PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production Poor vocalist

David Snyder beat me to it. I was going to point you to Tom Waits as well.

Good singer is a relative concept.

To address your question.

Obviously the vocaloid community is getting better all the time.

Another tried and true solution is to find someone else who is willing to sing the song. Ask a friend.

Also.... Work on your own abilities. Most folks can manage to sing well enough for rock and roll. Practice, maybe get a vocal coach, and sing.

One of those things should work for you.

In all fairness, there are some people who simply can not, and will not ever be able to sing well enough for anything. If you are one of those.... You will have to team up with someone who can. I worked with a cowriter who is definitely in that category. She writes brilliantly but it's fingernails on a chalkboard when she tries to sing. She knows what she is good at and what she's not and works with others who have stronger vocal abilities. That's how you accomplish the impossible.

To hear one of the songs she wrote.... Hit my link.... My music.... And scroll down to In a world without you. It's #20 on the list if i recall. She reached out to 2 people who helped put the song together. Myself and a really talented female singer.

Fiverr.com

Waves has a PlugIN called Waves Tune Real Time - it is pretty much an Pitch Correct thing - it's not perfect but used with an EQ + delay and reverb you might find your vocal is not as bad as you think.

An important thing to note is, you also need a decent Mic the Sh58 will not do any good to your vocal for demos - you need something like this
https://www.thomann.de/intl/rode_nt1a_complete_vocal_recording.htm or similar from your local music instrument shop.

Last advice from me - practice a lot, and get to know what works well for your voice - find a good body positure and when you have spare moments humm or sing high falset notes and very low notes in order to both train your voice and get to know your body better when you sing and hum.

Fiverr is good and the result may vary but are very much better than singing out of tune unpleasantly...there is a cost involved.
I don't do the 5vr thing though.
I have an appalling voice.
The more I use it, listen to it and try again the better it becomes - incrementally though.
I have a couple of songs that I can listen to and a bunch that I can't.
The synth things works pretty well.
Find & phone a friend?
Establish a relationship with forum members who may, eventually, offer, or respond positively to, a request to sing for you.
Melodyne is pretty good but subtlty is required...I know because I was sledge hammering for a while and the results reflect it.
ReaTune, in REAPER, is good but not as sophisticated.
Vocal fatteners can help...Reaper has a ReaDelay setting called Vocal Fattener and does juts that. It's a couple of ultra short delays spread a tiny % left and right of the original vocal.
Look at you vocal in a parametric EQ and gently boost the weak spots while carefully/surgically cutting back on the strident or rattly spots.
Want more bottom end and intimacy - sing close to the mic...want clarity and a rolled off bottom end - more back from the mic. Too much "room" in the capture hang a heavy blanket before & behind you about a meter.
Don't hide behind reverb...it does blur and mush the vocal but in the end leaves a smear that can be detrimental to the song.
Record a phrase at a time across multiple tracks...ensuring you've a glass of water at hand and a pop screen between you & the mic.
OH...find your range and write for it.
Mine is quite limited and blah but I've found that the chords in A maj suit me better than other keys because they don't press me to sing higher or lower than I can. OHHHHH, have you tried your falsetto voice? For some time I found that I was clearer and stronger up there than in my natural space...weird but true.
As for microphones...eh, they all record...you can work out the foibles of any mic to your advantage. I have a couple of decent medium diaphragm condensers, some very cheap small D condensers and a bundle of dynamic mics. I was in a hurry to get an idea down the other day and grabbed the nearest mic...a cheap dynamic...it required the right amount of preamp boost but did a fine job or recording...I wish my singing was good enough to make the mic seem deficient. RUN with what you have/can afford. A 58 is, after all, a live & studio dynamic with quite a history. It simply needs more "gain" from the preamp because it's neither internally powered like, nor as sensitive as, a condenser.
Give it enough juic and it will record what is sung into it and not notice background noise much if at all.
Ah...personal question...do you sing relatively quietly so as not to disturb the family and/or embarrass yourself? If the answer is YES then you need to send them all to the cafe or beach so you can get loud and develop you breathing/lung capacity and belt out beyond the rattle - SERIOUSLY.
Bon Chance.
OH, BIAB has pitch correction too as mentioned...I don't use BIAb to track so don't know the ins n outs of it.

Learn some Tom Waits songs.

Thank you for your thoughtful suggestions. I will implement those that work for me.

Hi Blong,
I am one step behind you I cant sing at all.What I do is I send my guide vocal to a singer from the website https://soundbetter.com/ or https://www.airgigs.com/.This will cost you ranging from 75 dollars and up depending on the singer you ask .It was the only way for me to get a professional sounding demo but its worth it.You will have to process the vocal yourself such as eq,compression,de essing ,reverb etc but their are plenty of instructional videos out there for that and I find it enjoybable ,yours H

What level of songwriter are you guys that you will pay $75 a song to have someone sing it? Are you placing songs on CDs? In commercials? Are you so well beyond the hobby level most of us here are that you pay for a singer to perform music nobody will likely ever hear? Just curious. I mean, I am not paying your tabs, but I just have to wonder what kind of music you are cranking out and where it ends up. I mean, none of us are exactly Diane Warren here...

