Careful if you're going to compress the vocals though. It can sound a bit odd having the room reverb fade in and out opposite the vocals. I notice this mostly with background vocals, which I frequently compress pretty heavily - even the headphone bleed can add up and have this effect.

i had a feeling that wasn't clear when i wrote it. here's what i meant:

the vocal is a mono channel, panned almost hard right, 4 o'clock.

the music is two mono channels, one panned hard left, but the other panned to about 3 o'clock, so the whole music mix is stereo but skewed left.

does that make more sense?


gregoire
del ubik

got it ! thanks! will try it today.

I know this is an old thread but...

The way I do it is pan everything except the vocal I'm about to record to the left. The vocal gets panned straight up center. I leave both headphones on. The bass goes between 10 and 11 o'clock so that the singer gets a good pitch reference. In this way, the vocal is up front in the cans and helps for singing in tune.

That's it.

can i rap

can i rap

For many people, sealed cans block the ability to control pitch in real time. It's like they have to hear it through the cans, and then make the correction a split second behind reality, so they are always chasing themselves. I track with no cans whenever possible, or one ear off always helps when cans are causing issues.

Just noticed, ancient thread. Why are there so many ancient threads being exhumed lately on GS?

To this note...

Are you working with newbie singers? They tend to warble the first few sessions... Filled with fear and doubt.

I've been a singer going on 30 years and I wish I could blame the cans.

It absolutely could be a case of dialing in a proper monitor mix... Also, give them a little reverb. The latter really helps with intonation.

And finally... What is your rig? If you have latency -- even a little bit -- it can cause all sorts of issues with a singer. It's almost a sure session vampire killer.

But assuming you've all got all of that squared away, it's back to the singers being green.

There's all sorts of weird things engineers have done to make a singer feel "safe" and "comfortable"... It's all ridiculous nonsense... Pair of speakers phased out, open cans... But, all of it increases the odds of getting a ton of junk mixed in with the vox track.... Even a little bleed can drive your mixer insane later...

I thank god that I'm the only a hole singer that gets recorded here. At least I know how to track myself!

Good luck playboy

It is old... I think the OP was actually Phil Spektor

I saw a video of Stevie Nicks singing with both headphones on....and she's been doin' it a long time and is awesome. I find that if you can stay on pitch with both headphones on...it gives(at least for me) the artist a better fix on how it's tracking and sounding as they go, vs having one headphone off. ie: with both phones on, one can balance themselves better with everything. As soon as one phone is off...you lose that big picture of everything going down...and how the vocal is balancing, with effects, etc.

I also like one can off, but it's caused major problems with bleed as I like quite a bit of compression for tracking...and no one likes to have to edit out tons of bleed during quiet parts(no vocal).

damn! some of the cooler info ever on g-slutz!

As a singer, this is awesome!
I've been having pitch problems when recording so I came to read a little to see if I was not alone...
I record myself and have time to do it so it's all my fault if I fail
I always make demos of my songs with an acoustic guitar and a H2 zoom recorder, I have a very nice natural pitch... and then recording BLAM!, I suck.
I'm going to try some of the tricks mentioned here.
Thanks Gearslutz!!

I took to using single-cup DJ-style phones (Stantons) for vocal recording a couple years back and it works for me. The headphones are accurate enough for the purpose.

Ever noticed, or played Name That Tune? I could do it in one or two notes with 80% success. Same with signing along, I may not have heard the song in years and couldn't sit and write the words down, because I couldn't remember them,,, But if I sang along with the song I could nail it word for word, on pitch, hit the Steven Perry , pitch perfect, Don Henley, Vince Gill, Ronnie James Dio, even Ann Wilson.,,,, I always knew I was feeding off them, Same back in school singing in choir,,, other's would feed off of me and if I stop singing others would follow suit or get all screwed up until I came back in, and all would be fine, so what I'm getting at is use a fine pre-delay between that vocal, to monitor/phones, record that, then use that with the better part of the whole composition, (as a feeding source for the vocalist) and do another vocal track off that. If this doesn't make since, then put on your favorite song, sing along you'll think S#*T,,, I sound pretty damn good Then hit the mute button.....and you'll get that WTF feeling. Case Closed.

Singing with cans on should be forbidden.

Some people can do it with both sides fully on, doesn't matter what kind of headphones they are. Some people have real problems with pitch and any kind of headphones and do much better a speaker. Some people aren't gonna sing in tune no matter what.

Other than recognizing what kind person you're dealing with, not much you can do. The one thing you can do, though, is recognize when you've got the kind of person who's gonna get stressed out when you start talking about pitch, and actually get worse. Coax a performance out of someone like that and you've earned your money.

