Need Vocal Production Tips

[an-electric-heart]

I just listened to Corkscrew Angel as well, and I'll second what Jace said. Your singing's fine, I'll go so far as to say; as good as some famous singers. I think you're dealing with confidence issues if anything.

[wagtunes]

I just listened to Corkscrew Angel as well, and I'll second what Jace said. Your singing's fine, I'll go so far as to say; as good as some famous singers. I think you're dealing with confidence issues if anything.

Would you like me to quote what some people have said to me over the years in regard to my singing?

Also, I have pretty good ears. I think I can tell the difference between an average voice and a great voice.

Great singers:

Gary Puckett
Celine Dion
Whitney Houston

Singers With Cool Voices

Roger Daltry
Robert Plant
Bruce Springsteen

I'm neither. I can carry a tune. That's about it. And so many times my voice goes off key because I have very little control over my vocal chords so I have to do more retakes than Carter has liver pills. Sure, I could use autotune but that's just too much work to have to get in there and adjust every single wrong note. It's easier to just sing the part again.

I'm not saying I'm the world's worst singer. But I'm no pro. Nobody would buy a record with me singing no matter how good the song was. Now maybe in the studio a top notch engineer COULD make me sound good enough to sell. I don't know. All I know is I hear my voice the way I record it and it sounds ordinary.

That doesn't mean there hasn't been songs in the past that I've sung that I thought I did a really good job on. There has. But they are few and far between. Far outnumbered by the songs I've sung where I just cringe. Especially when I try to sing high.

And that's another thing. Listen to Corkscrew Angel and write down the notes I'm singing. You'll notice that the range is very small. I have no range as a singer. I can't hit lo or high notes. My range is about from G below middle C to F above middle C and sometimes even that F is a tough one for me to hit depending on the day. That's an 11 note range. Not even an octave.

I don't know many singers with that limited a range (Lou Reed comes to mind) who could get by as a pro. But then Lou Reed doesn't really sing, does he.

Look, my mom was an opera singer. She had a voice. When she tried to teach me how to sing she eventually looked at me and said, "You poor child. You really CAN'T sing, can you."

Now having said that, her definition of "can't sing" would probably include a lot of today's singers as well. She had high standards. But still, I'm no Caruso. I'm not even a Gary Puckett. And nobody is going to excuse me of having the kind of vocal character of a Springsteen, Stewart, Daltry, Plant or even Ozzy Osborne.

Like I said, I can carry a tune and that's about it.

Nobody is going to give me a recording contract with THIS voice.

[Kinh]

Secret = good mic + good talent. Everything else is self explanatory

[funky lime]

Nobody is going to give me a recording contract with THIS voice.

What's your point?

Being a "good" singer, in my opinion, has surprisingly little to do with crafting a good song (or getting a recording contract, for that matter). But I think you know that already. And besides, even the great singers still have a team of people working invisibly behind the scenes to really help them shine.

I think it's about making the most with what you've got. If what you've got happens to be limited in range and timbre, then so be it. It is what it is. At least you know your range and have an idea of how to work well within it.

I think maybe one of the more beneficial things you could do is really hone your workflow. Okay, you've been singing for 40+ years (sorry, I didn't want to make assumptions, and was just offering generic advice about vocal performance in a studio context that I feel applies to all levels). But that aside, there's no substitute for putting in the time to learn and refine a vocal editing workflow that fits into your overall creative process.

I'm talking about stuff like making macros, setting up a custom toolbar and keyboard shortcuts to do common tasks, etc. For instance, a macro that takes your time selection, adds some volume envelope points, and lowers them by several db... this will let you deal with breaths in one click and one keystroke (thus, in one second) rather than having to do manual splits or envelope stuff. That sort of thing.

There's no substitute for putting in the hours. But stuff like that, which speeds up the workflow, means you are getting more meaningful hours.

To illustrate my point about meaningful hours... I've been playing guitar for 20 years now. But I never actually learned or had proper practice. So now I'm having to break myself of 20 years of bad habits and actually learn the fundamentals that I was too "cool" to learn back then. So really, it's less like 20 years and more like maybe 1 meaningful year. So I feel like a better statement should be: "I first played a guitar 20 years ago." Because if I say it any other way, I'm misrepresenting the extent of my ability (to myself, most of all).

So my point about the macros and workflow is, spending 5 hours doing edits is not effectively equivalent to 5 hours of learning how to edit, if you aren't making the process efficient and ergonomic. If you can shrink a repetitive task so that it takes 5 seconds instead of a full minute, you can squeeze a lot more progress into the amount of time you put in.

