haha. Nothing wrong with your voice brudda. Like everyone of us, you can go find pro singers with almost that exact voice
Ive only heard that one clip, which sounds like a basic warm baritone voice. Some of that will be a heredity type of thing but some is technique. If you put more effort into it and do things like lift the soft palate, sing up in the “mask”, learn to sing up thru the vocal break into head voice etc, you can expand that basic vibe quite a bit
A basic baritonish voice like that can be great for rock. A lot of guys have that basic voice but then they just learn ways to push up into head voice and/or scream and its gets a great vibe, a’la David Coverdale, Geoff Tate, Chris Cornell, David Lee Roth. All Baritones who just learned to push up higher. They get a different sound than the Steve Perry, Brad Delp, Michael Sweet types who already have a high voice to start with
Not that Andrew needs anyone to speak for him, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that the stage at which he advocates maintaining a healthy detachment is during mixing and finalization, not during performance. That is part and parcel of his suggestion to separate the process into the two main segments he wrote about above. So John I think you just misread his point and he is not in fact giving the advice you concluded he was.
So it really isn’t an argument. (Yes it is. No it isn’t!)
@Chordwainer You may well be right in the process he was talking about, but I dispute the “healthy” of a mix engineer being detached.
Creating a mix should be - surely - about getting the song to portray the emotions imparted by the musicians, and even enhancing them. Quite how you do that if you are not emoptionally attached to the recoirdings is a mystery to me.
I shall accept what you say, apologise to @ColdRoomStudio and set forth an article on this very subject when time allows.
It is normal to hate your own recorded voice. I recommend doing the following:
1 - Record two takes of your voice.
2 - Select your “main” take
3 - have two copies of the “not-main” take
3.1 - pan one of them to the hard left(100% left) and the other one hard right (100% right)
3.2 - move one of them 20 ms back and the other one 20 ms forward
This is a technique called doubling or something like that. It may give you the sense that the voice is different from your own so it is easier to judge it.
Thanks for the kind words Shack, this evening, I will post a snippet of the latest recording I did so that you get an idea. Not sure it will give you an idea of how this needs to be processed depending on the context of the rest of the instrumentation though, which is the whole thing I struggle most with.
What Andrew said made sense to me, in that it’s in the mixing phase, and I would also think he was talking about the technical phase of mixing, as I’m sure he’s not advising to be detached emotionally of the song itself. I think he proved time and time again how much he’s capable of enhancing the emotion of a song…
I’m looking forward to reading you article about that. I think there are technical aspects to a mix though that don’t fall into the ‘emotional category’, things that the big boys use an assistant for actually…
I do use doubling sometimes, as well as some parallel compression and sending to various delays and reverbs, all of this to make my voice stronger and a better fit for the rest of the tracks.
If I do doubling though, I would actually do a tripling, where 2 takes are left/right and much lower in volume but keep another main take dead center and louder. Otherwise, in my experience, doubling kills mono compatibility too much and makes the vocal sound too remote and lacking impact. YMMV.
Here’s a snippet of the vocals on the latest song I’m working on. I’ve tracked this yesterday.
No EQ/Compression/anything… straight from SM7B into my RME into Cubase:
See what you think. In the mix, I say it’s going to need some work…
Ptalbot, I use to do some voiceover and when I started, it was really difficult to get used to listen to my voice coming from the monitors. It is an awful feeling. Cannot explain. I don´t know if we tend to compare to others´s voice or what. Maybe we listen to our voice the whole day and when we have a chance to do a critical listening, we find a lot of defects.
In my opinion, the only solution to that is to get used to it. It is a matter of time, than you will start working with it as another´s voice.
@ptalbot Got that. No time today, elderly mother in hospital. (no good wishes, thank you, she’s an evil cow who abused me as a child so this is duty not love).
On first listening, you sound fine BUT tentative. Now tentative MAY be what the track requires, but it wseakens what sounds like a perfectly fine voice. BUT have downloaded to get it in the studio to have a closer listen and toy with. Will get back to you.
Damned right, and I find loads of defects with my vocals. But they’re good. And here’s the thing. Listen to raw vocals by any “top of the charts” singer and you’ll fiond loads of defects, even in the final used track.
What I’m saying is, IMHO: 90 percent of professionally recorded vocals have many defects and yet they are brilliant.
Only about 10 per cent (maybe a lot less) singers can do perfect. Don’t aim for that, aim for the great performance that does the job.
I fear PT is being over critical of a fine voice.
Yes, I believe it’s easy to be very critical of your own voice. And possibly because you are used to hear it “from the inside” so to speak, it’s just too weird an experience hearing it as others do…
And yes, of course the solution is to get used to it!
Thanks Shack! Yes, I hear you about tentative. I might try tracking it again at one point, although I’m not sure I can do better.
For now it works pretty well in the song actually, although it’s still a trouble dialing the right tone in context.
I think what is difficult for me on this one is that the verses are quite low, and the chorus quite high (within my limited range ) and I haven’t found a key that would benefit both. Right now the chorus works better than the verses. With a higher key, I would really struggle in the chorus… so it’s a trade off basically.
)
) and I haven’t found a key that would benefit both. Right now the chorus works better than the verses. With a higher key, I would really struggle in the chorus… so it’s a trade off basically.