I bring up this psychological aspect because I had someone in recently with whom I had an epic fail in this regard. Making a short story long, she had originally cowritten this song, her words and the other person's music. The original recording (not by me) sounded great. The two of them had some sort of falling out. So she kept the lyrics, rewrote the tune, and came in to recut the vocal. But while the original melody put the first line of the chorus safely below her break, the new melody put that line right in the middle of it. She couldn't sing the line without either putting it entirely in her head -- not good -- or bouncing back and forth between head & chest, which was worse. Like random unintentional yodeling.

By pointing out what the problem was and suggesting that possible solutions were to either gut it out and sing the whole thing in her chest voice, or rewrite the tune, or recut the track in a lower key, all I did was make things worse.

Eventually, after dozens of takes and careful note-taking, slicing, dicing, and tuning, I got something workable. But… damn.

So should replying to threads that are 11 years old.

You can guess a tune from just one note? Like... played on a piano?

AWESOME ability. I think you need to donate your brain to science.


But, for sure, having a guide track can make it easier for some people. But the choice of guide track can be problematic. There seems to be some science that suggests folk's personal pitch perception of bass can vary considerably. (And, in my personal, anecdotal experience, I can tell you there are some days when my own pitch sense [if not my vocal ability] is pretty acute -- and some days when it's just out to lunch, every take sounds 'fine' even if the next day I'm going to listen and whince.)

But even beyond individual pitch perception problems, even a melody guide track in the vocal range can be problematic, particularly for singers who grew up singing in ensembles. Sophisticated singing groups tend to key off each other and their harmonies tend to be more pure than equal-tempered instruments (locked as those instruments are to the 'necessary' inaccuracies of 12TET that make the music of the last few centuries possible). For that reason, a MIDI-instrument guide track -- so straightforward, so convenient -- can nonetheless be problematic for singers used to Just Intonation intervals that good singing ensembles lock into.

"You can guess a tune from just one note? Like... played on a piano?"
No,,,,,, from the original recording. You can't? Maybe you need to donate your brain to science.

LOL



So, do you plead guilty?

As charged!

You may not be entirely up on the official rules.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_That_Tune

They didn't use the hit recording, they used a generic broadcast studio orchestra, so you had to be able to guess the name of the tune essentially from the melody -- not from the far more easily identified 'whole package' of the recording.

But, yeah, depending on the song, I've often been able to identify a track quickly by, you know, listening to the track itself. Some stuff, not even a whole note. Some stuff not even an 8th.

But just based on melody, that's much, much harder for me. Even though my old man used to drill me when we'd go out to eat; old show or big band tunes would come on the Muzak and he'd go, 'What's that one?' and I'd roll the melody through my head and see what lyrics popped up, if any, then I'd work backwards to the title if it wasn't obvious.

Everyone's abilities in that regard undoubtedly vary (and naturally vary with material) but with regard to identifying specific records by their intros, I'll just note that I put in many of my formative years driving around with just an AM radio for sounds in my first car and I got real good at quickly recognizing songs I didn't want to hear. Lightning punch-out on the tuner buttons. Drove my GFs nuts.

I know the game, I'd do so so with it, but wasn't familiar with some tunes, on the other hand..... I pretty much did the same, Driving around/years/AM/8 tracks endless loop,.. those were the day's Hell maybe you can keep your brain after all.

Might be harder than it sounds!


Have a good Sunday, if it's still Sunday where you are when you read this. (Otherwise, adjust day-of-the week to fit.)

All Day Long,,,,! I'm out here in the Armpit of Oklahoma. You have a good one also.

Yes!

They'll sing even better with the headphones in front of their ears rather than over them and better yet to speakers. Lots of people don't realize that headphone use was rare prior to the late '60s.

Just listen to the pitch shift when you hold your hands over your ears! The same is true of the most experienced singers.

Open back headphones and sensible levels (=loud for loud parts, quiet for quiet parts) solved all my problems. And a proper monitor mix of course.

I personally cannot hear the headphone bleed when playing back the full mix.

Once recorded an album with a lovely french guy called Bruno Maman and we had to give him the backing track loud as F in closed cans (both sides on with him pressing them to his head) with NO vocal in his cans. It was the only way for him to sing bang on, and bang on it was. Most surreal.

I did an experiment with young singers who had never recorded before and they sang the best with no vocal. It makes experienced singers too uptight.

Interesting. He wasn't un-experienced at the time, but then he also was a type you'd struggle to get uptight regardless. Just didn't want to hear himself as he said he was either singing or listening, but not both....lol