- I'm talking LDC here...
- You've all heard me sing - I'm not very shouty but I do try to get reasonable apparent dynamic range into vocals via moving in and out as I sing
- Untreated, large (7 x 6.5 m/ 23 x 21 ft) room with 3 m / 9ft ceilngs
It strikes me that the vocals I recorded in 2014 for The Jongleurs were better than the vocals I recorded in 2018 for Honey Hunters which were better than the vocals I've recorded this year...
I haven't changed anything other than the distance to the mic - I'm singing further away, because somewhere along the way I picked up that I should - which could well be wrong, but that's what I've been doing. Deep voice - proximity effect etc.
Not quite the only thing - I did have a big couch that I up ended for the Jongleurs which we put in front of the mic and sang into. Alas, one day it fell down and destroyed itself and I needed a new couch anyway, but I can't up end this one.
Seems to me, at volume, certain syllables ring out in a piercing way which I struggle to tame in the mix, and there's a resonance that's a little unpleasant generally - and so my theory is that by moving back off the mic and thus using more gain to get the required recording level I'm capturing more of the reflections from the room and that's making the overall capture worse, and that probably the first thing I should do is just go back to what I was doing and get back to being closer.
I'm probably singing from about 10 to 12 inches whereas before it was more like 6 to 9 inches. Downside is that you have more vocal artefacts: sibilance, plosives, breaths, lip smacks etc to deal with.
What works for you?