how far are your singers off the mic

[Stoneroses6300]

I was just doing a session today with a vocalist and he was not able to stay in pitch...He backed off probably 6-10 inches and was pretty on after that...Is this typical? That having that space between mic and vocalist makes them more in pitch?

[filthyrich]

I sing and I find that singing louder allows me to "get up to" the harder notes. Granted, I have no classic vocal skills learned in voice lessons etc; so I do everything wrong.

However, when he/she is up on the mic closely; they can't be as loud. I would venture to say that if you turned down the input gain..or better..turned up the backing music..they would get the same results because they'd be forced to belt it out a little more.

[lord_bunny]

i remember someone telling me something about hearing more bass frequencies = tendancy to sing flat and more treble frequencies = sharp... that would explain perhaps why the singer was flat if he/she got too much proximity in their phones.

i try and have the singer 8 inches away from an LDC as a good starting point.

[sahiaman]

I usually tell the singer to be about 6-8 inches back. And if they start to have problems I do a number of things to make them comfortable. One time I gave a singer an unplugged sm58 just to hold chest level, as he was more comfortable, and was able to relax more. I think for some singers its intimidating to have a studio mic in front of them.

[flail19]

Originally Posted by sahiaman

One time I gave a singer an unplugged sm58 just to hold chest level, as he was more comfortable, and was able to relax more. I think for some singers its intimidating to have a studio mic in front of them.

I use that technique as well.

[Stoneroses6300]

Originally Posted by sahiaman

I usually tell the singer to be about 6-8 inches back. And if they start to have problems I do a number of things to make them comfortable. One time I gave a singer an unplugged sm58 just to hold chest level, as he was more comfortable, and was able to relax more. I think for some singers its intimidating to have a studio mic in front of them.

I'm def finding that with condensors 8 inches back is how it's gotta be...

[Brad McGowan]

Yeah, too much bass in the cans will make a singer sing flat. Also too much level in the headphones will make them flat too. So when the singer backed off the mic both the level and proximity effect decrease. It's a good idea to check the cue mix in the singer's headphones to make sure they aren't hearing something wonky.

Brad

[Stoneroses6300]

Originally Posted by Brad McGowan

Yeah, too much bass in the cans will make a singer sing flat. Also too much level in the headphones will make them flat too. So when the singer backed off the mic both the level and proximity effect decrease. It's a good idea to check the cue mix in the singer's headphones to make sure they aren't hearing something wonky.

Brad

Another thing I found is that when he backed off, he started to sing much quiter...pitch was really on...sounded really good...much much quiter sounding...but much more musical....

[teddy07x]

I'm not an engineer. But I found it easier to sing when my engineer/producer pulled me away around 5-10 inches from the mike when doing the regular singing. I'm a loud singer. When doing the soft spoken, soft sung parts, I came closer. After some trial n error I figured out things. Having an Iso booth with no ppl watching helped a lot. I had the curtains folded and nobody could even see me

I also found that with the backing music being a tad lower, I was on pitch. The producer had the keyboardist play and record the vocal line on the piano. That was bumped up a tad in the mix. But mostly we mixed in the Kick and snare for rythm, the bass was very shallow. The MAIN and most important guitars were kept in for musical guidance and knowing where you are in the song.

As my confidence grew, the producer bumped up the gain on the preamps. I learned how to manipulate and back off as my confidence grew. Eventually I got to the point that I somewhat got through the project. They did have to autotune it a bit. But I'm not a great singer....

the results can be found here......

www.myspace.com/millmoor

Zach Winters (he is on this forum) did the mix of I don't know. He also produced the new guitars on the song.

[Saudade]

yeah i read somewhere too that if the singer hears his voice in the headphone mix too loud, he will tend to sing flat, and vice versa. I tried it too, and it is mostly true.

When I am recording I believe in spending meticulous attention to getting a great headphone mix. Because when I sing ("croak") I get distracted and frustrated if the level of the voice versus music is not "just right", or if the compression and effects (in the monitoring chain) put on the voice is not suitable.

If you get can the headphone mix that will inspire the singer and make him/her feel like she sounds great, you are already half way there in getting a good vocal performance.

[mfender]

Originally Posted by Saudade

yeah i read somewhere too that if the singer hears his voice in the headphone mix too loud, he will tend to sing flat, and vice versa. I tried it too, and it is mostly true.

+1 thumbsup

The right headphone level, and making sure the singer is relaxed are key to a good vocal take in my experience.

[BLueROom]

6-8 inches is my starting point, but it really depends on the singer/screamer. Some "screamers" are very quiet in comparison to their singing voice so you gotsta get closer to get any sort of depth to the scream.

[peeder]

Let's first separate the cue mix with the mic placement. With good isolating cans (I use Beyer DT770 Pro for this purpose) you can get the cue mix where you want it, and the only thing the singer hears from the mic is the cue mix afterall. So if you want to highpass the proximity effect out of the cue mix you can, but you can keep that bottom on tape if you want it.

Mic placement is a parameter I'm not prepared to give up to rigid dogmatic tradition. There is no correct placement in general. There are consequences to any placement that can be good or bad depending. And with a vocalist, the placement can be easily made dynamic, taking advantage of different qualities on the spectrum over the course of a performance.

For instance, how many of you are aware of what your pop filters are doing? They convert low-frequency turbulence into high-frequency turbulence. The metal ones do this a lot more obviously than the nylons. You don't want that in your track, and to avoid it, you need to be a certain distance from the pop filter (depends on your filter). The filter has to be a certain distance from the capsule to dissipate the plosives as well. So if you're going to use a pop filter, your minimum distance with quality is fixed.

But no, you don't need a pop filter. You can find the louder side of the singer's face and sneak the mic in on it on an angle, just outside the plosive "cone". There you can get all the bottom and isolation you might want, no plosives in the way, and no diffusion or turbulence effect on the top (save any axial variations from the instrument itself). Do you want to have to give that possibility up for dogma?

You find everything you need to know out with an hour of experimentation on your own, and then a few minutes of training your vocalist if necessary. Listen.