How to Get a Big Vocal Sound
First, you need to have a great vocal microphone. A tube mic is really the best, in my opinion. Mics like the AKG C12VR Reference multipattern tube condenser microphone, or the Peluso P12 Vacuum Tube Microphone are going to sound fantastic. The AKG Pro Audio C414 XLII Vocal Condenser Microphone, Multipattern is quite a bit less expensive, but still sounds great. It is not a tube mic, but sounds wonderful even though it lacks the beautiful tube warmth.
A professional mic pre-amp is very important because it lets you record the pure sound of the microphone with very little electronics getting in the way. A discreet pre-amp such as the Neve 1073LB or the Avalon M5 Mono Pure Class A Microphone Preamp will amaze you with their clarity and rich tone.
Now for the “trick” for getting a huge vocal sound. You need to have a good effects processor that is stereo, like the Lexicon MX400 Dual Stereo/Surround Reverb/Effects Processor. It needs to be able to de-tune and up-tune in the delay section. You place your properly recorded vocal track right in the middle of your mix. Run the vocal track through the stereo processor’s delay and de-tune the track just a fraction, like maybe -8 and pan that effect signal to the hard left. Then up-tune the vocal track by the same amount to the positive, like +8, and pan that hard to the right. Even dry, without reverb or other effects, the vocal will sound like it fills the mix, up front and in your face because it is coming at you from 3 different locations with 3 different delays. Your ears can’t quite tell where it is coming from if you get the balance correct. It is very natural sounding and beautiful. It works great on almost any instrument also. It will make a Les Paul coming from a Marshall amp sound enormous as well as a violin sound like it is right in the room with you. Try it, you’ll love it!
Making Sure Your Mixes Sound the Same on Practically Everything You Play Them On
Nothing is more frustrating than working for hours on a mix to find that when you play it on your car stereo or your friend’s home stereo, it sounds awful. Are you going crazy, have your ears deceived you? No, you are just not mixing properly.
This used to happen to me and my musician friends all of the time when we first started going to recording studios to record our music. No one ever mentioned a solution, and it wasn’t until I took an audio engineering course that I discovered the “magic trick”.
First you need professional speakers, or near field monitors. Good studio monitors are designed to give you an accurate representation of your music, uncolored by E.Q.. Consumer speakers are equalized to make the music sound “better”, so if you mix with them, your mixes will always sound different on other speakers, but that is just part of the solution. Mixing volume is the biggest and most important factor to getting your mixes right.
Never use the big studio speakers to mix. They are for the listening party after the recording is finished. Proper mixing volume is between 80 and 90 decibels, which will surprise you because that isn’t very loud, but it is extremely critical.
When you mix with the music too loud, you will naturally hear more bass, or low end, and you will lower the bass to compensate making your mixes sound thin and wimpy when you listen to them on other speakers. We used to want to mix with the big studio speakers blaring at live band volume so we could really “get in to it”. Then the next day we would play the mix on our car stereos or our home speakers and be devastated to find that our kick butt song sounded so thin and wimpy with no punch that we didn’t want to show it to our friends.
No one ever told us about how mixing volume effects a mix.
On the other hand, if you mix at too low a volume, you will most likely add too much bass making your mix sound muddy and muffled. My favorite studio monitors are the Tannoy Reveal 502 speakers. If my mix sounds great on them, I know it will sound that way on practically every other speaker. Other monitors like the Yamaha HS5, which are the newer version of the NS-10 monitors, which were probably the most mixed on speakers in history, are very good also. Because they are extremely “flat”, they give you a true picture of your mix. So, good near field monitors and proper mixing volume will make all the difference in the world in helping you get that perfect mix every time.
How to Sing On Key When Using Headphones to Track a Vocal
I am a singer and have good pitch, but when I was younger, I ran in to the problem of thinking the vocal track I just sang with headphones was great only to find that when I heard the track back in the control room, it sounded awful. It was just a tiny bit sour. I thought that maybe I wasn’t such a good singer and was very dissapointed. No one ever told me how to correct that problem until years later when I took an audio engineering course. I learned that if you listen to the music at too loud a level in your headphones while singing, you will typically sing a little sharp, which does not sound good. Ever since I learned that liitle “trick”, I have no problems singing on pitch.