Don't under-rate members here.
I've actually had forum members pay me 10 times that $75 amount for a given project/task, so everyone here is not a hobbyist.

And yes, some has been used in commercials or TV
Good gig if you can get it

Even for hobbyists, how much money is that, really, to pay for a good recording of your own music that will last forever? I can think of a lot of things that cost $75, very few of which will add value to my life on anything like that level. I am indeed a mere hobbyist, and I have never hired a musician, but I started considering this approach seriously as soon as I learned of it here. Sometime soon, I really really want to pay a human singer to sing a song of mine, as of now still unwritten, just so I can hear it and share it and have it.

Yes, that in itself has value.
For many of us, we have spent more than we made in the long run, but it was still worth every penny.
I feel close to breaking even, and have enjoyed all of it .. I have other ways to make money

Hi Eddie,
Here is an example of a singer I got to sing a song.On hindsight I was trying to make the song sound other worldly or from under the water and could have done better with the vocals.The vocalists are really good and they put alot of work in for the money and consider it great value as I have gone to amazing trouble to make a good backing track.The choice I have is a simple one ,I just cant sing or I can sing only to a guide vocal level .
This will give you an idea of how good the singers are and more experienced producers on Biab would have done a better Job on the vocals I realize that now ,but im happy enough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUQoUJNPDKs&t=129s

Hi Here are the examples of Band in a box songs with a singer from soundsbetter I have on soundcloud and I have to say I have no regrets at all and they were extremely professional .H

https://soundcloud.com/user-219964721

One software package I use is Studio one from Presonus it comes with basic Melodyne built in. Just a thought.

The more contacts you have in the music world the better chance you have to find a musician who can actually do what you want to be done.

$75 is a pretty low amount to pay a professional vocalist. $200 to $400 is a good ballpark number for a pro from Nashville for example. New York or London will cost more.

Paying a vocalist or other musician to sing or play something you want to create does not need to be profitable. In fact, it most likely will not be.

Paying for a vocalist is no different than buying another guitar that you have no real need for.

I have spent thousands of dollars producing music that may have sold some but never made a profit. I don't regret spending a penny on it.

What to get in the big time?

According to the research, acts like Dave Matthews Band, Bruce Springsteen, Justin Bieber (ugh), Justin Timberlake, and Taylor Swift are the most expensive to book, with an estimated rate of $1 million-plus per performance, while it'll run you around $125,000-$175,000 for “Happy” singer Pharrell.

There are vocalists on this forum who are wonderful singers and there are some who can not carry a tune around in a water bucket but are super entertaining to listen to. There is no requirement to sing well to be well-liked.

Just sing, we will listen and 99.9% of us will be very kind in our remarks.
This is a nice place with nice people.

Billy

EDIT: Just in case you actually want to hire Taylor call the office at (212) 645-0555 and one of our Taylor Swift booking agents will assist you in hiring Taylor Swift for a private event anywhere in the world.

I would suggest looking for a pro singer through one of the many Nashville services. I had a song that I wanted to pitch in Nashville, and was fortunate enough to hook up with a guy named Brian Nolf, who played in Marty Stuart's band for many years.

I sent him the song, with my rough vocal, and he returned it with a lead vocal and two background harmony tracks. It was well-received at NSAI, and was forwarded to their "Pitch To A Producer" program. It wasn't picked up , but I was still pleased with the recording.


https://90dbband.bandcamp.com/track/big-time


Regards,

Bob

Yes. Even the SM57/58 — both sound less than ideal into a modern solid state interface due to mismatched high impedance (these were designed to see the 600Ω Bell Telephone spec found in nearly everything in the '50s–'60s). A little tweak to a barrel connector or a mic cable fixes that and turns these into the excellent mics that they were designed to be. I recommend reading this article on the problem, then the sidebar on what you can do inexpensively to fix it.

Recording Mag article on SM57

The answer lies in: "I want to record demos."

The skill level of your singer needs to be equal to what's expected from your demo. If you're just doing a demo to show off to friends or a band to get an idea of the song, the skill level is pretty low.

If you're trying to create demos to pitch songs, applying pitch correction to your voice isn't enough. A good singer doesn't just sing words on pitch, they'll emote and interpret the song in a style-appropriate way. You're paying for the performance, and that's not something that you can add via pitch correction.

And just like anything else, you may want to consider hiring out other tasks as well - especially if it's not something you've done before. For example, mixing is a fairly specialized skill.

Obviously, you can easily go broke on a pursuit that can quickly eat up a ton of money and bring in no return for your dollar. So at the end of the day, you'll want to also consider what you're willing to pay for a bunch of well-recorded demos of your songs that never got picked up.

Wouldn't something with switchable impedance like a VTB1 preamp do the same thing?
Seems to here.
I don't trust my soldering .. <grin>