Previous Thread
Index
Next Thread
Print Thread
Go To
Page 1 of 2 1 2
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 2,899
Veteran
OP Offline
Veteran
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 2,899
Hi All

With all this talk about modern songs and processing on vocals I thought it may be interesting if we posted some of our isolated vocals and talked a little about what we did to achieve them. In this way we can all comment, compare and learn!

I'll start!

Here is an isolated vocal from my album in progress with Lebz.



I did the following:
1. Recorded using my Scarlett solo and Rhode NT3 condenser mic.
2. Fixed timing and tuning errors using Melodyne
3. Manually reduced breath noises on lead vocal.
4. Ran the lead vocal through Izotope Nectar (Folk solo enhancement preset)
5. Added a little delay to the already processed vocal.
6. Added a bit of "Old Rotary" to the already processed vocal
7. Did some parallel processing by mixing the processed vocal in with the raw (tuned) lead vocal.
8. The harmonies I didn't do anything except fix timing and tuning with Melodyne and remove all the breath noises.

Constructive feedback on this is appreciated.

And....lets hear yours....


Last edited by JoanneCooper; 05/17/18 08:41 AM.

LyricLab A.I assisted chords and lyric app. Export lyrics and import directly into Band-in-a-Box 2024.
https://lyriclab.net
Play-along with songs you know and love, download SGU files
https://playiit.com/
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Apr 2009
Posts: 9,301
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Apr 2009
Posts: 9,301
That sounds good.

It can stand on it's own easily which I believe is the goal. Right?

Instruments are just the icing on the cake but this doesn't need them.

Many times it's tedious for me to listen to a-Capella singing.... not so with this this.

Very enjoyable.


You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 5,089
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 5,089
Excellent! Love your vibrato, and those harmonies are wonderful!

You can hear the delay on this, would love to hear it with the rest of the track to see how it fits into the final mix.

What is "Old Rotary"?

Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 2,899
Veteran
OP Offline
Veteran
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 2,899
Herb and Dave

Thanks for the comments. Herb YOU are the one who put me onto Melodyne and quite literally changed my life. I am forever in your debt!!

Dave "Old Rotary" is a kind of old speaker type effect. Floyd was saying that he thought that Ed Sheeran's vocal had it on. I just used a free trial plugin. I may purchase it.. Google PSP Lotary and you should find it if your are interested... Will post the final mix shortly...


LyricLab A.I assisted chords and lyric app. Export lyrics and import directly into Band-in-a-Box 2024.
https://lyriclab.net
Play-along with songs you know and love, download SGU files
https://playiit.com/
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 20,638
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 20,638
Hi Joanne,

The best Leslie rotary speaker emulation that I have found is UVI's Rotary:

https://www.uvi.net/rotary.html

It lists for $79 USD but it does go on sale.

This is fully adjustable and has presets for both instruments and vocals.

YMMV


Me, it's not about how many times you fail, it's about how many times you get back up.
Cop, that's not how field sobriety tests work.

64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 13,977
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 13,977
Interesting example Joanne...enjoyed reading what you did.

John Lennon asked the Beatles' engineer if he (John) could hang by his feet in the studio and twirl around - really. The notion was to pass by the mic on each revolution while singing (a vocal effect idea he had for Tomorrow Never Knows). The engineer, Geoff Emerick, more sensibly tried a Leslie rotary speaker (typically heard with a Hammond B3 organ) and thus the "rotary" vocal sound began.

FIFTY+ YEARS ago. Modern? Ha! What goes around comes around! Yeah...awful pun.

Bud

PS Geoff Emerick's book offers tremendous insight into their studio creativity. The Beatles would tell George Martin what they wanted but Geoff had to figure out how to do it.

Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 2,254
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 2,254
Originally Posted By: Janice & Bud


John Lennon asked the Beatles' engineer if he (John) could hang by his feet and twirl around. The notion was to pass by the mic on each revolution while singing (for a vocal effect idea he had for Tomorrow Never Knows). The engineer, Geoff Emerick, more sensibly tried a Leslie rotary speaker (typically heard with a Hammond B3 organ) and thus the "rotary" sound began.


I'm missing something here. Specifically the part I'm not clear about is how did Geoff mount John to the rotary speaker? crazy


Quote:
FIFTY+ YEARS ago. Modern? Ha! What goes around comes around! Yeah...awful pun.


