2 song acoustic demo- advice?

[AndySebastian]

hey everyone,

Today I dusted off my recording equipment to record my old friend. He was feeling a bit down after quitting his band of 7 years (hence the sadness of the songs) so I told him Id record him for fun. We put down these two tracks and of course he wanted them mixed right away. It cheered him up but i want to remix these two songs.

I used an at2020 for vox and an at2021 for the acoustic together into a presonus firestudio 26x26. I was gonna run it through my alesis 3630 compressor but i can never get a good compression sound out of it so i compressed the vocals a bit to even them up with the software compressor in logic. I added some reverb to it too, again logic. I am not very happy with the reverb sound on the vocals, it doesnt seem to mix very well.

So question is what do you guys think overall, any pointers? what software reverbs do you guys recommend i buy for this type of music.

I havent recorded in a long while and i want to get this sounding good for him to cheer him up and renew his faith in himself musically.

Thanks!

Edit- yes i know you can hear the tv at the beginning of the songs. I live with my near-deaf parents and they had the tv blasting. I dont mind it though

[greatgreatriver]

It sounds good - I like it a lot! I would cut some high end on the reverb - make it more transparent.

Cool!

[stoneagejim]

hi andy,

google owns the world.....has got some serious low rumble going on! did you use a pop filter for the vocal mic? or it could be the singer hitting the boom stand with his feet?

id stuck to using logic plugs for a while you can get some nice sounding verbs out of space designer just takes a bit of patience and not sticking with the presets.


jim

[AndySebastian]

Originally Posted by stoneagejim

hi andy,

google owns the world.....has got some serious low rumble going on! did you use a pop filter for the vocal mic? or it could be the singer hitting the boom stand with his feet?

id stuck to using logic plugs for a while you can get some nice sounding verbs out of space designer just takes a bit of patience and not sticking with the presets.


jim

Yeah I hear the rumble now. I think its a combo of not using a pop filter and him bumping into the stand : /

The funny thing is I found the pop filter AFTER I wrapped up the session. oh well. Any way to fix that?

I was gonna use space designer but I had too many beers and not enough time to figure it out. I didnt even know I had it. I will play with it tomorrow

[stoneagejim]

you could try and eq out the rumble around 75hz, if it is something hitting mic stand.
if it's a plosive "pop" then its gonna be harder to get rid of.

the rumble before the singing starts can be edited out tho

jim

[AndySebastian]

Thanks Jim! I'm pretty sure they're not plosives i think is more him bumping into the boom stand or his feet tapping. Aside from the rumbling, you don't think it sounded too dead with the compression do you? I don't really like using compression because I'm not too experianced with it but I wanted to even out the vocals.

Thanks!

[stoneagejim]

it's not over compressed. theres not that much dynamic range in the performance anyway so id only compress a few 3db at the most.

ive had a second listen to it and it will need re-doing if im honest. for a rough demo its fine,

there are loads of digital clicks and pops in the track as well.

it sounds ok as a demo for his stuff. guitar sounds good..

next time id def use the pop filter and tell him to keep his feet still. if he moves about a lot during his vocal take, you should experiment with hanging the mic from above him with the stand extended a bit, you'll have to counter balance the stand so it dosent fall over under the weight of the mic, (use anything heavy on base of mic stand)
if he likes to hold the mic then you could use a dummy mic like a 58 or something and set up the actual recording mic behind it (suspended) and just lie to him what its there for!