join your local choir. you'll learn about voice control and how to blend multiple voices as one, as well as dynamic control. The skills you pick up singing songs in a group with only voices will help so much with double tracking and cut down on the number of takes youll need to get a good take
When I first started playing (got my first guitar when I was 12,) I joined our middle school choir and took choir every year after. Biggest help ever. Helped me match pitch better and understand harmonies more.
I love that you touched on Auto-Tune, one of my favorite life hacks that I've discovered a few years ago is using auto-tune to make fake vocal harmonies so that we can write them in the control room together. Then you send in the singer to sing along to the fake Harmony we created to get a good performance.
I've tried similar things with a vocoder. The results were a bit mixed, but I think if I refined my setup, I could probably get it to work alright. Best of all, vocoders are are so utterly incapable of subtlety that there's no temptation to just put the vocoded tracks in the final mix, unless you really want to sound like a late 70s robot. (and if you do want to sound like that, s'all cool with me, live your best life)
Even if you are the next Freddie (you're not) and every note that falls from your mouth is like butter to the ear, you won't have the skill to not ruin your voice after a handful of live performances without lessons. Everyone wants to be some vocal god that was unearthed in some small town, but even the greats have lessons and coaching to enhance abilities.
@@SpectreSoundStudios be sure to tell him those things, because he will be so offended that you want him to watch a video about improving his techniques... that he won't watch the video. Great, great stuff (as always), Glen. Thank you for all that you do.
Don’t know if it helps anyone, but as a singer and engineer who really struggled with singing in a studio environment, it helped me a lot not having any monitoring of my voice going in. Instead I just use one side of the headphone to hear the music and leave one ear uncovered. I‘ve experienced what other musicians and some engineers don’t understand is, that singing with headphones in a dead room is so much different from your usual singing. Not hearing your voice resonating in a room kills a lot of the feedback you usually get. Without this feedback your automatisms don’t work as they should, so you start thinking and thinking finally kills all your automatisms. Having one ear uncovered gives you a little of the feeling back from your voice in a room, even thought the room is dead.
I've been recording myself at home, and I find semi-open headphones give me the sound I need to hear, better than closed back on one or both ears. I do stay a foot back from the mic and don't hear headphone bleed.
More notes pertaining to the performance part, from my own experience recording bands: -DO show up sober (of course), preferably quit drinking days to weeks before (the more time the better, usually. You'll wonder where all that elasticity in your vocal cords came from). -If you're a smoker, DON'T quit smoking before recording days! As counter-intuitive as it sounds, once you stop your body will hock up a lot of the chemical waste you put in your body; I had a singer stop smoking with the best intentions, only to have their voice drown in throat slime and mucus and phlegm for weeks on end. -DO make the headphone mixing as painless (for yourself AND the singer) as possible ('The most important gear in a studio is the cue rig' - Andrew Scheps). I was fucking around with send volumes on tracks for a long time before I just got a Behringer P16 rig, which after about 30 secs of explanation saves me SO much grief every single session. -COMPRESSION (in a vocal sense): Untrained people will often sing from their throat (bc that's how a lot of people talk), which is tiring and unhealthy if strained. Essentially, you want to engage their back and abdomen to push air, so their throat is just tone/pitch control. If someone needs to hit a high note but just can't hit it cleanly, there are a couple tricks you can use: 1. Have them hold something in front of them (some weight but not tiringly heavy. Like a big heavy book, that kinda range), just lifting it in front of them by their forearms. It'll engage their core without them really noticing, and it usually makes straining high notes a lot cleaner and more consistent. 2. The more awkward option: have a bandmate slightly pull them back by their hipbones, while they themselves counteract that motion. It also engages their core and grounds their feet, so high notes are cleaner and more consistent! X
Yeah giving up smoking is a killer. I was a stoner for 30 years. 4 months ago I gave up smoking and I've been on and off hacking up phlegm the whole time. I'm a well trained well respected singer, I give basic singing tuition to folks around town, and this is seriously affecting my performance some days. If you're a long term smoker it takes months to clean out. If you're a singer just don't smoke anything full stop
The part about taking lessons is so spot on. I never sang clean, always did harsh vocals/grunts. But when I started out, there was absolutely nothing available on how to do it. So I just went with emulating Max Cavalera and Burton C Bell and subsequently totally frying my voice every single time I was on stage, as I had no inkling of control, force and the like. It took me years to finally get it better and several sessions with vocal coaches, to be fair. Breath control was also a major factor that is often overlooked by a lot of 'extreme' vocalists. In any case, any vocalist in whatever style out there: practise and take lessons and heed this advice! :-p
Glenn, you do a fantastic (emphatic) job of explaining the subject material you offer. I’ve only watched about 6 or 7 UA-cam episodes (so far) and any realistic, reasonable, and pragmatic musician will recognize the value you’re offering. Thank you for what you do.
I would really love a video with a few different vocalists with different timbers and registers (soprano, baritone, tenor, clean, growl, raspy, nasal etc.) with your advice on which mike to use, maybe a couple of choices: a pro one and a home recording one. It would be so useful and most of yt video do not cover the topic.
Oh yeah, that would actually be seriously helpful! Being able to know what sort of mic to use with a given singer would be a godsend for a lot of people!
Nice video Glen!! One thing I've taken to doing when tracking vocals is to set up a number of different condensers in a circle fairly close together and have the vocalist sing a few phrases from about 12" away. Then you can go back and listen to each mic separately and decide which works best with that person's voice. This eliminates the issue with the vocalist not being able to exactly duplicate the test phrase. And saves a ton of time!!
Everybody remembers that lady singing the vocal part on "Great Gig in the Sky" off Dark Side Of the moon. I heard her interviewed and she said, what she most remembered of the job was that "there was a great sound on the cans" which inspired a truly memorable performance.
Ive had really good success lately doing all my vocals with a pair of mics in Blumlein pair, and by doing double tracking by changing which mic I sing into for each take. The bleed from the extra mic helps the 2 takes blend together better when panned left/right, and adds a bit of ambiance as well. I also really like this method because it sums to mono perfectly, and as long as i remember to step back a bit for the harmonies, the parts pretty much mix themselves just by pushing the faders up. I also use my guest bathroom as a reverb chamber and pump the live sound from the mic into that room while im in the closet doing the vocal take. Gives more control over the final product, and i think a real room will sound better than a plugin any day of the week
6:27 I remember when I bought my AT4047/SV.. It was about $750 or something. I used it on dozens of songs. I still own it to this day, however I never use it anymore. Instead I use a $300 microphone on basically every song I record.. That $300 Mic is an AKG C214 and I use it because it favors my voice well. The AT4047 didn't favor my voice as well and required so much mixing to dial in. The C214 favors my vocals so well that I plan on ordering the C414xii sometime this week. I am excited to hear what my c214 sounds like with the larger higher quality capsule.
this was awesome ! I'm making my singer watch this before we record again .... and love the fact you drop F bombs every 5 mins , gets the point across !!
Yes!! I want to hear more things about metal vocals on this channel. Also in your mix demos i think having some vocals in it will be a better representation of what whatever it is in the mix. An instrumental mix is rarely what people are mixing these days (unless they’re doing riff salad). For the phone thing, when I still had a studio space to record in, I had an iPad for my vocal booth on the mic stand. Bigger than a phone, positioned well, and no signal.
@@orlock20 haha totally! I just think more education needs to happen about recording vocals, so this is a welcomed intro tutorial. A mixing tutorial at how to make a shitty sounding (aka still in key/time, but not great tone) singer sound good without autotune would be cool (yes i've done this magic).
