C or Pro C 2. If you want something more aggressive then Microwarmer might be worth a shot, but it will affect the sound more noticeably, and add some audible grit/fuzz.

@u0421793 also makes a good point, editing the underlying audio files can be really useful, both from a technical and a creative viewpoint. Technical: to remove plosive p sounds and sibillant s sounds from the doubles, and creative to add or remove emphasis from individual words.

Another thing you can try is to stack compressors: gently compress each individual vocal before sending to the mix bus and then add another layer of compression to the mixed result. Obviously you need to trim out everything from the audio files because with compression every breath and mouth noise will be audible. On the other hand, compression when done right can really work magic on a vocal, emphasizing the timbre of the voice to great effect.

Then after that you can add reverb and/or delay to the vocal on an AUX send. A very slight delay can be a really effective thickening effect, and is less likely to muddy the mix than reverb. If you are using reverb I strongly recommend that you EQ the reverb send separately from the main vocal (ie you daisy-chain the EQ and reverb on the AUX send so that the reverb has its own EQ, see my Auria Pro tips thread to find out how to do this). I usually cut both the top and the bottom end of the reverb out completely, leaving only the mids, so that the reverb doesn't muddy the mix so much.

JohnnyGoodyear

Gentlemen, @richardyot, @u0421793, @theconnactic, thanks so much for the lessons and suggestions. I think I am going to take a step back from the whole caboodle and just work on a 60 second song, one verse, one chorus, to try and learn a little bit of the craft of this....I really appreciate your input, has given me some specific things to try while I am in this unusually quiet house....

Will

Is there a 'lead' and two (1.5) backups or are they meant to be an ensemble/single 2.5 voice kind of thing?

Hard to say of course without hearing it but...

If lead, and you have the time/willingness/ability to rerecord the back up parts, simply record them further away from the mic. Wonders. If you can't re-record, roll the highs off the back up parts. Go aggressive so you can really hear it doing it and then roll it back some.

If all-as-one, try sending them all to the same bus and use two or three very gentle compressors stacked on top of each other. Like 2-4db max reduction on each. The last one can have a fairly fast attack but all should (to start with anyway) have a slow release. You might still want to roll the highs off of two of them to stop the S and P and K clashing.

Kaikoo2

I don't know @JohnnyGoodYear question can be solved by Fieldscaper?

Seems has lots tools for vocal.

JohnnyGoodyear

@syrupcore @Kaikoo2, Thank you both. I am finally putting at least a little effort into the mastering/mixing or at least the idea of it, rather than holding my breath and pretending it doesn't exist. I think a big leap (for me) is manning up and 'sending things to a bus' which has always seemed a complex or confusing business, but I realize I'm just being a lazy pussy which is not the kind of pussy even cat people like so much.

Will

Definitely a jump worth taking, bussing. Opens up quite a lot of things.

null____void

My son owes his very existence to the fact that I hate riding the bus.

JohnnyGoodyear

@rhcball said:
My son owes his very existence to the fact that I hate riding the bus.

OK. I'll bite. You met his mother on a bus/train?

JohnnyGoodyear

@syrupcore said:
Definitely a jump worth taking, bussing. Opens up quite a lot of things.

I've been thinking about this (or your previous comment) and wanted to ask a no doubt anodyne question (but I'm going to ask it anyway ): When you say record two vocals further away, do you feel there's a substantial difference in doing this compared to, say, recording them as usual and then just turning them down?

Even sounds silly just typing it....

null____void

@JohnnyGoodyear said:

@rhcball said:
My son owes his very existence to the fact that I hate riding the bus.

OK. I'll bite. You met his mother on a bus/train?

I wanted to break up with her but I needed her to drive me around because the bus gave me panic attacks (I was terrified that it would become so packed with people that I would never be able to get off).

So he owes his existence to a hatred of buses and batshit insanity.

JohnnyGoodyear

@rhcball said:

@JohnnyGoodyear said:

@rhcball said:
My son owes his very existence to the fact that I hate riding the bus.

OK. I'll bite. You met his mother on a bus/train?

I wanted to break up with her but I needed her to drive me around because the bus gave me panic attacks (I was terrified that it would become so packed with people that I would never be able to get off).

So he owes his existence to a hatred of buses and batshit insanity.

Hmmm. That sounds like fate mister, your own. And his of course. And hers.

null____void

@JohnnyGoodyear said:

@rhcball said:

@JohnnyGoodyear said:

@rhcball said:
My son owes his very existence to the fact that I hate riding the bus.

OK. I'll bite. You met his mother on a bus/train?

I wanted to break up with her but I needed her to drive me around because the bus gave me panic attacks (I was terrified that it would become so packed with people that I would never be able to get off).

So he owes his existence to a hatred of buses and batshit insanity.

Hmmm. That sounds like fate mister, your own. And his of course. And hers.