But to get there, you've got to just practice. Record vocals, then edit them. Repeat. Figure out what's slowing you down or throwing you off, and address it.

No amount of tips/tricks/videos/blogs/posts/classes will ever be a substitute for actually getting your hands dirty and racking up those "meaningful hours."

Yeah, yeah, you've been doing this for 40 years, you already know all that. Carry on.

[funky lime]

I'm really sorry Wags, I really need to stop blogging all over your threads.
I don't get out much, this time of year...

[wagtunes]

The problem is, all these automated or one click things you're telling me to set up, I don't even know what they are. Everything you said above in regard to workflow is Greek to me. The only thing I know about singing is plugging in the mic and singing. I can then slap and EQ and compressor on the track and maybe a few FX (delay, chorus, reverb, etc.) That's it. That's the extent of my knowledge. I just got Waves Vocal Rider to at least keep the vocal level above the instruments without me having to manually move the slider throughout the song. But that's it. All the rest of this stuff you're talking about is the stuff I have to learn. IOW, I need somebody to sit down with me and say "Okay, here's how you do a vocal track from beginning to end." But nobody's going to do that and I don't know where to go to learn this stuff.

You don't know what you don't know. We all don't have built in intuition where we can just pull some workflow algorithm out of our backsides and start using it. I can do math today because I was taught it in schools. I didn't pop out of the womb doing calculus or even knowing what calculus was.

In short, where I am on a technical level as far as recording and edit vocals is about as primitive as you can get short of being a total newbie.

[wagtunes]

I'm really sorry Wags, I really need to stop blogging all over your threads.
I don't get out much, this time of year...

It's okay, You're just trying to help. I appreciate it. It's just not as easy as you make it sound.

[ramseysounds]

As I know very little about vocal processing

Even with nearly 14000 posts?

Please explain to me what one has to do with the other. What is the correlation between typing on a keyboard and processing a vocal track?

This should be interesting.

Out of 14000 posts, vocal processing was never discussed or debated?

[wagtunes]

As I know very little about vocal processing

Even with nearly 14000 posts?

Please explain to me what one has to do with the other. What is the correlation between typing on a keyboard and processing a vocal track?

This should be interesting.

Out of 14000 posts, vocal processing was never discussed or debated?

No, because...

1. Most people here do instrumental music. At least most of the people I know.

2. I rarely come to this part of the forum. Most of my time is spent in Instruments and Music Cafe.

So stop making assumptions about what people may or may not have been exposed to. Number of posts means nothing.

[vurt]

even if it had come up, nothing wrong with a)rehashing old info to make sure you understood it properly...
b)consolidating those ideas in to one thread
c)seeing if anyone had anything to add.

not like theres a finite resource being wasted by the discussion.

[ramseysounds]

Clearly some people are very sensitive to being asked a question. I really won't bother in future. meh.

[funky lime]

Clearly some people are very sensitive to being asked a question. I really won't bother in future. meh.

"Even with nearly 14000 posts? "

Your "question" had implicit sass, and served no purpose in the conversation beyond having a jab at the original poster.

That you fail to realize this, or choose to ignore it, indicates an opportunity for personal growth to occur.

[vurt]

/mic drop.



- at the end of every performance!

[ramseysounds]

Clearly some people are very sensitive to being asked a question. I really won't bother in future. meh.

"Even with nearly 14000 posts? "

Your "question" had implicit sass, and served no purpose in the conversation beyond having a jab at the original poster.

That you fail to realize this, or choose to ignore it, indicates an opportunity for personal growth to occur.

No mate. It was a question. I was curious. It's what you do when you're curious. Sometimes questions in a written form can be interpreted in more than one way. You clearly demonstrate this, but that's ok.

[wagtunes]

Clearly some people are very sensitive to being asked a question. I really won't bother in future. meh.

"Even with nearly 14000 posts? "

Your "question" had implicit sass, and served no purpose in the conversation beyond having a jab at the original poster.

That you fail to realize this, or choose to ignore it, indicates an opportunity for personal growth to occur.

No mate. It was a question. I was curious. It's what you do when you're curious. Sometimes questions in a written form can be interpreted in more than one way. You clearly demonstrate this, but that's ok.

Except I interpreted it the same way, that you were being a smart ass. And I have had my fill of smart asses around this place.

You were implying that I must be some kind of an idiot that even with 14,000 posts I know so little about vocal processing.

Now do us all a favor and take your smart ass and go away.