I know this is all probably info you have talked about before. But new uploads kinda revisiting the info already told, is really nice because it's like a refresher. Thank you for stuff like this. Actually grabbed a few tips from this video I need to implement for my new studio room.
LOVE that you’re giving vocals so much love! You’re one of the only good channels to do that, brotha. Metal these days is so guitar driven, so much focus on the drums. It’s like artists nowadays only put the vocals in because there needs to be a vocal. Not because they’re treating it like a crucial instrument in the song. No one takes the time to learn proper singing abilities like they do guitar or drums, as well. I took 10 years of vocal lessons to be the best singer I can be. Because I wanted to bring the SINGING back into metal!! But I feel like that’s an uncommon outlook on vocals in metal now, and that saddens me. Keep it up, brotha!!
@@orlock20 well not really, there are still bands who actually sing which I love. Megadeth, priest, Metallica, rammstein, FFDP, disturbed, SOAD, anthrax, etc. The list goes on. Even with newer bands. It’s just that every single new band or garage band these days has the Cookie Monster for a singer. It’s getting REALLY old. Pop music puts the vocals front and center. Country music as well. And if those shit genres know to do that, why are vocals such an after thought for new metal artists these days? Makes no sense.
@@orlock20 FFDP and A7x/disturbed are quite young bands comparatively speaking. Still not the newest generation though, you’re right. The new generation is almost completely shit in that aspect.
Getting a piano was one of the biggest musical improvement our band has seen!! It was one of those free piano deals for an old 20's upright. It's so easy to find the chord you're in, pick out the notes and work out the harmonies from there! Just noodling around with the thing over the past few years of owning it really pushed the musicianship of the band as a whole!!
YES YES YES 1000% YES to everything in this video. Amazing content as always! Couple extra tips that really helped me with vocal recording back in the day: - Take breaks: if you've got too much of an ego to admit you're tired you're wasting everyone's time with sh*t takes. Take a break if you need it, go get some water and some breathable air (vocal booths get stuffy AF 🤣) and come back at it fresh. - Mic placement: whether you're the vocalist or the engineer you can place the mic to encourage better posture to optimise the performance. It's kind of personal preference but I always preferred my mic a couple of inches above my mouth so I could sing upwards with my head tilted slightly backwards. That helped me to open up my vocal chords and chest and was more comfortable for adding power. It's different for everyone, but finding the right mic placement that feels comfortable for the vocalist can make a massive difference to the performance. - Track clean and scream/growl vocals separately: Again, this one is kind of personal preference, but I always found that the optimum "feel" of my clean vocal wasn't necessarily the optimum "feel" of my scream. Obviously live you have no choice, but I had a separate warm up routine for tracking clean vocals in the studio vs. my scream to get the best possible performance of both. Some tracks the intertwining of the two didn't sound right separated so we'd do both together, but on the whole I found tracking them separate really helped me to hone in on each style and also helped with managing endurance/fatigue during really long sessions.
Thanks, I actually DID learn something valuable today: everyone always recommends open headphones - well not everyone, but composers and keyboarders - and I wondered if I should get some, just to get less startled when my neighbour's dog throws something over, I only hear the bass of it dropping and it feels like a SWAT team is kicking my front door in. But I never considered "bleeding" when recording a voice over or even when doing a M$ teams call. So damn, you're 100% right about not using open headphones.
Fantastic that you brought up the thing about autotune. Said simply: it is a great learning and practice tool. Using it as an effect doesn't bother me either, if you're into that kind of stuff and it fits with the song. The compressors in series is very useful for many things other than vocals as well. Some people use limiters way too much and comps in series usually fixes that in my experience.
Ive been using the double compression for ages back when I was doing analog recording. Thanks to digital, comping became so much easier. I also find having that pop filter tells the vocalist: BTFU and "don't touch" without having to say either. Another technique I've used with digital is combining the double compressor method with a double mic method for more dynamic singers. I would have the second mic set a bit higher(and with a pop filter) the vocalist and angled down into them, and it would be gained lower. This way when they had to belt stuff out, if they overloaded the main mic, this second mic would catch it just fine. i find when most vocalists "open up" like that, they tend to aim upwards. Worse case is you end up with a complete safety-take at a lower level. Thank goodness for digital giving us nearly unlimited tracking capability!
In regards to the mic technique part. Colt Capperune had a nice video on a different technique than backing off the mic for loud parts. He recommends turning your head up or to the side, to still give the mic more headroom before distortion, but with this method you retain the same proximity effect. Generally people back off the mic when they sing a high note, and if they also back off they are also getting a thinner sound. This new method tends to have the best of both worlds.
Very entertaining video Glen your the best. one thing that I think you forgot to mention is that an audio engineer in the studio when it comes to singers is also a psychiatrist. leaving aside the ego.. when a vocalist comes to the Studio you need to make them feel at their best so don't forget that. a cool trick I learned way back is even though the singer or the song is not the best.. when the vocalist or the player sees you nodding your head to the song it helps them get in the mood and feel confident. O and it helps them being in the zone. 😊
"Take Lessons" I'm a guitarist that does vocals sometimes, I took 4 years of vocal lessons just to I could be a little better when I DO want to do a vocal part. Also on the bit about Comping. taking lots of takes, even if they had a great take. You can get great chorus, or great harmonies as you experiment with different takes, because I will do 3-6 takes the way I wrote the song, then several more 3-6 more that are "What if I did this instead" and often get neat harmony parts to layer in.
OH and yes I do that with pitch correction, correct it, or and hear me out, I use a piano track of the vocal melody to sing to. However, the final takes and comps, I do not correct them. They are what they are. that's all it will be.
I've been learning to sing for the last month or so and using pitch correction has been really helpful. I can see how far away from the note I am, and then sing along to the corrected version and understand how my body feels when hitting those notes. Especially useful when I need to figure out how to get the same note while singing different words. As others have said, it's helpful for writing harmonies too and creating a guide track to sing along to.
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14:50 I do that all the time, especially for writing and finding cool harmonies. I always call it Robot technique, I sing the vocals, pitch correct it to death, absolute robot voice correction and then i learn it. Many singers, including me, have a general idea of the melody, but there are often fill words that are simply not in the right pitch and are forgotten. A short "but" without much tone in front of a sentence, for example. Or a gliding in or out of a not the screams "noob" sometimes. And the most forgotten thing is emotion. If I had to choose the more emotional take that needs pitch correction and the pitch perfect take with less emotions, it will always take the more emotional one and fix the pitch as long as it is not that audible. Sometimes I even work on the lyrics to get the right emotions in every sentence and the right dynamics to build up to the chorus… just a few marks in the lyrics that describe the emotion you want to get across, and you can work better with a singer if that is necessary ) … I think getting the vocals right is just the number one thing, people talk endlessly about amps and drums, but getting a good performance out of a singer is a skill that is absolutely rare in all the tutorials online.
I love this video. I took multiple lessons to improve my vocal quality, from opera to r&b. It's always great to step out of your comfort zone and do something new. It can teach you things you never knew before.
Totally agree with all you said Glen...I find setting up a bit of a mood helps a lot with performance and comfort ,lower lighting n stuff, or baphomet candles and meat cleavers depending on what style of vocals you're doing and obviously personal preference..
