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  #11  
Old 10-05-2018, 08:16 AM
briaboy briaboy is offline
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Default Re: Breathy Vocals

and, from the producer:



“The vocals start at track 42, with Damon’s lead vocal. The main lo-fi telephone-like effect is the typical 2-D sound, because this is a 2-D song. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s done with hardware. The plug-ins on the inserts are a Waves Renaissance De-esser and RVox, and the Waves Kramer PIE [compressor], which I use a lot on vocals. Below are two tracks of lead vocals with delays.


Stephen Sedgwick’s two main plug-in reverbs for ‘Charger’ were the UAD Lexicon 224 and EMT Plate 140.While recording, I often use the SoundToys EchoBoy for delays, but I replace that with hardware delays to get more character. In this case these two tracks are prints of me running Damon’s vocals through a Roland SDE 2000. I was having fun with that, doing fast delays and delays with modulation. Then there are some Damon harmonies, and the yellow tracks are him singing the chorus, and some of these are pitched down an octave with the Little AlterBoy. I usually compress vocals with outboard, either using Empirical Labs Distressors or sometimes the Summit TLA 100A or Tube-Tech CL1B compressor. If want to impose a lot of character I’ll engage an old Collins broadcast limiter. For reverbs on the vocals I often use the studio’s EMT 140 plate.
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  #12  
Old 10-05-2018, 08:16 AM
musicman691 musicman691 is offline
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Default Re: Breathy Vocals

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lue View Post
Like what I said in the beginning a sound similar to the gorillaz. The main vocalist has that kind of radio/telephone effect on the vocals.
It's the singers voice. The actual singers voice is breathy in real life. The breathiness is fine, I don't mind it. The vocals just sound like they don't belong because they are so unclear and muddy.

I've tried EQ, compression, and d-verb, watched buttloads of tutorials.. Just to give you an idea I've been working on just the vocals for 2 weeks with a minimum of 10 hours a day purely working on the vocals. I'm doing my best to put in the time but no matter what, even if I take off the telephone effect the vocals just sound unclear and muddy.. I'm not sure how to phrase it. It just doesn't sound professional.

I know for a fact that people can make even the crappiest mics sound good because some people even use ipads and phones to record music and vocals
and they somehow manage to still make it sound professional - even if it's distorted.

I don't mind if it sounds distorted or breathy in any way. It just overall always, no matter what I try, sounds unprofessional. Like it doesn't fit in the song. I've even tried different singers. It's definitely my lack of skill. I'm not too sure on what else to try when I feel like I've covered all the basics and even more advanced tutorials I could possibly find online.

A good song example that the audio was recorded on a phone is "White Light" even though it's clearly distorted it just "fits" in the song.. I just don't know how else to explain it. No matter what I do, the vocals .. any vocals I put in don't "fit"
You really need to pay attention to what I wrote in my previous post. Try a different mic. And ditch that King's Microphone plugin.


I'm confused - at one time you talked abut a 'radio effect' and another a 'telephone effect'. I don't listen to the Gorillaz so don't know what you're talking about. But keep in mind either of those types of effects are band limited by design. Old telephones were band limited to roughly 300HZ to 3 KHz. Also keep in mind that you're trying to emulate a sound that was captured in a multi-million dollar studio with a top-notch artist and engineer.


I just listened to White Light and the vocals is a highly distorted/saturated sound with a lot of the low end rolled off. It's like listening to something with no woofer and all tweeter. Or a broken microphone. Like I said before grab McDSP's Futzbox - it should give you what you want. Of course if you really knew the basics of audio you could do it with whatever plugins you have on hand.
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  #13  
Old 10-05-2018, 08:55 AM
Lue Lue is offline
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Default Re: Breathy Vocals

Quote:
Originally Posted by musicman691 View Post
You really need to pay attention to what I wrote in my previous post. Try a different mic. And ditch that King's Microphone plugin.


I'm confused - at one time you talked abut a 'radio effect' and another a 'telephone effect'. I don't listen to the Gorillaz so don't know what you're talking about. But keep in mind either of those types of effects are band limited by design. Old telephones were band limited to roughly 300HZ to 3 KHz. Also keep in mind that you're trying to emulate a sound that was captured in a multi-million dollar studio with a top-notch artist and engineer.


I just listened to White Light and the vocals is a highly distorted/saturated sound with a lot of the low end rolled off. It's like listening to something with no woofer and all tweeter. Or a broken microphone. Like I said before grab McDSP's Futzbox - it should give you what you want. Of course if you really knew the basics of audio you could do it with whatever plugins you have on hand.
Hey man. I already took your advice and ditched those plugins. Thank you for all your advice and time.

I'm just frustrated that I've spent 900 hours in pro tools and at least an additional 500 hours watching tutorials and I still can't grasp the basics of anything. I don't even know how much money I spent on plugins that I thought would help me that others claim are great but I can't seem to make it work like they do. I understand this is due to my lack of experience, but anywhere I try to learn fails to teach me. Everything I've learnt is just from myself or listening to "stems" and trying to emulate them.

I don't believe that I need a multi million dollar studio to make a good song. There are plenty of songs that sound professional (at least to my ears) that have been claimed to be made in peoples basements and bedrooms. (Any song from the artist Billie Eilish for example)

Like I said previously, regardless of what telephone, radio what-ever effect I add it doesn't sound professional to me. I just don't think I need millions of dollars to get the sound I want. I should just be able to make good music with what I have, yet 900 hours later I am still unable to make vocals sound good - or at least to the point where it SOUNDS like it's going somewhere.. ANYWHERE.