Funnily enough I wouldn't have started seriously working on music if I hadn't ended up as a stay-at-home dad with huge gulfs of time/space to fill, and the sudden horrendous sense of my lifetime ticking away provided some motivation as well. Sorry for hijacking this thread, it's a defense mechanism because I am fated to never comprehend Compression, on vocals or otherwise.

Kaikoo2

@Rhcball,

Youtube videos and Pro C2 can help a lot to understand compression. By watching more than 10 videos can get a hand of it.

richardyot

@JohnnyGoodyear said:
When you say record two vocals further away, do you feel there's a substantial difference in doing this compared to, say, recording them as usual and then just turning them down?

The further away you are from the mic when you record, the more room ambience you are going to capture, and additionally the overall tonality of the mic/vocal will change, so the recording will have a different character.

One thing I've experimented with in the past is to use two mics for recording vocals or acoustic guitar, one placed close and the second placed six to eight feet further away. You can then balance the mics to taste in your mix, and the second one has natural reverb coming from the room.

Jocphone

@richardyot said:

@JohnnyGoodyear said:
When you say record two vocals further away, do you feel there's a substantial difference in doing this compared to, say, recording them as usual and then just turning them down?

The further away you are from the mic when you record, the more room ambience you are going to capture, and additionally the overall tonality of the mic/vocal will change, so the recording will have a different character.

One thing I've experimented with in the past is to use two mics for recording vocals or acoustic guitar, one placed close and the second placed six to eight feet further away. You can then balance the mics to taste in your mix, and the second one has natural reverb coming from the room.

The video about the recording of the vocals for Heroes is a good example of taking this further. Although I seem to remember they had noise gates on the mics that were more distant to enhance the effect.

Also Phil Spector's Wall of Sound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_of_Sound

richardyot

@Jocphone said:
The video about the recording of the vocals for Heroes is a good example of taking this further. Although I seem to remember they had noise gates on the mics that were more distant to enhance the effect.

The noise gates were set up so that the the two more distant mics would only open once Bowie's voice reached a certain level of volume (with the third gated at a higher threshold than the second, so that the effect was ramped), so the additional reverb would only appear on the louder vocals:

richardyot

Also, this is the room Heroes was recorded in. I think Johnny's house in Maine is quite grand, but it might not quite be a match for this in terms of natural reverb:

Will

@richardyot said:

@JohnnyGoodyear said:
When you say record two vocals further away, do you feel there's a substantial difference in doing this compared to, say, recording them as usual and then just turning them down?

The further away you are from the mic when you record, the more room ambience you are going to capture, and additionally the overall tonality of the mic/vocal will change, so the recording will have a different character.

Very much this. Plus things like plosives and sibilants are naturally much softer if you're two-four feet back from the mic. When it was explained to me, it was to "picture a 60s group with back up singers and one mic"—you put the back up singers behind the lead and they'll blend in. Simple. Also, try imagining recording a choir. If you put some mics out front, you'll get a natural blending of the voices. If you tried to close mic each singer, you'd spend a year mixing to get that sound (and it would never work!). Same idea.

Inspiration:

Smokey Robinson singing lead; Miracles are back up off the mics

(She'd be standing and closer during the actual take)

One mic!

Couple of queen doing backups

lukesleepwalker

thanks @syrupcore for intimidating us with photos of Smokey, Queen, and the Beach Boys singing. As if we didn't feel inadequate enough.

JohnnyGoodyear

Brilliant stuff you guys. I will work hard on my Frankie Lymon.

@richardyot this IS a large house, but it's laid out like a Middle-Earth warren, you be pushed to find reverb that would be classified as any bigger than small room. Acres of fields out back to have a festival in mind and the Pemaquid river on one side and the Atlantic ocean on the other...I'm feeling somewhat dwarfed by it all (talking of Middle-Earth) and whereas last week I was writing gritty blaxploitation verses, this week it's all Gordon Lightfoot meets Wuthering Heights with a bit of Kestrel killing thrown in for color...Maybe our environment is the ultimate app.

[Deleted User]

thx for those wonderful images, jgy & syrup

knewspeak

Extreme EQ, lose the bass, enhance mids and highs, gentle compression, then inverse reverb, mix with the original to taste.

Will

@lukesleepwalker said:
thanks @syrupcore for intimidating us with photos of Smokey, Queen, and the Beach Boys singing. As if we didn't feel inadequate enough.

Diana Ross and Frankie Lymon though... no big deal?

lukesleepwalker

@syrupcore said:

@lukesleepwalker said:
thanks @syrupcore for intimidating us with photos of Smokey, Queen, and the Beach Boys singing. As if we didn't feel inadequate enough.

Diana Ross and Frankie Lymon though... no big deal?

Lol, those images didn't load the first time but they just did... Insult to injury, dammit!

Will

@lukesleepwalker If it helps, I sing like a sick Shaun Ryder on my good days.