Personally, I double mic most of my vocals where there is both screaming and singing. I use 2 large diaphragm mics - 1 broadcast dynamic, and one condenser. I record one take over 2 tracks and then delete out as needed. Loud singing gets the condenser mic. Loud screaming gets the dynamic. Softer singing and quieter screaming techniques like vocal fry or glottal fry get a blend of both. Both mics get mild compression, and are routed to the main vocal bus, which is then lightly compressed again. Backing get both mics, using the same techniques I learned from YOU, Glenn. Gang vocals get the dynamic in front of the main vocalist(s) and the rest of the band or whomever else in the background, and the condenser acting as a room mic. Garages/parking garages and employee entrance alcoves behind concrete shopping malls work really well; add additional reverb to taste if needed.
You Give Great Practical advice.. so great that People can utilize your advice for many businesses and many areas of life besides just Music. thank You Glenn.
As a singer, part time producer, mastering engineer and songwriter, here would be my extra advices 😆: 1. Avoid sick people at least 2 weeks before the session and during it. Singing with a lew can ruin your voice. 2. Get up at least 3 hours before the session ( your vocal cords have some warm up time too) and practice at least 1 gliding, breath,sibbilance and loudness exercise. 3. Don't use your sibbilances overdramatic (doubled sss are a nightmare to mix) 4. Eat enough but not too much (your stomach shouldn't produce any strange noises) 5. Relax, don't stress yourself out and loose focus. 6. Critic and advices are not the enemy, the producer is right 7. Do not kiss the mic, singing soft doesn't mean singing quiet. 8. Have a vocal emergency kit with tea, regular voice and other stuff with you. 9. Take your time and plan your session always from easy to hard songs. 10. Say goodbye to the outside: the session is everything and the engineer is God (though he/she can also make mistakes) 11. Comfortable and quiet shoes and clothes to avid any strange noises for your producer 12. If you want to party with your bandages and engineer: two days before your first session and two days after should get the trick. 13. Stay functional (no diet or getting sober maneuvers) 14. Avoid alcohol and sparkling water during sessions ( your burps are most likely not to be saved for eternety) 15. Talk to your engineer about where to keep your water bottle and drink enough and take some pauses from time to time to stretch and go 5o the toilet. Have fun ;)
About the closet... it is quite likely that you will get ugly "box" sound, as the dimensions are so small that the room resonances are actually in the vocal range. This is the tradeoff, less reverb but skewed response and boxy sound. You can NOT take the room out once it is once put there, a box sound can not be masked by adding more hall reverb. So, experiment, the closet might work for you, or it is just horrible. Pay attention to the reflections in the mid range and that "boxy" sound.
Some good advice. More would be once you find the right mic for the vocalist work with them first singing into it to understand the sweet spot for their voice with the sensitivity and pattern. As a singer for most of my life starting from a young age and having had formal training, most vocalists have no idea what singing from the diaphragm is too. But once you learn it you'll find hitting those harder notes for yourself oh so easier, have better clarity and more fluid and smoother phrasing. And being able to control your breathing and singing from your diaphragm, you can get the most out of your lungs singing longer sustained phrases.
I thing i learned from albini was to use parallel limiting on the vocal. A thing I learned myself and from you was to step back from the vocal mic (you) and putting a fattening delay on it (me) when harmonizing.
Regarding harmonies and the headphone mix: I've noticed that in a lot of rock and pop compositions, recording the chorus over other parts will result in interesting harmonies. Sometimes doubling (which is and also isn't harmonizing) over a "smaller" mix will make it stand out more. Bonus if you have an acoustic mix to record over, as long as you can keep it tight.
I'm a competent home studio guy who's recorded albums for myself & others. I literally use different vocal mics on myself depending on the type of singing I do and the situation & I even apply this logic to certain instruments. My range is from subdued blues / jazz to hard rock belting. I recorded a bunch of live rock stuff with my band in a medium sized room, there was a lot of noise spill and I found a Sennheiser MD441 was really good for belted vocals with minimum sound spill, but due to it's low gain colourless nature it's not so good for quiet singing. Then I realised pairing the Senn with condenser for tracking vocals was kind of cool because condensers sound big and live whereas the Senn is bit colourless & rejects room sound. If the condenser sounds too "roomy" or "live" you can mix in about 20 to 30% Senn to "pull back" the sound to a more "neutral" sounding mix. I also used this technique on recording a tuba. The condenser made the tuba sound quite farty and live because it picked up every nuance. The Senn sounded a bit too dead but a 60/40 mix of the two fixed that
Glen! I can offer a little bit of insight about the vocalist and lessons. Unlike other instruments the voice is extraordinarily, exclusively, personal. When you don’t sound good as a singer you can’t just go out and buy a better voice, you can’t blame it on your strings, or your sticks, or your amp. And every singer knows this. When I was studying opera, when I was singing opera professionally, I still witness this. Even among professionals the voice is too personal. Now for people who haven’t sung at a high-level this might seem like a copout. But it’s why vocalist don’t take lessons, it’s why vocalist don’t take advice. And a better voice required by the music the more fragile the person probably is. Just my two cents
The volume in the headphone mix can make a singer go flat if it’s too low, or sharp if it’s too high. So, if you’re not blessed with perfect pitch, you can throw a pitch correction plug-in on the track to see if they’re consistently singing flat or sharp, and then you can make minor adjustments to the headphone mix to re-tune the singer, before having them take another pass at it. If you have an advanced enough setup where you can tweak the headphone mix independently of the main mix, some vocalists will perform better or worse when they hear their voice higher or lower relative to the other instruments. Headphone bleed, even with good set of closed cans can be an issue, but it doesn’t have to ruin the track. Listen to “Whole Lotta Love” and when Plant starts faking an orgasm, you can hear the bleed from a previous take making this subtle echo that comes before the notes on the final track. What I’m trying to get at with that story is that bleed is ONLY bad when you can hear the click track, and rather than trust that you’ve taken all the necessary precautions to avoid the click bleeding into the mic-you can use a different kind of metronome. Unless you’re working with Stevie Wonder, then the band in studio has working eyes, so you can just flash lights at them in time with the music. Some DAWs have a visual metronome function that will allow you to do it right in the software, and you can just have a separate monitor output flashing it at them. There are also plug-ins that will do something like that, and if you’re really fancy and like building cool stuff, you can use a Raspberry Pi and/or an Arduino to program something that will automate a dimmer for your lights in your studio to flash bright on every beat and quickly fade to a much lower level, the way a note would decay. That’s something a lot more advanced, but relatively inexpensive to implement if you can write the program yourself or know someone who can. Having an inaudible way to get everyone in the room to feel the pulse of the beat is even easier with light, and if you haven’t tried playing or singing in time with a light instead of click, you’d be surprised at how much easier it is to stay locked in. Especially for musicians that aren’t used to playing along with a click, this trick makes it much easier to adapt to. I feel like it works because when you’re performing along with pre-recorded tracks, you have a lot of information that your brain is trying to process through one pathway, and by offloading that to the part of your brain that handles vision, it frees up some of that mental bandwidth for your ears and will get you a better performance. If you ever wondered why it sounds so much better when you can record (at least a scratch track) with everyone playing together live in the studio, it’s because everyone is able to watch as well as listen to each other. Watch any tight rhythm section playing live, and the bass player will almost certainly be in a position where they can keep an eye on the drummer, and I would argue it’s the combination of the audio and visual information working together to make that happen. So, my theory is that by playing to a flash, rather than a click sort of helps to split the difference between recording individual overdubs and recording with a full band.