I actually like a good pun. Well played.






Quote:
PS Geoff Emerick's book offers tremendous insight into their studio creativity. The Beatles would tell George Martin what they wanted but Geoff had to figure out how to do it.


I hadn't heard of this. Very cool. They had some WILD productions. Thanks for the info!


Duct tape? Is that the answer to the rotary speaker mount?

Last edited by HearToLearn; 05/18/18 10:45 AM.

Chad (Hope that makes it easier)

TEMPO TANTRUM: What a lead singer has when they can't stay in time.
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 13,977
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 13,977
Originally Posted By: HearToLearn


....Duct tape? Is that the answer to the rotary speaker mount?


Yeah, unfortunately Gorilla Tape had not made the scene. smile

Bud

Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 21,609
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 21,609
On your example, I suspect removing the breathing may take a little out of it.
It's well done and will likely fit a mix well; they have their own space/sound. Breathing adds a little 'intimacy' which (in my head) I hear as the direction the song is heading.
Quote:
And....lets hear yours....

^ It's interesting because when I started to follow your lead and create a vocal only track it was difficult to try to not hear the other parts (that I knew existed) in my head as I listened.
It will also be interesting to see how your actual full song fits into my 'preconceived impression' of the rest of the tracks after hearing the vocals.

smile

Last edited by rharv; 05/18/18 12:46 PM.

Make your sound your own!
.. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 7,913
R
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
R
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 7,913
I might post some stuff this weekend from bare bones production February album writing month songs.

Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 13,977
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 13,977
I find Nectar 2’s Breath Controller an excellent tool. You can set the sensitivity to completely remove the breaths or to just reduce them to keep the intimacy. Just turn it on, set the sensitivity and forget about it. It is very, very accurate.

If appropriate to the thread I’ll post a demo on how effective it is using one of Janice’s vocals.

Bud

Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 2,899
Veteran
OP Offline
Veteran
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 2,899
Interesting stuff coming out of this thread, especially all the history about the rotary speaker. If Floyd had not mentioned it in the Ed Sheeran thread I would never have known a thing about it. I still need to decide if it is worth purchasing or not

Bud, yes please post a sample of the breath control stuff from Nectar. I do tend to spend quite a bit of time manually reducing breath noises so it would be nice to short cut my work flow.

Scott: looking forward to hearing yours.

Mario, thanks for the link to the rotary speaker plug. I will check it out.

I will post the final mix of the song once this thread has run a bit (give others a chance to listen to the vocal only first).


LyricLab A.I assisted chords and lyric app. Export lyrics and import directly into Band-in-a-Box 2024.
https://lyriclab.net
Play-along with songs you know and love, download SGU files
https://playiit.com/
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 13,977
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 13,977

Here are two short clips that will demonstrate the Izotope Breath Controller that is packaged with Nectar 2.

It's a very simple plug-in to remove or partially remove breath intake sounds. Basically just turn it on and set the sensitivity. For this demonstration I used more "removal" than I typically would. I like to leave a bit...we are humans after all smile

45s vocal clips - Janice

If interested, the fx are essentially what I've used for nearly 30 years on her vocals - mostly irrespective of genre. A little compression, a little reverb and two very slight eq tweaks. Now that I'm digital I add a little tape saturation. Some times on a double track I'll add a little delay to one track. That's it. I never do any vocal edits of any type. We typically do two takes and about 75% of the time she will prefer the first one. We only record about once every three weeks or so and it's typically a 20 minute session so I don't profess to be any kind of expert. When she says she's ready to record...she's ready! She will "live with" a song with her bluetooth earpiece around the house until ready. Janice has no interest in vocal editing and I'm not going to be so presumptuous as to try it and assume I can better what she says is a take that she likes smile I realize that practically everybody nowadays from the best singers to the average edit vocals so I certainly don't think our way is the "right" way to do it - it's just the way we do it.

Bud

Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 21,609
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 21,609
That Nectar did a nice job, clean and not intrusive.
Gotta love iZotope.

