I want a Church for my vocals, a big warm one, please...

[Rammelt]

Hi all,

I'm arranging/recording/producing a CD right now, where I've recorded about 30 tracks per song with male voices. Soon it's time for mixing and I was wondering if anyone has any special tips for me, making this seem like a male choir standing in a church.
The music is kind of Enigma like but with a bit more folk and modern sounds.

I'm mixing on a HD3 system on Mac with about all the plugins there are for Pro Tools.

Best Regards,
John

[rmx]

Altiverb?

[Rammelt]

Ehmm...except that one, of course.
The Mac is running OSX, so guess it's not possible to buy it either.


Regards,
John

[joestudio2]

I use TC Mega on the choir with a hall setting I modified. Leads go to a Reverb One plate with the "build" setting. The presets will intitially make things murky, but if you get those two to work together - it's quite nice.

Joe

[PTUser NYC]

I would have addressed this in tracking.

Perhaps I would have recorded 4 takes "on mic", 8 back a couple feet (moving to a different spot each time), and the rest at least 5 feet away from the mic, again from different spots - maybe the last 4 facing the wall away from the mic.

When you get that kind of variation in distance, even in a bedroom, it really helps you to believe that a larger number of people were involved.

If I was given this project to mix, I think I might try setting up an early reflection patch on a reverb processor (Quantec would be ideal, but even an SPX90 does this pretty well) and then treating each group of tracks differently. I would try to simulate the setup I described above. Some tracks would be dryer and louder, others would have more early reflection, and be softer, have less high frequencies added to them when EQing, and for yucks, I might even slide them SLIGHTLY later.

Taking this virtual choir, and then subgouping it, to compress, EQ and add reverb would bring it together, and make it sound more like one thing.

Add your Church reverb after the premix - you'll find its the early reflection room delays that really give you the distance cues. More so than a long smooth digital hall for sure.

If the sound still isn't coming together into "one choir" rather than "a bunch of overdubs" some gated reverb or even distortion can mush the middle together and unify the sound a little more.

[rmx]

Audioease just released Altiverb OSX.You can download a demo on their site

[img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img] :cool [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[Rammelt]

Thanks, guys!

I really appreciate it.

I can't do anything about the material already been recorded, but next time I will try the different distances method.

Best Regards,
John

[Chris Cavell]

The 960 series from lexicon is really your only hope of making it sound realistic. Expensive though, 16k for the cheapest model! [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

However, if you don't believe me, call them and tell them you're interested. They will fly someone out on their bill to perform a demo of the unit! [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[Helge Krabye]

I have good experience with using the TCTools MegaReverb. Start with any of the presets for Church or Large Hall, and tweek the parameters. In a lively room like a church, there will be a long predelay, and a lot of complicated reflections with a long tale. Try to tweek the parameters while listening to the choir sound in the mix, that makes it easier to find the best predelay and other values.

You may also get interesting results by using the Long Delay plugin and combine this with MegaReverb. In a big church, there will always be some strange reflections and delays that make the sound interesting. In a music mix, there are no rules - just play around until you make a valuable mistake and enjoy the sound [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Helge K.

[bluemt]

Go to a church (when no one's there) with your vocal track on a playback machine, a powered speaker, and two microphones. Record on 2 tracks. Import the stereo reverb track into your session. Crank it to the appropriate level. If it's the right room and mics it will be stellar.