I can 100% advocate for the la-2a style comp into an 1176 style comp. I use it on all my main vocal tracks and it just is the magic switch. Can't recommend it enough
One trick I’ve always used to make sure I sing on key and nail a take is to add a really lush reverb on the headphone mix. It’s only used during tracking, but somehow the tail of the verb seems to help flow to the next phrase in key. (Delay does NOT accomplish the same thing). Dunno if it works for everyone- but for me, it has been a lifesaver way before auto tune existed. Hope that helps someone :)
Hey Glenn! Long time viewer from the land of the Kiwis over here! Thanks for making this video, as I was really getting stuck on vocals. People would say I sound alright but when I hear myself, I absolutely hate the result, so thanks for the tips on vocal production! Much love
Comping has lots of advantages, just like usual mentioned. But sometimes I find that if you comp too many parts, the flow is gone... If there's anough room in between, than it's great. But I tried comping lots of times with guitar solo's but it really takes the flow out of the performance sometimes. As far as tuning vocals, I sometimes use Melodyne, which is a lot more natural sounding than autotune. I use for two things, to fix/tune a single note from a vocal or bass (guitar gives artefacts). If it's just that one note that's just a little too far off, than I don't see a problem fixing it in post. As an engineer, we also fix timing issues in post. But you're right, don't fix a bad singer. Secondly I use it to "make" harmony vocals, just as a tool. Create them from the lead vocal by moving the notes up or down a third or fifth (or whatever you want). Adjust it so it's correct and then sing that part and delete the created Melodyne harmony. But great video, spot on!
A couple of points: 1) re effects in the monitors (also applies to live performances); can sometimes cause errors in pitch. 2) re hitting the high notes; try lowering the key the song is played in.
I am a multi instrumentalist and gear nerd building a studio. It's amazing how little singers know about how your voice and mic works. Operatic Metal Singer with a voice like Dickinson, Halford, and Dio with Jeff Walker, Cronos, and Tom Warrior vocals. I jave had to record with an SM57 for one studio as my 6'4" 300lbs frame makes for a LOUD VOICE! Maybe the engineer did know his shit, but it worked!
Since you mentioned the Shure SM7B, that’s the only microphone I’ve tried so far that didn’t actually need a pop filter, aside from the included wind screen that comes attached to it by default. And you can also get up really close to it without sounding boomy. Probably because it’s so long that it already keeps your mouth far enough away from the capsule - usually. When you sing a louder part, of course you still have to get further away from it. But you don’t get those nasty air pops with the SM7B that otherwise force you to use a pop filter with most condenser mights, or also an SM58.
One you missed entirely is compensation for latency. You can record a click track then play it and record the click on a mic in a different track. Then play them back... measure the distance in the count in your DAW then set the offset to comp for it in your DAW. When you think you got it correct you can record the click again and listen to it back against the first click it should perfectly line up with no echo once you get it right. If you do not do this your recorded vocals will be slightly off as well as any of your mic instruments. Setting this is different on every computer and you need to do this but it is SUPER important with vocals.
At last! Somebody who recognises that cheap 'packing blankets' are the same as very expensive 'sound blankets'. I have used them for years in film and TV work. Thanks Glen...
Back in my radio daze we used the SM 5B and the SM 7 because it has about 3" of foam in front of the capsule. It was great for the jocks that liked to eat the mic. Both need a LOT of gain because of that. Foam degradation on the older mics is a big problem. BTW: Both mikes were developed as boom mics to be used on TV and film sound stages. Just started using the Arousor vst, the software version of the Distressor, tweaky but very cool. Had a pair of LA 2A's with V4's still working [no B suffix, original] that I rebuilt. Sounded great but I don't miss the thermal drift. I have several vst's that emulate the LA 2A very well. The Black Rooster VLA-2A and the Arousor do a very convincing job without the drift.
Question: about the pop filter. What about the SM7B? Or any mic for that matter that comes with a wind screen already on it? Do you still need a pop filter on that or are you ok to record without it as long as the wind screen is on it?
My vocal trick is a throw away chorus at the beginning of a song. I’m already in the pocket when the keeper beginning starts. Edit it out later. But I like single straight through takes when ever possible and this helps.
3:07 I don't know why, so many people think they are gifted to sing. I've met so many improvised vocalists that I got tired of if and started singing myself for my project. Taking lessons, because I'm not talented as well, so, coherence. BTW do you recommend getting a bit more far from the mic on louder parts, instead of lowering gain? I'm always afraid I'd get more room in the take.
The one thing that pitch correction is really helpful on is BACKGROUND SINGERS.... when you have multiple harmonies singing "oooohs" you can tighten them up, and it's in the background where it's not totally obvious.
I record an alternative metal vocalist often. There are many clean parts and many scream parts in the songs, and he doesn't like recording them separately - so what I do is have him sing into a dynamic mic with a lower gain setting, and then I add a condenser mic right next to it (upside down for phase) with a higher gain for the clean parts. The condenser has a much brighter sound to it so this works out well!
join your local choir. you'll learn about voice control and how to blend multiple voices as one, as well as dynamic control. The skills you pick up singing songs in a group with only voices will help so much with double tracking and cut down on the number of takes youll need to get a good take
As someone who often does full choirs, and full queen covers, alone. I concur.one of the best things I ever did for music.
Musical theater and joining the local opera chorus are also good things.
Well that's an excellent bit of advice right there.
Thats exactly how Tim Owens got his start. Good tip!
When I first started playing (got my first guitar when I was 12,) I joined our middle school choir and took choir every year after. Biggest help ever. Helped me match pitch better and understand harmonies more.
I love that you touched on Auto-Tune, one of my favorite life hacks that I've discovered a few years ago is using auto-tune to make fake vocal harmonies so that we can write them in the control room together. Then you send in the singer to sing along to the fake Harmony we created to get a good performance.
I've tried similar things with a vocoder. The results were a bit mixed, but I think if I refined my setup, I could probably get it to work alright.
Best of all, vocoders are are so utterly incapable of subtlety that there's no temptation to just put the vocoded tracks in the final mix, unless you really want to sound like a late 70s robot. (and if you do want to sound like that, s'all cool with me, live your best life)
Seems legit. Nice
Recently started recording myself singing as a hobby. It's a LOT harder than I thought. This video is much appreciated
Even if you are the next Freddie (you're not) and every note that falls from your mouth is like butter to the ear, you won't have the skill to not ruin your voice after a handful of live performances without lessons.
Everyone wants to be some vocal god that was unearthed in some small town, but even the greats have lessons and coaching to enhance abilities.
yes, and even the rare vocal god that was unearthed in some small town probably grew up singing in their church choir since they learned to talk.
Dude, you are on a roll this video. Only 5 minutes in and I'm dying laughing. Sending this to my singer 😂😂
Tell him I said to swallow his pride & take some lessons. …. And hold the mic properly.
@@SpectreSoundStudios be sure to tell him those things, because he will be so offended that you want him to watch a video about improving his techniques... that he won't watch the video. Great, great stuff (as always), Glen. Thank you for all that you do.
Don’t know if it helps anyone, but as a singer and engineer who really struggled with singing in a studio environment, it helped me a lot not having any monitoring of my voice going in. Instead I just use one side of the headphone to hear the music and leave one ear uncovered. I‘ve experienced what other musicians and some engineers don’t understand is, that singing with headphones in a dead room is so much different from your usual singing. Not hearing your voice resonating in a room kills a lot of the feedback you usually get. Without this feedback your automatisms don’t work as they should, so you start thinking and thinking finally kills all your automatisms. Having one ear uncovered gives you a little of the feeling back from your voice in a room, even thought the room is dead.
