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Old 10-19-2017, 12:04 AM   #1
sjs94704
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Default Best practices? - I am not really MIXING music, but singing to existing songs!

Hi:

First, I am not attempting to be a PRO mixer! In my case I am recording myself singing to my favorite songs to simply share with family, friends, on FACEBOOK, as well as SoundCloud etc.... I am on FULL-TIME disability and am doing this to occupy my time. I have always been involved in the choir in school and have even performed on stage and sung a few solos as a kid!

Nowadays, I like to sing karaoke style music and belong to a website with some very high quality background music.

At the moment I am not interested in learning how to create my own mixes of the actual music. I am wanting to only maximize the sound I can get out of this existing background music tracks that I have downloaded. I am making an educated guess that this music has already be processed and mastered before I got it!
One thing I CAN do is use reaPitch so I can adjust the song to where it is best for me octave wise!

So, in my case the ONLY thing I have control over is my vocals. I have a studio quality condenser MIC, a U-Phoria UMC22 interface and running 64-bit Reaper.
I hired a guy to come over to configure Reaper to have ZERO latency! (Thank God!)

What I would like to know is how and where to spend the most time and effort with my recordings?
I just do not want to spend too much time doing things that will not truly benefit me!

The following questions refer to the background music only!
I am just now starting to grasp a lot of the terminology so, some of what I am saying might not be the right words etc.

1. How should I use the gain and volume? (Which one vs. which?) Should I even need to use gain? Just for the MIC?

2. How much EQing do I do? I do know from messing around that some EQing can enhance the sound of the music! I am like a newborn baby when it comes to knowing how to properly EQ, but, I want to believe that I am slowly learning. I learn best by watching videos, so if anyone knows of a good video that teaches in-depth of EQing from scratch I would appreciate knowing about it!

What I am doing is using the volume envelope to control the volume of the music so that for example, at the very beginning of the song the volume is louder and then as I approach the parts where I am going to actually start singing, I bring the volume down a bit. If there are parts of the song that have just the music playing but no vocal for an extended period, I bring the volume of the background music back up for a bit and then bring it back down when I start singing again.

One plugin that I use a lot is MTurboReverb. One of the things I want to be able to be sure to accomplish is to avoid letting my vocals sound 'hollow' but more rich and full! (I hope I am using the right words to describe what I mean!) I just don't want to sound like I am in a tunnel!

Here is a link to one of my songs called 'Somewhere' made famous by Barbra Streisand. As I am writing this message I am listening to it and I can tell that there is so much I would like to do with the background music so that it can also stand out some more! BUT, I have already explained my limitations with the actual music.


https://soundcloud.com/bayside_studios/somewhere


Now, before anyone says how crappy my singing is (I know for sure that several notes I hit are NOT right!) it is "Just For Fun", I am also studying some online courses for that, so I should get better at singing over time!

Anyways, I would be grateful for any advice that others can offer!

Steven
Berkeley, CA USA
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Old 10-19-2017, 12:51 AM   #2
mucknog
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Hi Steven,

I think you're on a good path. Your recording chain should me more than adequate to lay down some great vocals.

You're right. When you get a stereo playback file, the mix is pretty much set in stone. Of course you still can EQ & compress a little (like mastering) but this shouldn't radically change the overall sound.
One thing you might consider is carving out around 1-4K, so your vocals have a bit more space to breathe.

Talking about space, the most important thing you should learn is how to put the vocals into the right space/room/hall. The first thing that struck me from your recording is the (over-) use of reverb. Try a mixture of delay & reverb but in a much more subtle way. If you feel your vocals should be bigger/wider, try the old left/right detune trick (maybe feed that back into a delay).

Of course all vocals need some EQ & compression, and you should definitely experiment a lot. But there are no quick rules what to do, and what not to do.

Cheers
Sebastian
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Old 10-19-2017, 01:27 AM   #3
sjs94704
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Default Thank You! - Followup questions

Thanks so much for your input. Here are a couple followups:

You Said:
"One thing you might consider is carving out around 1-4K, so your vocals have a bit more space to breathe."

You Also Said:
"Talking about space, the most important thing you should learn is how to put the vocals into the right space/room/hall. The first thing that struck me from your recording is the (over-) use of reverb. Try a mixture of delay & reverb but in a much more subtle way. If you feel your vocals should be bigger/wider, try the old left/right detune trick (maybe feed that back into a delay)."

I am not sure, but I think I know the direction you are taking me with these suggestions, BUT, I know that at the moment I do not know how to do what your suggesting here! Please expand a bit on what your saying so that I can know for SURE what your trying to tell me here!

As far as EQing, I have seen a bit about 'High Pass' and 'Low Pass' filters as well as other types of filters as well, so, I wanted to know if you would be willing to help me find one or more videos on YouTube that can show me more how to do this stuff your suggesting .....

I have not yet touched compression nor at the moment do I really understand it's purpose. In all the videos I have found on YouTube, there is always a big portion that uses terminology that makes it hard to totally follow. Today I did find a young guy named Jason Omoi who does get into terminology explanation, so, despite his human nature I think I will get a better grasp of what much of this is all about!

At the moment the way the vocal track is set up (only because I saw this in one of the videos I saw is that I have one vocal track inside of a folder which is my vocal BUSS. The vocal track has NO VSTs at all and is a send to the BUSS. The BUSS has (in this order):

1. VST3: MTurboReverb (Melda Productions)
2. DXi: Blue Cat's Triple EQ 4 (Stereo)
3. DXi: Blue Cat's Gain 3 (Stereo)

This is then sent to a 'Delay' track with the following in order:
(Once again I did this thinking I was doing what this one video said they did!)

1. DX1: Blue Cat's Triple EQ 4 (Stereo)
2. Blue Cat's Gain 3 (Stereo)
3. VST: ReaDelay Cockos)

I have no doubt that there is some doubling of at least two VSTs so I will start there.

Ideas?










































































Thanks .......

Last edited by sjs94704; 10-19-2017 at 02:03 AM.
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Old 10-19-2017, 04:40 AM   #4
mucknog
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Don't worry when you have problems hearing differences when EQing or compressing,. It takes some practice to hear changes.

Pensado's Place is a great source for mixing. In this video he talks about his philosophy when hi-passing vocals.

"carving out around 1-4K"
use an ReaEQ band filter on the instruments & set to about -3dB. Then swoop around 2-4K. Fine tune bandwidth & gain.

Regarding plug-ins. I know Cocos plugins don't look like much, but I'd advise learning them first before installing different options.


There's really a lot to stuff to cover, takes time.
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