Compressing after compressing ..

[Scorpio253]

Originally Posted by daeron80

Part of the thin tone problem is overprocessing. They're tuned to death, which removes a lot of the natural vocal tone, replacing it with a near triangle wave. Tuning that much, it's practically vocoded. It also removes the humanity and soul from them, which is probably what most people hear as "fat" in a vocal, psycho-acoustically. The vocs are pretty much dynamically flattened out by compression already (which removes more soul), so there's nothing left for another compressor to do - won't help, might hurt. If I were you, I'd go back to the original vocals, don't tune anything that doesn't sound just plain wrong, and don't use any more compression than they need to sit up in the mix. It's a nice sparse mix - there's lots of space for the vocs to sit in, great job on that.

Yea I understand what you're getting at. Actually, nothing "needed" to be tuned, I just do it to polish the song up to give it a more commercial-ready sound if that makes any sense. I had it set to 80, is that too high? Is there any way I could change the settings to where it wouldnt sound over processed?

[peppertree]

Originally Posted by Scorpio253

Yea I recorded this straight through the mbox mini.

Oh snap!

You just pissed off a whole lotta people that spent $$$$$$ and don't sound that good!

Keep going man you have mad skillz.

[Scorpio253]

Originally Posted by peppertree

Oh snap!

You just pissed off a whole lotta people that spent $$$$$$ and don't sound that good!

Keep going man you have mad skillz.

LOL! That's a lot, Peppertree haha I really appreciate it. I'll be recording in big studios starting next week but I'll be recording references at home so I'm still studying and looking for tips but I see I'm doing something right so I'll keep at it. Thanks again.

[peppertree]

Since you're nice, I'll suggest an oldie but goodie: try using Waves Doubler on an aux from the vocal...the default preset is not bad to start with. Turn off the center and go +6 and -6 pitch left and right, no modulation, and staggered delays somewhere between 5-25ms. Set the filter so it sounds good blended full up with the original, then pull the fader down -16db or so. That will thicken and widen the vocal nicely.

Also blend in some Supertap the same way, usually synced to MIDI tempo and 1 and 2 bar ping pong. Filter at 2k or so with a little feedback 15-20. Again turn off center, blend down -20db or so and that will give you some more width and space.

Include a send for both of those to whatever reverb you have on the voice (if any).

On bgvox, you can go crazy with vocoders, pitch effects, echoes and the like.

Enjoy you've earned your promotion to the bigtime. If only everyone else stuck with an MBox mini until they had the skills!

[daeron80]

Originally Posted by Scorpio253

Is there any way I could change the settings to where it wouldnt sound over processed?

Probably not. You know how all acoustic instruments, including human voices, are tonally defined to a large degree by formants - more or less fixed resonant frequencies. In the human voice, there are three predominant ones: low, mid, and high, produced by the chest, throat/mouth, and head/sinus cavities, respectively. Autotuning tends to blur or reduce the strength of the formants, which makes the vocal tone sound less human and more mechanical. If you have to have that to sell records in that genre, then I guess you just have to find some way to compensate or otherwise make the best of it.

Ask yourself, what am I tuning this to? In tune with what? An arbitrary division of the pitch spectrum into 12 equal points per octave that was developed in the West less than 200 yrs ago so composers could change keys as much as they wanted? Why would a pop song need to be in tune with that, unless it modulates through half a dozen different key centers?

Let your ear tell you what's in tune, not a machine. Machines don't know from music. They never heard of music. All they know is hard math. Every time I hear an old Motown or P-funk record, I thank God there was no Autotune back then! Some fool would have used it on the Supremes or Marvin Gaye. That would have been a crime worthy of death. Sorry, this is a stump topic for me.

[peppertree]

To be honest, this is like telling the Beatles that they should turn their amplifiers down because they are distorting.

"Distortion on guitar amps destroys the transients and dynamics. You are hurting your career applying distortion on a guitar amp...I don't care who else is doing it. By 1965 there will be higher headroom amplifiers and a couple years after that NO ONE will be using distortion on guitar ever again...thank heavens."

[daeron80]

Point taken. But then, asking for a fat, warm vocal tone that's heavily tuned may be like asking for a round, jazzy tone out of a cranked up Hiwatt.

[peppertree]

Originally Posted by daeron80

Point taken. But then, asking for a fat, warm vocal tone that's heavily tuned may be like asking for a round, jazzy tone out of a cranked up Hiwatt.

Point to you. It does impart a flangey sort of top. But maybe this guy can figure out how to do it...he got that production out of an MBox Mini, so at this point I'm not betting against him on anything...

[Scorpio253]

Hahaha Thanks for the tips. I'm jotting them down now. I'm also waiting for my ART MPA Gold preamp (from a friend). Would any of you suggest this preamp for R&B/Pop vocals?

[peppertree]

Originally Posted by Scorpio253

Hahaha Thanks for the tips. I'm jotting them down now. I'm also waiting for my ART MPA Gold preamp (from a friend). Would any of you suggest this preamp for R&B/Pop vocals?

It might work I haven't tried it.

Something that I really will recommend though is the ART Pro VLA tube compressor. That is fat and gooey...version 2 even gooier than version 1...you have to be careful not to overdo it, but I love it on bgvox and I own two of them which look odd nestled amongst high-end pieces but earn their keep!