I've been recording myself at home, and I find semi-open headphones give me the sound I need to hear, better than closed back on one or both ears. I do stay a foot back from the mic and don't hear headphone bleed.
More notes pertaining to the performance part, from my own experience recording bands:
-DO show up sober (of course), preferably quit drinking days to weeks before (the more time the better, usually. You'll wonder where all that elasticity in your vocal cords came from).
-If you're a smoker, DON'T quit smoking before recording days! As counter-intuitive as it sounds, once you stop your body will hock up a lot of the chemical waste you put in your body; I had a singer stop smoking with the best intentions, only to have their voice drown in throat slime and mucus and phlegm for weeks on end.
-DO make the headphone mixing as painless (for yourself AND the singer) as possible ('The most important gear in a studio is the cue rig' - Andrew Scheps).
I was fucking around with send volumes on tracks for a long time before I just got a Behringer P16 rig, which after about 30 secs of explanation saves me SO much grief every single session.
-COMPRESSION (in a vocal sense): Untrained people will often sing from their throat (bc that's how a lot of people talk), which is tiring and unhealthy if strained. Essentially, you want to engage their back and abdomen to push air, so their throat is just tone/pitch control. If someone needs to hit a high note but just can't hit it cleanly, there are a couple tricks you can use:
1. Have them hold something in front of them (some weight but not tiringly heavy. Like a big heavy book, that kinda range), just lifting it in front of them by their forearms. It'll engage their core without them really noticing, and it usually makes straining high notes a lot cleaner and more consistent.
2. The more awkward option: have a bandmate slightly pull them back by their hipbones, while they themselves counteract that motion. It also engages their core and grounds their feet, so high notes are cleaner and more consistent!
X
Kinda dig the holding the book idea, may have to try that sometime
@@mfkrwill Honestly it's one of my favorite 'see, I'm a good producer, I swear' tricks. So far it's shown improvement literally 100% of the time.
Yeah giving up smoking is a killer. I was a stoner for 30 years. 4 months ago I gave up smoking and I've been on and off hacking up phlegm the whole time. I'm a well trained well respected singer, I give basic singing tuition to folks around town, and this is seriously affecting my performance some days. If you're a long term smoker it takes months to clean out. If you're a singer just don't smoke anything full stop
Glenn, thank you for everything.
The part about taking lessons is so spot on. I never sang clean, always did harsh vocals/grunts. But when I started out, there was absolutely nothing available on how to do it. So I just went with emulating Max Cavalera and Burton C Bell and subsequently totally frying my voice every single time I was on stage, as I had no inkling of control, force and the like.
It took me years to finally get it better and several sessions with vocal coaches, to be fair. Breath control was also a major factor that is often overlooked by a lot of 'extreme' vocalists.
In any case, any vocalist in whatever style out there: practise and take lessons and heed this advice! :-p
Glenn, you do a fantastic (emphatic) job of explaining the subject material you offer. I’ve only watched about 6 or 7 UA-cam episodes (so far) and any realistic, reasonable, and pragmatic musician will recognize the value you’re offering.
Thank you for what you do.
Dude, I absolutely LOVE when you show your out-takes at the end of your AWESOME videos!
I would really love a video with a few different vocalists with different timbers and registers (soprano, baritone, tenor, clean, growl, raspy, nasal etc.) with your advice on which mike to use, maybe a couple of choices: a pro one and a home recording one. It would be so useful and most of yt video do not cover the topic.
Oh yeah, that would actually be seriously helpful! Being able to know what sort of mic to use with a given singer would be a godsend for a lot of people!
Your ad is always spot on but your humor absolutely knocks me out.
Nice video Glen!!
One thing I've taken to doing when tracking vocals is to set up a number of different condensers in a circle fairly close together and have the vocalist sing a few phrases from about 12" away.
Then you can go back and listen to each mic separately and decide which works best with that person's voice.
This eliminates the issue with the vocalist not being able to exactly duplicate the test phrase.
And saves a ton of time!!
Everybody remembers that lady singing the vocal part on "Great Gig in the Sky" off Dark Side Of the moon. I heard her interviewed and she said, what she most remembered of the job was that "there was a great sound on the cans" which inspired a truly memorable performance.
Thank you so much for this OUTSTANDING video!! Made my day! 🤘🏻🔥
You're very welcome! Glad you found it useful!
Ive had really good success lately doing all my vocals with a pair of mics in Blumlein pair, and by doing double tracking by changing which mic I sing into for each take. The bleed from the extra mic helps the 2 takes blend together better when panned left/right, and adds a bit of ambiance as well. I also really like this method because it sums to mono perfectly, and as long as i remember to step back a bit for the harmonies, the parts pretty much mix themselves just by pushing the faders up. I also use my guest bathroom as a reverb chamber and pump the live sound from the mic into that room while im in the closet doing the vocal take. Gives more control over the final product, and i think a real room will sound better than a plugin any day of the week
Clever idea. Thank's for the share!
@@lalumieredumonde no problem! I picked up the idea when looking at some Beach Boys recording photos and watching some documentaries on Brian Wilson.
I’ve dogged on you for some instances in the past, but I’ve learned an incredible amount of information from you. Love this channel
6:27 I remember when I bought my AT4047/SV.. It was about $750 or something. I used it on dozens of songs. I still own it to this day, however I never use it anymore. Instead I use a $300 microphone on basically every song I record.. That $300 Mic is an AKG C214 and I use it because it favors my voice well. The AT4047 didn't favor my voice as well and required so much mixing to dial in. The C214 favors my vocals so well that I plan on ordering the C414xii sometime this week. I am excited to hear what my c214 sounds like with the larger higher quality capsule.
My point is, I agree. Don't always assume that the more expensive Mic is the better option. Dynamics matter.
The Dave Mustaine comment made me proper laugh!!! Nice one!
Hahahaa that was funny as hell!
dave gets all the hate, but billy corgan's ten thousand times worse.
@@austindolan7182 as a massive fan of Smashing Pumpkins, yes I agree lol
this was awesome ! I'm making my singer watch this before we record again .... and love the fact you drop F bombs every 5 mins , gets the point across !!
Keep the outtakes coming Glenn!
Yes!! I want to hear more things about metal vocals on this channel. Also in your mix demos i think having some vocals in it will be a better representation of what whatever it is in the mix. An instrumental mix is rarely what people are mixing these days (unless they’re doing riff salad).
For the phone thing, when I still had a studio space to record in, I had an iPad for my vocal booth on the mic stand. Bigger than a phone, positioned well, and no signal.
Gear God's song contest had mostly riff salad. I imagine the lesson is don't let the metal guitarist write the song.
@@orlock20 haha totally! I just think more education needs to happen about recording vocals, so this is a welcomed intro tutorial. A mixing tutorial at how to make a shitty sounding (aka still in key/time, but not great tone) singer sound good without autotune would be cool (yes i've done this magic).
I've been taking singing lessons since september. Best decision ever! Don't understand singers who don't do it
I know this is all probably info you have talked about before. But new uploads kinda revisiting the info already told, is really nice because it's like a refresher. Thank you for stuff like this. Actually grabbed a few tips from this video I need to implement for my new studio room.
I don't know why but when you scream at me on these videos it just warms my heart! thanks for all the good advice Glenn.