Here's one for fun (hopefully).
Verse vocals were doubled in real time (recorded Barry using two takes on separate tracks). This gave us 'almost' the effect we wanted, but he sang in tune with himself too much, as he could hear his first take while he sang his second.
So I ran slight tuning on one of them, which gave us more of what we wanted. Of course there is also reverb and EQ involved.
Chorus vocals are pretty much just EQ and reverb. Two tracks Barry, one me during choruses.
http://masteringmatters.com/stuff2/VoxSolod.mp3

End result when added to the mix:
http://masteringmatters.com/stuff2/Happy-Mel-2.mp3
This is circa 2010 or so, according to file dates.
Anyone remember OBTune?

Last edited by rharv; 05/20/18 02:16 AM.

Make your sound your own!
.. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 7,913
R
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
R
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 7,913
Here's my first song from February Album Writing Month; very simple songs: two tracks, electric piano and 1 vocal track sang improvised.

Playlist on Soundcloud has the full two track song, then the vocal solo'ed with all processing, then the vocal dry.

This was the first song that I recorded using an old Electrovoice SRO RE11 microphone. These are not good mics in general.

As I tried it out, I really didn't care for the midrange bump it seems to have, but it does have a bit of a vintage sound to it. So I just left it.

Processing on the isolated vocal: A mono channel strip plugin that has a high pass filter, compression and some EQ (It's Mackie's mono channel strip plugin that came with Tracktion when Mackie owned Tracktion), on a send I have some pretty wet reverb.

https://soundcloud.com/rockstar_not/sets/scott-lake-vocal-isolation

Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 2,254
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 2,254
Hey Bud, those are REALLY cool to hear

You will have to tell Janice that her vocal has a built in breath removal tool. She sings, and it takes my breath away! Seriously, what great tone! It always helps when you start with something that already sounds good.

Now, that being said, you really do a great job on your processing. Everything is sounding so good to me.

I am curious, and please excuse my ignorance, does the breath removal tool work as well for spoken word/voice-overs as well? I'm guessing so; but thought I would ask if you found that to be the case.

Thanks. Those two examples really showed how well it works.


Chad (Hope that makes it easier)

TEMPO TANTRUM: What a lead singer has when they can't stay in time.
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Aug 2014
Posts: 7,663
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Aug 2014
Posts: 7,663
Here is the first verse and chorus of Kingdom Now--vocal only.

https://soundcloud.com/david-snyder-mixing-lab/kingdom-now-vocal-snippet

A few things:

1.) I am singing rock and roll so I don't want it to be perfect. I don't cut and paste because to me that destroys the emotion. I have to keep re-recording until I get a take that maintains the emotional build from beginning to end or I don't like it.

2.) I cut out breaths in Audacity before I import to DAW if I am singing rock 'n' roll. If I am not singing rock 'n' roll I don't usually take as many breaths. Rock 'n' Roll can get noisy though.

3.) I am looking for a warm dynamic range of at least 13 and I don't want the vocals to go in to the red zone because that means the dynamics have been stripped. I want them in that green range where the vocal chords are still present and the timbre blends in with other instruments such as acoustic guitar.

See screenshot.

Here is the final, from the showcase.

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=471810#Post471810

Also here is a link a did a few weeks ago I guess showing the complete effects rack that made this sound, including some tape saturation.

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=472063&#Post472063




Attached Files (Click to download or enlarge) (Only available when you are logged in)
Kingdom Now Vox Snippet.jpg (90.27 KB, 92 downloads)
Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Aug 2014
Posts: 7,663
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Aug 2014
Posts: 7,663
Rharv,

These sound really cool!

Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Aug 2014
Posts: 7,663
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Aug 2014
Posts: 7,663
Bud and Janice,

Yeah I agree those were beautiful to listen to!

Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
Joined: Aug 2014
Posts: 7,663
Veteran
Offline
Veteran
Joined: Aug 2014
Posts: 7,663
Really nice work Joanne.

Previous Thread
Next Thread
Go To
Page 1 of 2 1 2

Link Copied to Clipboard
ChatPG

Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.

ChatPG's knowledge base includes the full Band-in-a-Box User Manual and sales information from the website.

PG Music News
Convenient Ways to Listen to Band-in-a-Box® Songs Created by Program Users!

The User Showcase Forum is an excellent place to share your Band-in-a-Box® songs and listen to songs other program users are creating!

There are other places you can listen to these songs too! Visit our User Showcase page to sort by genre, artist (forum name), song title, and date - each listing will direct you to the forum post for that song.

