Re: [linux-audio-user] Vocals

On Sunday 29 October 2006 22:23, chaz kiser wrote:
> Any suggestions what plugins or effects in Audacity I could
> utilize to make my vocals sound better, or more importantly,
> like someone else?

I'm no recording engineer, but I've worked with one in the last
few years and I think I have a little bit of understanding of
what sounds good and what doesn't now.

First of all, I assume you're not trying to record your vocals on
a $5 microphone that came with your computer and that you're
recording somewhere that doesn't have awful acoustics. I've
recorded in a closet, in a car, under a blanket and a number of
other ways due to being unable to just put up acoustic foam in
the apartments I've lived in. I also learned that all the
cliches about "sing from the diaphragm", "don't swallow the
mic", etc. are pretty much true, at least if you're trying to
record something that sounds like popular music.

After you're done recording, conventional approaches to fixing
vocals include compression and EQ, various "aural exciters",
which range from expensive snake oil to useful, and nowadays
pitch correction (like Antares Autotune) especially. I don't
think there's a way to automatically correct sharp or flat
vocals in Audacity though (yet.)

I used something a lot cheaper than Autotune back in my Windows
days, but can't remember what it was called and I don't know
whether there are any Autotune clones that would work under
Linux. But you should be able to fix especially out-of-tune
notes by either punching in from another recording (which I
usually do) or selecting just that note and manually shifting
the pitch through one of Audacity's time/pitch plugins.

A common mistake (or artistic decision I would disagree with)
that I hear in people's stuff that they post to the net is
leaving the vocals too dry when the whole rest of the track has
a ton of effects. Doubling the vocal track (recording it a
second time in unison) or using chorus or delay, and then
applying a reverb sound that's appropriate to the rest of the
track, will usually help. Use your discretion.... if it's a
really electronic sounding track, you can take a lot more
liberties (flange, gate, phaser, vocoder...) than if you're
recording a "folk singer/songwriter" kind of track, but I think
there aren't a lot of situations where you want to leave the
vocal track totally dry.

Finally, people who aren't confident in their own vocal ability
and who mix their own music tend to mix themselves way too far
back, even when the vocal or lyrics is what they want you to
notice. I personally think it's better to have the vocal
overcooked than inaudible.

As far as making yourself sound like someone else.... you can try
tricks like slowing down your track, recording your vocals and
speeding it back up (or vice versa), you can try analyzing the
spectrum of the person you want to imitate's vocals and EQ'ing
yourself to sound like him or her, but in the end there's more
to someone's voice than just the timbre.

There are articles about how to record better sounding vocals in
the musician magazines almost every month, and I'm sure there
are hundreds of them around the net, but these are my opinions.

Rob
Received on Mon Oct 30 08:15:03 2006