LOVE that you’re giving vocals so much love! You’re one of the only good channels to do that, brotha. Metal these days is so guitar driven, so much focus on the drums. It’s like artists nowadays only put the vocals in because there needs to be a vocal. Not because they’re treating it like a crucial instrument in the song. No one takes the time to learn proper singing abilities like they do guitar or drums, as well. I took 10 years of vocal lessons to be the best singer I can be. Because I wanted to bring the SINGING back into metal!! But I feel like that’s an uncommon outlook on vocals in metal now, and that saddens me. Keep it up, brotha!!
Singing in metal has been reduced to symphonic metal such as Nightwish and Sirena.
@@orlock20 well not really, there are still bands who actually sing which I love. Megadeth, priest, Metallica, rammstein, FFDP, disturbed, SOAD, anthrax, etc. The list goes on. Even with newer bands. It’s just that every single new band or garage band these days has the Cookie Monster for a singer. It’s getting REALLY old. Pop music puts the vocals front and center. Country music as well. And if those shit genres know to do that, why are vocals such an after thought for new metal artists these days? Makes no sense.
@@The_Buff_Guy That's because they are the rare metal acts that can sing and were around when metal was still popular.
@@orlock20 FFDP and A7x/disturbed are quite young bands comparatively speaking. Still not the newest generation though, you’re right. The new generation is almost completely shit in that aspect.
@@The_Buff_Guy A7x is about 22 years old and FFDP is 16 years old. Are you feeling old from reading that?
I was waiting for a video about this topic! 🤘 Thanks Glenn!
It’s one of his best lessons.
Getting a piano was one of the biggest musical improvement our band has seen!! It was one of those free piano deals for an old 20's upright. It's so easy to find the chord you're in, pick out the notes and work out the harmonies from there! Just noodling around with the thing over the past few years of owning it really pushed the musicianship of the band as a whole!!
The problem with pianos is they are purposely out of tune. I don't know about electronic keyboards.
I want to hear a full version of slimed in my prime
Pre lubricated new romance
Heck, I want to record it for humor value... 10:40
Brilliant outtakes, cherries on a delicious cake!! :D :D :D
Always Appreciated GLENN !
I'm not a singer, but I was considering just doing my own vocals anyway. This video came at the perfect time, thank you, Glenn!
YES YES YES 1000% YES to everything in this video. Amazing content as always!
Couple extra tips that really helped me with vocal recording back in the day:
- Take breaks: if you've got too much of an ego to admit you're tired you're wasting everyone's time with sh*t takes. Take a break if you need it, go get some water and some breathable air (vocal booths get stuffy AF 🤣) and come back at it fresh.
- Mic placement: whether you're the vocalist or the engineer you can place the mic to encourage better posture to optimise the performance. It's kind of personal preference but I always preferred my mic a couple of inches above my mouth so I could sing upwards with my head tilted slightly backwards. That helped me to open up my vocal chords and chest and was more comfortable for adding power. It's different for everyone, but finding the right mic placement that feels comfortable for the vocalist can make a massive difference to the performance.
- Track clean and scream/growl vocals separately: Again, this one is kind of personal preference, but I always found that the optimum "feel" of my clean vocal wasn't necessarily the optimum "feel" of my scream. Obviously live you have no choice, but I had a separate warm up routine for tracking clean vocals in the studio vs. my scream to get the best possible performance of both. Some tracks the intertwining of the two didn't sound right separated so we'd do both together, but on the whole I found tracking them separate really helped me to hone in on each style and also helped with managing endurance/fatigue during really long sessions.
Thanks, I actually DID learn something valuable today: everyone always recommends open headphones - well not everyone, but composers and keyboarders - and I wondered if I should get some, just to get less startled when my neighbour's dog throws something over, I only hear the bass of it dropping and it feels like a SWAT team is kicking my front door in. But I never considered "bleeding" when recording a voice over or even when doing a M$ teams call. So damn, you're 100% right about not using open headphones.
I love Mustaine's singing. Charming and cute.
One of the most entertaining videos I've seen. Informative and on point. THX !!
Fantastic that you brought up the thing about autotune. Said simply: it is a great learning and practice tool. Using it as an effect doesn't bother me either, if you're into that kind of stuff and it fits with the song.
The compressors in series is very useful for many things other than vocals as well. Some people use limiters way too much and comps in series usually fixes that in my experience.
Vocal warm ups is important as well!!
Wow you're all fired up and hilarious! I love it. Awesome work.
Great sensible advice
Ive been using the double compression for ages back when I was doing analog recording. Thanks to digital, comping became so much easier. I also find having that pop filter tells the vocalist: BTFU and "don't touch" without having to say either. Another technique I've used with digital is combining the double compressor method with a double mic method for more dynamic singers. I would have the second mic set a bit higher(and with a pop filter) the vocalist and angled down into them, and it would be gained lower. This way when they had to belt stuff out, if they overloaded the main mic, this second mic would catch it just fine. i find when most vocalists "open up" like that, they tend to aim upwards. Worse case is you end up with a complete safety-take at a lower level. Thank goodness for digital giving us nearly unlimited tracking capability!
The 2 mic's is a great trick 👌 but won't you have any tone differences between the two due to the different placing?
In regards to the mic technique part. Colt Capperune had a nice video on a different technique than backing off the mic for loud parts. He recommends turning your head up or to the side, to still give the mic more headroom before distortion, but with this method you retain the same proximity effect. Generally people back off the mic when they sing a high note, and if they also back off they are also getting a thinner sound. This new method tends to have the best of both worlds.
Very entertaining video Glen your the best.
one thing that I think you forgot to mention is that an audio engineer in the studio when it comes to singers is also a psychiatrist.
leaving aside the ego.. when a vocalist comes to the Studio you need to make them feel at their best so don't forget that.
a cool trick I learned way back is even though the singer or the song is not the best.. when the vocalist or the player sees you nodding your head to the song it helps them get in the mood and feel confident. O and it helps them being in the zone. 😊
When the engineer hurls insults at me, I sing better!!!!!
@@asaphsarmy2637 if it works for you the more the power to you🏆
"Take Lessons" I'm a guitarist that does vocals sometimes, I took 4 years of vocal lessons just to I could be a little better when I DO want to do a vocal part.
Also on the bit about Comping. taking lots of takes, even if they had a great take. You can get great chorus, or great harmonies as you experiment with different takes, because I will do 3-6 takes the way I wrote the song, then several more 3-6 more that are "What if I did this instead" and often get neat harmony parts to layer in.
OH and yes I do that with pitch correction, correct it, or and hear me out, I use a piano track of the vocal melody to sing to. However, the final takes and comps, I do not correct them. They are what they are. that's all it will be.
Joe Bonamassa takes singing lessons and Adele doesn't. He sings in three octaves and Adele sings two octaves. Lessons help.
Glenn is definitely top of the food chain. Salute!
I've been learning to sing for the last month or so and using pitch correction has been really helpful. I can see how far away from the note I am, and then sing along to the corrected version and understand how my body feels when hitting those notes. Especially useful when I need to figure out how to get the same note while singing different words. As others have said, it's helpful for writing harmonies too and creating a guide track to sing along to.
