1. Pet Peeve...Even when aligning good overdubs on time when doing them, i always manage so how to make the overdubs kinda Clutter my main vocals and dont stay Behind it like i want it to...(an suggestions to help that problem)

2. Need a Better Mic i know that for a fact i only record wit a Radio Shack mic going into the Soundcard of my SoundBlaster Live...YES I KNOW THEY BOTH GOT's Ta' Go!...

3. Another Pet Peeve....I stack my vocals and harmozine the best of my ability and i often like the results but i crave some better Reverb or something to Bring out In the Mix have it stand out and jump at you....And Some nice effects to give some flavor weather rapping it, or kinda singy songish but ain't no r.kelly more of a fifty cent harmonization...Just Want my Hooks to sound Full and Have some Pretty Decent Effects to Get me By...

4. Need something also give my vocals to stand out in the mix.....

after dat i'll be pretty much satisified cuz i'm not tryna build not actual studio...just gonna do a couple of songs "mixtape quality" to give me a buzz and my name out and get that money to invest in studio time to go to a actual studio for the real deal...So i need CHEAP but Decent Gear to get me buy for just MIXTAPE-LIKE Quality!....

Here's an audio Track where u can listen to my voice as well and maybe kinda suggest to what u hear what be the best mic for me in a not so high price...

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/song...songID=2348200

unfinished track but it should get the idea, called "D-Town"

so pleaz do not sleep on this thread and feed me with some insite and wisdom to get the best bang for my buck and get me by....i dont need Super but Tolerable Audio Quality for the ears....

Are you talking about a double tracked lead vox? Not sure.

Oops. Radio Shack? Yeah not good. Get a $100 mic from your local music store, it should improve your vox. There's many to choose from.

There are far too many audio cards to choose from. What's your budget and how many tracks do you record at once? A Mbox/PTLE system is good. You can get into many budget systems, including software, for about $4-500 if you already have a decent computer. Lexicon, Steinberg, Mackie, Digidesign & others all have these types of systems bundled with software.

Up front "jumping out" vocals are often the result of compression. On your "singy songish" parts try stacking multiple parts to fatten them up.

The best thing you can do right now is just play similar music to reference to when you mix your songs and get it as close as you can. The other stuff comes with time and experience.

I hope I was a little help.

Lawrence

the overdub thing i'm talking bout is yes, double tracked vocals to make certain lines stand out....like i was to say a line that included a punchline saying 3 or 4 words or even less...when i record them, i can time thing correctly and sometimes one may be slightly off which i seen on sweetwater that they got this software called align that used for overdubs to adjust those minor things and even them out so u can capture the best performance of them...But my question is that i want them behind the main vocal or (lead vocal) of the track so it does clutter the words and sacrifice the clarity to be able to hear the line clear do to a muffled overdub being in front of it instead behind it....i went to school for audio engineering a lil bit and recording a song on cooledit on a radio shack mic than went to protools and did some touching up on editing and somehow iono what i did but my overdubs manage to go behind me and not clutter my main vocals which i've been craving to figure out how the heck i do it? is it a eq trick or something cuz i didn't use a outboard just the software and some masterx plug in and T Racks and maybe a tad bit of eq....that's it didn't mess wit anything else....

now for the mics,software,comp, eq stuff that's not so expensive....would u mind giving off names of some...i'm planning on spending no more than about 1500-1800 no more.....just need to get off the ground and i'll probably use this labtop i'm on now to record cuz my other pc just went awol on me and having major latency problems and memory cuz all the programs of my brothers photoshop, 3d studio max, graphic stuff he does and combines wit my music...despite we gotta external harddrive to try to fix the mass overload of things we have....it still not going like it used to....dont no how to fix it without losing all his stuff, i'm not to concern cuz mines cuz all my songs are on soundclick or myspace and when i get the new gear i'm starting all over wit new tracks and everything...but it's a dell pc pentinum 4 processor and had 1gb of memory/ram...Used to do find in cooledit and the minimal plugins i used in waves. The labtop is fairly brand spanking new...aint got alot of memory tho got bout 512mb which sucks to but i gotta make it work, so maybe a external harddrive will help that and like i said i dont use to many plug ins so it'll probably do okay til i raise more money to get a better pc, but i really just wanna get to making the music as soon as possible instead concentrating on stuff that i can't afford right now.

a couple of my online buddies has very minimal gear from what they told me and got some pretty decent quality...one had a b1, another had a rode nt 1 both had some cheap preamp...dont know what was used wit the b1 but the rode nt 1 had some cheap little dbx one...no compressor just used a plug in i supposed but i rather used a external one cuz i need to save the processing power and use minimal plug ins do to the lil lab top not being able to handle that...Another one pretty known online PointGame just had a AT4040 with some Cheap Preamp and a behinger mixer....As for booths and stuff some manage to make booths outta closets even tho i know those are the worst but it worked for them. They just put some foam up and there they go...Than others just build there's from scratch and spent less than 500 or 300 dollars on building one. Monitors they would have some cheap off brand kind or just some nady, or yamaha, etc...to get them by and that's wut i'm looking for and most of them didn't spend more than a 1,000 on it... So iono i guess it may be possible maybe not...I know i dont wanna deal wit to much Sibliance problems which i read on one of these threads where a person had copped a NT2000 mic from rode....If a SM57 is good for my vocals despite the big talk everyone also boost on condensors....wut would be needed to make those sound good for myself...wut pre, eq, comp??? wut will do the trick and be wise investment and not Expensive...i would say TOO but if i'm not careful it'll only break my heart on ya'll suggesting things i know i can't afford and only dream about it when i got so many other obsticales to deal with...like a Car Payment lol....

So if ya'll get any advice to help me out on getting the sound i'm looking for in a cost effective way...PLEAZ PLEAZ tell me and drop names on products and prices if u know that i should look in to....

by the way i do stack multiple parts in my singy songy hooks but i know they could sound much much more better than they do....the reverbs and effects i use all just comes wit cooledit pro 2.0 and they just do less than mediocre job on that...wut's some other technics or tricks i can do to get some nice effects and a fat sound??? maybe a good compressor?

Uppin for assistance^^^

uppin^^^^

you should put the waves soundshifter on the hook(which sucks by the way) and drop the octave in your voice a little bit.

I would save for an SM7B and a great preamp.

Also, when you double vocals make sure you're not having phase issues!!!

Maybe pan the backing tracks a little and put reverb on them - so they sit back in the track a little more. The lead, running in the center of the track, shouldn't really have much reverb at all (if any) - especially if you're lacking presence.

Rez

Try backing up from the mic a few feet when you're doing the overdubs. Reduces clutter, increases depth.

appreciated the overdub advice very VERY much appreciated cuz that's my biggest Pet Peeve is Clutterness of the main vocal when doing overdubs to make certain lines stand out without destorying the clarity from the main one...I wanna make sure that the overdubs are Outta phase so it is behind it and my main vocals in phase where it stands out in the mix...iono how to figure that out using cooledit, they explain something like this in school over protools but iono what they did it was a demo demonstartion dat didn't explain it to throughly so wut way can i find this?....also one more question is anyone gotta any hiphop audio that they got some good overdubs on it i can listen to so i can see wut ya'll did to pull that off...

Uppin ^^^^