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Old 07-21-2022, 11:16 AM
AlldayBoogie AlldayBoogie is offline
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Default Recording vocals

Good afternoon and trust everyone is doing well. I have a question. A vocalist asked me to do something yesterday in the studio and I wasn't able to. I knew what she was referring to but admittedly, I could not execute it for her.

So what did she want? I'm glad you asked.

Basically, she is the type of vocalist who needs to hear how things are going to sound while she is recording her vocals. She wants to get as close to a mixed version of the song, as it relates to vocals, as possible i.e. reverb, delay, compression, and anything else that will make her sound legit coming out the gate. It helps her creativity and spawns different vibes and inflictions in her voice that would otherwise not be there if she just recorded it dry. So I have a few questions which I hope you guys can help me with:
1) My question is how in the heck do I do that?
2) What is that called?
3) And how do I not record the effect?
4) What if I hear something differently after she recorded it but her original voice is affected by the effect she used - Can I ever get the recorded effect off her vocals? I don't think so but you guys can keep me honest.

Honestly, I"m just trying to be great and any assistance to that end will be appreciated. Peace and be well.
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Old 07-21-2022, 12:33 PM
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jeffro jeffro is offline
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Default Re: Recording vocals

Welcome to the community.

You've come up against a pretty common challenge. While it gives an engineer more control and options to record something dry, talent often wants a more produced sound to feel comfortable enough to relax which might lead to a better performance.

A couple ways to tackle this and satisfy both sides - usually involving Sends and Aux tracks in addition to your Audio track, but might need a little extra planning to avoid dealing with latency which can be an even bigger challenge for the talent.

Some interfaces have built-in DSP and mixing for this very thing - so audio going into the interface gets processed and returned (without going through - and delayed by - the computer) and there's other hardware that has very low latency. Otherwise on your Audio track you could add a Send going to an Aux track with effects (reverb, delay, etc.). Putting plug-ins on your Audio track might work (and doesn't affect what's recorded) but could potentially add too much latency to be effective.

I deal with this more as a guitarist - the effects become part of the whole vibe and might inspire me to play a certain way, so I record that but whenever possible also record a dry signal in case I want to re-amp or change effects later.

I'm sure other users out there have better real-world solutions they are using so hoping they chime in...
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Old 07-21-2022, 01:08 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is online now
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Default Re: Recording vocals

The alternative jeffro describes are extensions of basic hardware monitoring and software monitoring. "sweetening" the cue mix to talent is very common.

Are you hardware or software monitoring today?

What interface do you have?

And to be clear, if you were recording an audio track and placed plugins on that so the talent could hear a "sweetened" cue signal you are *not* recording any of those plugin effects. Pro Tools records the signal before not after plugins. Understanding this signal flow will help you a lot, there are very helpful explanations of signal flows in the Pro Tools Reference Guide.

If you don't understand any terms here Google will probably explain them.

Last edited by Darryl Ramm; 07-21-2022 at 04:13 PM.
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Old 07-21-2022, 04:25 PM
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albee1952 albee1952 is offline
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Default Re: Recording vocals

Good advice above, but I'll still toss in some more as I have done this hundreds of times. A few important things:
1-As said plugins are NOT recorded(unless you bus and do it on purpose)
2-If you have a reasonably powerful computer, set your buffer to 64 and skip Low Latency monitoring.
3-Setup a mix using plugins that have low(or zero) latency. You can put up a very solid mix with some basic plugins like: Avid Channel Strip, EQ III, BF76, SMACK!. Any delay plugin should work with near-zero latency(Echoboy shows 32 samples and you can disable ADC on delay and reverb AUX tracks). The same goes for many reverb plugins(I like IK Classik Reverbs, D-Verb, Slate's reverbs and IK Classik Plate and Room).
4-DON'T do mastering stuff while tracking. A gentle compressor(with no latency) would be okay(but most "mastering" plugins will add a lot of latency)
5-If you are not going to feed the artist the main output, then add a send to all your tracks. Make those sends all POST-fade and set to -0(so they will provide the same mix that you hear in the CR). That saves a ton of time if you don't want to set up the headphone mix ahead of time.(and you can still make some tweaks to keep the artist happy).
6-something that comes in handy; add an AUX track next to your vocal track. Copy the input and all the same plugins from the vocal track. This gives you and the artist more of their voice(in your mix and the HP mix) which makes them able to hear their voice better(actually hotter than you may want), but this "extra juice" is not recorded. Plus, being an AUX track, even during playback, you can still hear the artist if they try to talk to you(when their vocal track is NOT passing the input)
7-when you have advance notice, you can perform a full mix(without the vocal) and bounce this mix(from zero on the timeline). Then put up a new blank session and import that stereo mix and record the vocal over that. Once you have the "keeper", fly it back into the original multi-track session(very handy if your computer is on the weak side)
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