Breathy Vocals

[amagras]

Originally Posted by musicman691

I've seen a few of your tutorial vids and they are always concise, to the point and explain things clearly enough anyone can follow. Not to mention the audio quality is top-notch.

Have you thought about doing stuff for Groove 3

Well, as always it is a great honour to hear that from you (and from any of the other guys here too) but I don't think I have the knowledge and the jargo to sell tutorials. What I do is to log my discoveries in a way that I can easily recall in detail (and share it with others of course) and since I hate so much the general tone of most YouTube tutorials (you know, the typical guy talking for 15 minutes before showing how to solo safe a channel, etc) I make them as short and unobtrusive as possible. Turns out that has become some sort of a niche for my channel that friends appreciate as much as I do.

The biggest benefit that I have derived from doing this is that by constantly showing my work I feel compromised to do a better job at every level and my mixes/playing/compositions have improved as a result.

[joeymakesmusic]

Can I jump on this question as well?

I have the same problem with breathy vocals but I can't pinpoint if it's the singer's singing, the hardware, the recording environment, or the effects chain

Apart from using different hardware/recording equipment, how would one go about diagnosing this issue?

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by joeymakesmusic

Can I jump on this question as well?

I have the same problem with breathy vocals but I can't pinpoint if it's the singer's singing, the hardware, the recording environment, or the effects chain

Apart from using different hardware/recording equipment, how would one go about diagnosing this issue?

First off if those effects are s/w drop them. Record the signal dry or at most with slight compression - I'd use an LA2A type here.

It could well be the singer's delivery and there's not much you can do about that. Take it from experience if you try and get a vocalist to change their delivery you will be in for a LONG session; depends on how you phrase the request. If you say something like 'that was good but let's try something different' that will go over better than saying 'that sucked and you should take up something else than singing'

Make sure the vocalist is comfortably positioned and isn't straining their body or voice to sing into the mic. Also make sure the vocalist isn't tying to sing with a dry set of vocal chords. Different singers have different needs to moisten their vocal chords.

Next thing I'd try is a different mic and make sure you have a pop filter in front of the mic. Maybe try a dynamic mic instead of a large diaphragm condenser. Or even a ribbon mic if you have access to one.