14:50 I do that all the time, especially for writing and finding cool harmonies. I always call it Robot technique, I sing the vocals, pitch correct it to death, absolute robot voice correction and then i learn it. Many singers, including me, have a general idea of the melody, but there are often fill words that are simply not in the right pitch and are forgotten. A short "but" without much tone in front of a sentence, for example. Or a gliding in or out of a not the screams "noob" sometimes. And the most forgotten thing is emotion. If I had to choose the more emotional take that needs pitch correction and the pitch perfect take with less emotions, it will always take the more emotional one and fix the pitch as long as it is not that audible. Sometimes I even work on the lyrics to get the right emotions in every sentence and the right dynamics to build up to the chorus… just a few marks in the lyrics that describe the emotion you want to get across, and you can work better with a singer if that is necessary ) … I think getting the vocals right is just the number one thing, people talk endlessly about amps and drums, but getting a good performance out of a singer is a skill that is absolutely rare in all the tutorials online.
I love this video. I took multiple lessons to improve my vocal quality, from opera to r&b. It's always great to step out of your comfort zone and do something new. It can teach you things you never knew before.
Thank the musicians for fusion. Sound best singing rock, but want to do opera? There is rock opera!
Totally agree with all you said Glen...I find setting up a bit of a mood helps a lot with performance and comfort ,lower lighting n stuff, or baphomet candles and meat cleavers depending on what style of vocals you're doing and obviously personal preference..
Love the picture of Warrel Dane when talking about Real Singers. Nevermore / Sanctuary RIP BROTHER YOUR WORDS WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN
Personally, I double mic most of my vocals where there is both screaming and singing. I use 2 large diaphragm mics - 1 broadcast dynamic, and one condenser. I record one take over 2 tracks and then delete out as needed. Loud singing gets the condenser mic. Loud screaming gets the dynamic. Softer singing and quieter screaming techniques like vocal fry or glottal fry get a blend of both. Both mics get mild compression, and are routed to the main vocal bus, which is then lightly compressed again. Backing get both mics, using the same techniques I learned from YOU, Glenn. Gang vocals get the dynamic in front of the main vocalist(s) and the rest of the band or whomever else in the background, and the condenser acting as a room mic. Garages/parking garages and employee entrance alcoves behind concrete shopping malls work really well; add additional reverb to taste if needed.
You Give Great Practical advice.. so great that People can utilize your advice for many businesses and many areas of life besides just Music. thank You Glenn.
Glad you did this. Watched it before work and laughed my ass off while learning a few things! Good one!
Always great info
Thank you so much for this video!
As a singer, part time producer, mastering engineer and songwriter, here would be my extra advices 😆:
1. Avoid sick people at least 2 weeks before the session and during it. Singing with a lew can ruin your voice.
2. Get up at least 3 hours before the session ( your vocal cords have some warm up time too) and practice at least 1 gliding, breath,sibbilance and loudness exercise.
3. Don't use your sibbilances overdramatic (doubled sss are a nightmare to mix)
4. Eat enough but not too much (your stomach shouldn't produce any strange noises)
5. Relax, don't stress yourself out and loose focus.
6. Critic and advices are not the enemy, the producer is right
7. Do not kiss the mic, singing soft doesn't mean singing quiet.
8. Have a vocal emergency kit with tea, regular voice and other stuff with you.
9. Take your time and plan your session always from easy to hard songs.
10. Say goodbye to the outside: the session is everything and the engineer is God (though he/she can also make mistakes)
11. Comfortable and quiet shoes and clothes to avid any strange noises for your producer
12. If you want to party with your bandages and engineer: two days before your first session and two days after should get the trick.
13. Stay functional (no diet or getting sober maneuvers)
14. Avoid alcohol and sparkling water during sessions ( your burps are most likely not to be saved for eternety)
15. Talk to your engineer about where to keep your water bottle and drink enough and take some pauses from time to time to stretch and go 5o the toilet.
Have fun ;)
I really love these types of videos, where list what you should and should not do. They are informative and funny at the same time.
About the closet... it is quite likely that you will get ugly "box" sound, as the dimensions are so small that the room resonances are actually in the vocal range. This is the tradeoff, less reverb but skewed response and boxy sound. You can NOT take the room out once it is once put there, a box sound can not be masked by adding more hall reverb.
So, experiment, the closet might work for you, or it is just horrible. Pay attention to the reflections in the mid range and that "boxy" sound.
If you fill it full of clothes you wont get that as much.
Some good advice. More would be once you find the right mic for the vocalist work with them first singing into it to understand the sweet spot for their voice with the sensitivity and pattern. As a singer for most of my life starting from a young age and having had formal training, most vocalists have no idea what singing from the diaphragm is too. But once you learn it you'll find hitting those harder notes for yourself oh so easier, have better clarity and more fluid and smoother phrasing. And being able to control your breathing and singing from your diaphragm, you can get the most out of your lungs singing longer sustained phrases.
I thing i learned from albini was to use parallel limiting on the vocal. A thing I learned myself and from you was to step back from the vocal mic (you) and putting a fattening delay on it (me) when harmonizing.
Regarding harmonies and the headphone mix: I've noticed that in a lot of rock and pop compositions, recording the chorus over other parts will result in interesting harmonies. Sometimes doubling (which is and also isn't harmonizing) over a "smaller" mix will make it stand out more. Bonus if you have an acoustic mix to record over, as long as you can keep it tight.
I'm a competent home studio guy who's recorded albums for myself & others. I literally use different vocal mics on myself depending on the type of singing I do and the situation & I even apply this logic to certain instruments. My range is from subdued blues / jazz to hard rock belting. I recorded a bunch of live rock stuff with my band in a medium sized room, there was a lot of noise spill and I found a Sennheiser MD441 was really good for belted vocals with minimum sound spill, but due to it's low gain colourless nature it's not so good for quiet singing. Then I realised pairing the Senn with condenser for tracking vocals was kind of cool because condensers sound big and live whereas the Senn is bit colourless & rejects room sound. If the condenser sounds too "roomy" or "live" you can mix in about 20 to 30% Senn to "pull back" the sound to a more "neutral" sounding mix. I also used this technique on recording a tuba. The condenser made the tuba sound quite farty and live because it picked up every nuance. The Senn sounded a bit too dead but a 60/40 mix of the two fixed that
as a singer, the side note cut like a knife, but its going to heal so good.
Another great vid. Can't wait for your ssl review.
Tomorrow!
Glen!
I can offer a little bit of insight about the vocalist and lessons. Unlike other instruments the voice is extraordinarily, exclusively, personal. When you don’t sound good as a singer you can’t just go out and buy a better voice, you can’t blame it on your strings, or your sticks, or your amp. And every singer knows this.
When I was studying opera, when I was singing opera professionally, I still witness this. Even among professionals the voice is too personal.
Now for people who haven’t sung at a high-level this might seem like a copout. But it’s why vocalist don’t take lessons, it’s why vocalist don’t take advice. And a better voice required by the music the more fragile the person probably is.
Just my two cents
The volume in the headphone mix can make a singer go flat if it’s too low, or sharp if it’s too high. So, if you’re not blessed with perfect pitch, you can throw a pitch correction plug-in on the track to see if they’re consistently singing flat or sharp, and then you can make minor adjustments to the headphone mix to re-tune the singer, before having them take another pass at it.
If you have an advanced enough setup where you can tweak the headphone mix independently of the main mix, some vocalists will perform better or worse when they hear their voice higher or lower relative to the other instruments.