If you'd rather listen to these songs in one place, head to our Band-in-a-Box® Radio, where you'll have the option to select the genre playlist for your listening pleasure. This page has SoundCloud built in, so it won't redirect you. We've also added the link to the Artists SoundCloud page here, and a link to their forum post.

We hope you find some inspiration from this amazing collection of User Showcase Songs!

Congratulations to the 2023 User Showcase Award Winners!

We've just announced the 2023 User Showcase Award Winners!

There are 45 winners, each receiving a Band-in-a-Box 2024 UltraPAK! Read the official announcement to see if you've won.

Our User Showcase Forum receives more than 50 posts per day, with people sharing their Band-in-a-Box songs and providing feedback for other songs posted.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed!

Video: Volume Automation in Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows®

We've created a video to help you learn more about the Volume Automation options in Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows.

Band-in-a-Box® 2024: Volume Automation

www.pgmusic.com/manuals/bbw2024full/chapter11.htm#volume-automation

Video: Audio Input Monitoring with Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows®

We've created this short video to explain Audio Input Monitoring within Band-in-a-Box® 2024, and included some tips & troubleshooting details too!

Band-in-a-Box® 2024: Audio Input Monitoring

3:17: Tips
5:10: Troubleshooting

www.pgmusic.com/manuals/bbw2024full/chapter11.htm#audio-input-monitoring

Video: Enhanced Melodists in Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows®!

We've enhanced the Melodists feature included in Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows!

Access the Melodist feature by pressing F7 in the program to open the new MultiPicker Library and locate the [Melodist] tab.

You can now generate a melody on any track in the program - very handy! Plus, you select how much of the melody you want generated - specify a range, or apply it to the whole track.

See the Melodist in action with our video, Band-in-a-Box® 2024: The Melodist Window.

Learn even more about the enhancements to the Melodist feature in Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows at www.pgmusic.com/manuals/bbw2024upgrade/chapter3.htm#enhanced-melodist

Band-in-a-Box® 2024 DAW Plugin Version 6: New Features Specifically for Reaper®

New with the DAW Plugin Version 6.0, released with Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows: the Reaper® Panel!

This new panel offers built-in specific support for the Reaper® DAW API allowing direct transfer of Band-in-a-Box® files to/from Reaper® tracks!

When you run the Plugin from Reaper®, there is a panel to set the following options:
-BB Track(s) to send: This allows you to select the Plugin tracks that will be sent Reaper.
-Destination Reaper Track: This lets you select the destination Reaper track to receive media content from the Plugin.
-At Bar: You can select a bar in Reaper where the Plugin tracks should be placed.
-Start Below Selected Track: This allows you to place the Plugin tracks below the destination Reaper track.
-Overwrite Reaper Track: You can overwrite previous content on the destination Reaper track.
-Move to Project Folder: With this option, you can move the Plugin tracks to the Reaper project folder.
-Send Reaper Instructions Enable this option to send the Reaper Instructions instead of rendering audio tracks, which is faster.
-Render Audio & Instructions: Enable this option to generate audio files and the Reaper instructions.
-Send Tracks After Generating: This allows the Plugin to automatically send tracks to Reaper after generating.
-Send Audio for MIDI Track: Enable this option to send rendered audio for MIDI tracks.
-Send RealCharts with Audio: If this option is enabled, Enable this option to send RealCharts with audio.

Check out this video highlighting the new Reaper®-specific features: Band-in-a-Box® DAW Plugin Version 6: New Features Specifically for Reaper®

Band-in-a-Box® 2024 DAW Plugin Version 6: New Features Video

The new Band-in-a-Box VST DAW Plugin Verion 6 adds over 20 new features!

Watch the new features video to learn more: Video: Band-in-a-Box® 2024 - DAW Plugin Version 6 New Features

We also list these new features at www.pgmusic.com/bbwin.plugin.htm.

Forum Statistics
Forums66
Topics81,391
Posts732,468
Members38,440
Most Online2,537
Jan 19th, 2020
Newest Members
Ernest J, Izzy, BenChaz, Csofi, mmpartee
38,439 Registered Users
Top Posters(30 Days)
MarioD 195
Al-David 124
DC Ron 113
dcuny 87
rsdean 83
Today's Birthdays
CeeDee, SethMould
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5