Thank you for your time, I understand that this forum isn't for beginners and I'm easily pushed aside and told to learn the basics and not told where to learn. Clearly you guys aren't learning from youtube tutorials or paid tutorials. Where are you all learning? School? I don't know.. I'm just so stuck on just this one song I've been trying to make for 450 hours now.. 450 hours of listening to the same 1 minute and 30 second song over and over. and I still can't get the vocals to sound decent. Which is a shame because I really like the song. I just don't know what to do.
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  #14  
Old 10-05-2018, 12:00 PM
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JFreak JFreak is offline
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Default Re: Breathy Vocals

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lue View Post
Thank you for your time, I understand that this forum isn't for beginners and I'm easily pushed aside and told to learn the basics and not told where to learn.
Apologies for that. There is certainly room for beginners just as the seasoned professionals. We can all learn from each other.

Please don't be offended if someone says you need to learn the basics. It's like going to PT 101 course or something. One book I can recommend for anyone is Bob Katz: Mastering Audio. And one advise I can give is move all your non-Avid plugins to unused folder for a while and try go learn the basics with standard plugins.

Bear with us... sometimes we're busy and something like "learn the basics" is all one has time to write. But even then, there is this wisdom of "you're looking at the problem from wrong perspective".

Cheers!
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  #15  
Old 10-05-2018, 01:50 PM
musicman691 musicman691 is offline
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Default Re: Breathy Vocals

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lue View Post

Thank you for your time, I understand that this forum isn't for beginners and I'm easily pushed aside and told to learn the basics and not told where to learn. Clearly you guys aren't learning from youtube tutorials or paid tutorials. Where are you all learning? School? I don't know.. I'm just so stuck on just this one song I've been trying to make for 450 hours now.. 450 hours of listening to the same 1 minute and 30 second song over and over. and I still can't get the vocals to sound decent. Which is a shame because I really like the song. I just don't know what to do.
You've been given several sources to learn from - Lynda, Groove 3, YouTube and of course a Google search. Another place to learn if you have access to it is a professional studio. Pick some job like coffee getter or so on and watch and learn. A lot of us learned that way. A recording school would be another source but that isn't going to be cheap.


If you truly are spending that amount of time on one song no wonder you're having issues getting what you call a 'decent' sound. Take a break, go outside and enjoy nature's sounds. You're suffering from ear fatigue and that happens to all of us sooner or later. Another thing that can contribute to ear fatigue is a poor listening setup with sub-par monitor speakers.
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  #16  
Old 10-05-2018, 09:53 PM
Lue Lue is offline
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Default Re: Breathy Vocals

Quote:
Originally Posted by JFreak View Post
Apologies for that. There is certainly room for beginners just as the seasoned professionals. We can all learn from each other.

Please don't be offended if someone says you need to learn the basics. It's like going to PT 101 course or something. One book I can recommend for anyone is Bob Katz: Mastering Audio. And one advise I can give is move all your non-Avid plugins to unused folder for a while and try go learn the basics with standard plugins.

Bear with us... sometimes we're busy and something like "learn the basics" is all one has time to write. But even then, there is this wisdom of "you're looking at the problem from wrong perspective".

Cheers!
I'm not offended at all. Just confused when people are telling me to learn the basics but I don't even know what the basics are or where to learn them. I've tried Lynda, Google and Youtube but everythings just all over the place and I'm not sure what is considered a basic and how many basics there are.. or anything like that. People keep telling me what I'm trying to do is too advanced and to get off the forums and learn the basics first .. without telling me what the basics are. I know that people don't have time to explain what I assume to be a whole bunch of information so that's why I don't pursue them.

Thank you for your book recommendation. I will try to get my hands on that.
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  #17  
Old 10-06-2018, 05:07 AM
musicman691 musicman691 is offline
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Default Re: Breathy Vocals

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lue View Post
I'm not offended at all. Just confused when people are telling me to learn the basics but I don't even know what the basics are or where to learn them. I've tried Lynda, Google and Youtube but everythings just all over the place and I'm not sure what is considered a basic and how many basics there are.. or anything like that. People keep telling me what I'm trying to do is too advanced and to get off the forums and learn the basics first .. without telling me what the basics are. I know that people don't have time to explain what I assume to be a whole bunch of information so that's why I don't pursue them.

Thank you for your book recommendation. I will try to get my hands on that.
Basics are things like:
eq - what it is and what it does (think of the bass & treble controls on your car stereo)
compression - what it is and what it does
The above are just a couple of basic things you need to learn.

As someone has said the DUC is not a forum for how to learn the basics of audio recording or even what certain terms mean. Just pop different terms into Google; like type in 'audio equalization' and see what comes up. Do the same thing for compression, etc. People here will point you to where to look but it's up to you how you make use of those pointers.
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  #18  
Old 10-06-2018, 05:25 AM
Sardi Sardi is offline
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Default Re: Breathy Vocals

Why don’t you post a clip of the audio and people might give you some pointers?

I’m truly baffled at how many posts I’ve seen describing audio in words. Post the damn audio! HAHAHA

We’re audio engineers. Let us hear and we might be able to offer some suggestions.


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  #19  
Old 10-06-2018, 05:37 AM
musicman691 musicman691 is offline
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Default Re: Breathy Vocals

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sardi View Post
Why don’t you post a clip of the audio and people might give you some pointers?

I’m truly baffled at how many posts I’ve seen describing audio in words. Post the damn audio! HAHAHA

We’re audio engineers. Let us hear and we might be able to offer some suggestions.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This would be an excellent idea. Via YouTube we know what the Gorillaz White Light tune sounds like so at least we know where you want to go. But we can't give directions until we know where you're starting from.
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  #20  
Old 10-06-2018, 11:48 AM
briaboy briaboy is offline
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Default Re: Breathy Vocals

Lue - which plugins do you have that might be useful for what you are hoping to achieve with this vocal?
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