Headphone bleed, even with good set of closed cans can be an issue, but it doesn’t have to ruin the track. Listen to “Whole Lotta Love” and when Plant starts faking an orgasm, you can hear the bleed from a previous take making this subtle echo that comes before the notes on the final track. What I’m trying to get at with that story is that bleed is ONLY bad when you can hear the click track, and rather than trust that you’ve taken all the necessary precautions to avoid the click bleeding into the mic-you can use a different kind of metronome. Unless you’re working with Stevie Wonder, then the band in studio has working eyes, so you can just flash lights at them in time with the music. Some DAWs have a visual metronome function that will allow you to do it right in the software, and you can just have a separate monitor output flashing it at them. There are also plug-ins that will do something like that, and if you’re really fancy and like building cool stuff, you can use a Raspberry Pi and/or an Arduino to program something that will automate a dimmer for your lights in your studio to flash bright on every beat and quickly fade to a much lower level, the way a note would decay. That’s something a lot more advanced, but relatively inexpensive to implement if you can write the program yourself or know someone who can. Having an inaudible way to get everyone in the room to feel the pulse of the beat is even easier with light, and if you haven’t tried playing or singing in time with a light instead of click, you’d be surprised at how much easier it is to stay locked in. Especially for musicians that aren’t used to playing along with a click, this trick makes it much easier to adapt to. I feel like it works because when you’re performing along with pre-recorded tracks, you have a lot of information that your brain is trying to process through one pathway, and by offloading that to the part of your brain that handles vision, it frees up some of that mental bandwidth for your ears and will get you a better performance. If you ever wondered why it sounds so much better when you can record (at least a scratch track) with everyone playing together live in the studio, it’s because everyone is able to watch as well as listen to each other. Watch any tight rhythm section playing live, and the bass player will almost certainly be in a position where they can keep an eye on the drummer, and I would argue it’s the combination of the audio and visual information working together to make that happen. So, my theory is that by playing to a flash, rather than a click sort of helps to split the difference between recording individual overdubs and recording with a full band.
Great info and out-takes! Would love to see an unedited post sometime:)
6:10 Made me laugh like crazy, but I think Glenn's comedy is on point thru this whole episode. Great advice also.
Good one! You got it covered.
15:07 bloody right that is!
I can 100% advocate for the la-2a style comp into an 1176 style comp. I use it on all my main vocal tracks and it just is the magic switch. Can't recommend it enough
One trick I’ve always used to make sure I sing on key and nail a take is to add a really lush reverb on the headphone mix. It’s only used during tracking, but somehow the tail of the verb seems to help flow to the next phrase in key. (Delay does NOT accomplish the same thing). Dunno if it works for everyone- but for me, it has been a lifesaver way before auto tune existed. Hope that helps someone :)
Hey Glenn! Long time viewer from the land of the Kiwis over here! Thanks for making this video, as I was really getting stuck on vocals. People would say I sound alright but when I hear myself, I absolutely hate the result, so thanks for the tips on vocal production! Much love
I’m sure we can do something down the road
Learning stuff from this channel is better than college. Listen to this man! He knows his physics and tech. Ignore at your own peril.
Precise, funny and educational... as always. Thx bro!
Glen is so passionate on this one, you can see his vocals clipping on Reaper in the background lol
Comping has lots of advantages, just like usual mentioned. But sometimes I find that if you comp too many parts, the flow is gone... If there's anough room in between, than it's great. But I tried comping lots of times with guitar solo's but it really takes the flow out of the performance sometimes. As far as tuning vocals, I sometimes use Melodyne, which is a lot more natural sounding than autotune. I use for two things, to fix/tune a single note from a vocal or bass (guitar gives artefacts). If it's just that one note that's just a little too far off, than I don't see a problem fixing it in post. As an engineer, we also fix timing issues in post. But you're right, don't fix a bad singer. Secondly I use it to "make" harmony vocals, just as a tool. Create them from the lead vocal by moving the notes up or down a third or fifth (or whatever you want). Adjust it so it's correct and then sing that part and delete the created Melodyne harmony. But great video, spot on!
A couple of points: 1) re effects in the monitors (also applies to live performances); can sometimes cause errors in pitch. 2) re hitting the high notes; try lowering the key the song is played in.
Really entertaining and informative.. thanks Glenn :)
I am a multi instrumentalist and gear nerd building a studio. It's amazing how little singers know about how your voice and mic works. Operatic Metal Singer with a voice like Dickinson, Halford, and Dio with Jeff Walker, Cronos, and Tom Warrior vocals. I jave had to record with an SM57 for one studio as my 6'4" 300lbs frame makes for a LOUD VOICE! Maybe the engineer did know his shit, but it worked!
Since you mentioned the Shure SM7B, that’s the only microphone I’ve tried so far that didn’t actually need a pop filter, aside from the included wind screen that comes attached to it by default. And you can also get up really close to it without sounding boomy. Probably because it’s so long that it already keeps your mouth far enough away from the capsule - usually. When you sing a louder part, of course you still have to get further away from it. But you don’t get those nasty air pops with the SM7B that otherwise force you to use a pop filter with most condenser mights, or also an SM58.
Awesome!
One you missed entirely is compensation for latency. You can record a click track then play it and record the click on a mic in a different track. Then play them back... measure the distance in the count in your DAW then set the offset to comp for it in your DAW. When you think you got it correct you can record the click again and listen to it back against the first click it should perfectly line up with no echo once you get it right. If you do not do this your recorded vocals will be slightly off as well as any of your mic instruments. Setting this is different on every computer and you need to do this but it is SUPER important with vocals.
Great video!
Great stuff
Your videos are hilarious. I fucking love your content.
So funny and great advice. I'm hooked. 😎
0:46 That was the most powerful P I've ever heard
Man i just love your show! Please keep those outtakes. 🤪😁
Thank you! Especially #1 & #2…
Freddie Mercury hated his performance on Queen's first album so much that HE took lessons.
At last! Somebody who recognises that cheap 'packing blankets' are the same as very expensive 'sound blankets'. I have used them for years in film and TV work. Thanks Glen...
Back in my radio daze we used the SM 5B and the SM 7 because it has about 3" of foam in front of the capsule. It was great for the jocks that liked to eat the mic. Both need a LOT of gain because of that. Foam degradation on the older mics is a big problem. BTW: Both mikes were developed as boom mics to be used on TV and film sound stages.
Just started using the Arousor vst, the software version of the Distressor, tweaky but very cool. Had a pair of LA 2A's with V4's still working [no B suffix, original] that I rebuilt. Sounded great but I don't miss the thermal drift. I have several vst's that emulate the LA 2A very well. The Black Rooster VLA-2A and the Arousor do a very convincing job without the drift.
Question: about the pop filter. What about the SM7B? Or any mic for that matter that comes with a wind screen already on it? Do you still need a pop filter on that or are you ok to record without it as long as the wind screen is on it?
My vocal trick is a throw away chorus at the beginning of a song. I’m already in the pocket when the keeper beginning starts. Edit it out later. But I like single straight through takes when ever possible and this helps.
3:07 I don't know why, so many people think they are gifted to sing. I've met so many improvised vocalists that I got tired of if and started singing myself for my project. Taking lessons, because I'm not talented as well, so, coherence.
BTW do you recommend getting a bit more far from the mic on louder parts, instead of lowering gain? I'm always afraid I'd get more room in the take.
The one thing that pitch correction is really helpful on is BACKGROUND SINGERS.... when you have multiple harmonies singing "oooohs" you can tighten them up, and it's in the background where it's not totally obvious.
6:22 just makes my night
I record an alternative metal vocalist often. There are many clean parts and many scream parts in the songs, and he doesn't like recording them separately - so what I do is have him sing into a dynamic mic with a lower gain setting, and then I add a condenser mic right next to it (upside down for phase) with a higher gain for the clean parts. The condenser has a much brighter sound to it so this works out well!