I am fronting a band. I spend a lot of time on my harp sound. For vocals though, I just eq/reverb a bit on whatever PA is provided. I'm rethinking that equation. My voice is heard on most all the songs and actually one of the most important ingredients of our music.
So how can I improve the sound? What mics do you guys use (I use an SM 58..)? What pedals? What processors/preamps? I'm thinking about getting an ART MP to warm the sound up a bit. But maybe there is something out there which also lets me shape the tone and perhaps have some better FX too. Something I can bring so I'm less dependent on the venue?
I basically use just an SM58 for vocals regardless if it's my own PA or a system provided at the gig and have a bit of reverb on the voice and that's pretty much it.
To be honest, I personally feel that using pedals to "warm things up" is a huge waste of money because with room acoustics, there's nothing you can really do to EQ that out of the equation for anything, including the vocals and about the only thing you get from that is loss of clarity.
Only in a good recording studio (NOT a home studio set up in the basement of your house without proper sound proofing) is where everything is set up to be as sonically neutral as humanly possible so that acoustics is taken out of the equation.
I think what your real problem is closer to being more like you want your vocal sound to be more like one of your vocal heroes rather than doing the right thing, which would be work with what you have and then further refine it. I think getting together with a reputable vocal coach would make more sense than wasting money on effects for the vocals. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
As usual Bob knows his shit! For me good quality vocal mic, no matter what size room a monitor (I've got to hear my vocals), reverb and know your own vocal limitations etc. and try to recognise your own vocal technique to express cos its the same old same old it's all about what you put in just like harp tone. I Don't know nothing about pedals or stuff for voice. ----------
"Those British boys want to play the blues real bad, and they do"
Last Edited by marine1896 on Dec 17, 2015 11:22 AM
@FreeWilly -- What the hell was that answer all about???? What are you REALLY going for?? Are you looking at a heavily processed rock/pop/electronica sound??? No need for that arrogant answer because all these replies are meant to help!!! ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
That answer was about a recurring theme on this site.. supposing everyone who askes something about tone needs more lessons. My voice is fine as it is - I had training. Thanks. I thought the first part of your response was very helpful though, so thanks for that.
I was at a concert recently where a couple of guys were singing through some sort of vintage mic. When one of them spoke through the sm 58 the guitarrist had, it sounded harsh and unbalanced by comparison. Got me to think on the subject. I'm not sure all extra gear just robbs clarity and was wondering what you guys think/use.
It depends very much on your voice, the song, and the sound you want. Mostly I do them as after effects on recordings since we haven't been playing out much. On some songs I add reverb. Sometimes chorus is useful. There are some great pedals that will add harmony to your vocal. I also put distortion on it. Sometimes I have someone else sing backup.
If you want more specific advice we'll need a clip to listen to and maybe some examples of what sound you are going for, since that's a matter of taste too.
I own an old Vox FX pedal that has multiple effects. I don't actually use it that often. I've found with my amp that I can get most of the sounds I want with a combination of how I cup the mic and adjusting my two gain knobs and reverb. If I had the money though I'd have a loop pedal (to play around with both harp and vocals with) and I'd have one of those harmonizing pedals. Of course, since I haven't had the money I haven't looked at specific models- just categories- so I'm not sure which the best is in each category, but once you know what sound you are after you might hit up a vocal forum or a pedal forum for exact models. Here is one I've seen that is pretty cool.
I bought a vocal processor for voice and mainly for chromatic harp, TC Helicon Voicetone Create XT, now out of production. It was on a closeout sale. It has great reverb and it does enrich vocals to some extent. It has an OK delay, but I like my PA and pedals just as much. I never bother use it. It is just another thing to set up at a gig.
My PA has reverb if I even want that, and the EQ on the PA can make as much of my vocals as is needed. Most of the people I play with don't use much in the way of effects on vocals and prefer just amplifying the natural sound.
If I play a chromatic harp as a sideman I might use the reverb of the processor for that. Otherwise, I just work with what I have got in the way of voice and what is available on PA. Each room is different, and settings need adjustment in each room. Some rooms are full of hard surfaces and create their own reverb. ----------
Doug S.
Last Edited by dougharps on Dec 17, 2015 1:10 PM
@FreeWilly -- If it sounded harsh and unbalanced, it may actually be a bad mic cable, which does happen and in some cases can make anything going thru the mic sound odd and/or just plain crappy and I've run into that, not only within house systems, but even with my own and when you have cheapo cables, you're more likely to run into that.
Certain vintage mics are naturally darker or brighter in tone. An example of a different sounding tone is if you go thru a REAL Shure PE-55, rather than the reissues you see now, where they're all Low-Z mics and a real one is hi-z and the connectors are totally different and the cartridge in the mic is totally different (and have been out of production for several decades) and the reissues uses the same cartridge you find in an SM57 or SM58.
There are some mics around now that have a vintage look but are far from vintage and that can, at times, alter the vocal tone and some vocal mics are specifically designed for female voices rather than male voices.
Beyer Dynamic in the 70's had a vocal mic using a ribbon cartridge which some vocalists felt that gave their voices a somewhat warmer tone, but having not had a chance to use one, I cannot honestly comment about that one way or another.
Condensor mics can be really bright sounding and mics that get used in a recording studio like Neuman's (with the U-87 being the most famous and one of the most expensive) can change the tone but to what degree, that may be more on personal taste and your own ears more than anything else.
Outside of reverb, the most commonly used effect for vocals that I've run across being used are delay units and sometimes a combination of both. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
To get great club sound on any instrument/vocal, the room has to be acoustically good and very few are. I use to play the Brussels Jazz Club on the Grande Place and they spent a fortune on the sound system and acoustically treating the room. One could easily record a world class album in that place off the board. Most all clubs are just boxes that bounce sound all over the place. I remember when playing veteran halls you would say "hey" on the mic and 1 second later "hey" would bounce back at you onstage.
Playing quiet is the best acoustical solution for most any club. Loud will only work when the room is acoustically treated right. Quiet is the key to good sound most anyplace but most people are stuck on playing loud. In reality most can't play quiet and come up with lines like " I have to play at x volume to get my tone" but the truth is if one can play quiet they are really a master of the instrument. People will come to great music that is quiet and it is all bunk about playing loud is needed to keep a room full. Jimmy Carl Black, the original drummer for Frank Zappa and TMI, played with me on and off for 8 years in Austin. He could rock the hell out of a beat at a talking volume. That is a real musician to me.
That Beyer Dynamic mic was the M500. I used one for recording my vocals in my studio for a couple years but live it would feed back to easy. Sinatra was a big fan of that mic for performance. They can be had on ebay for a decent price often. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year in the Tunnel of Dreams Studio. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
Beta 58 here. Better mids. From there you tailor your channel to your needs. Me, I need less bass and gain and a bit of highs and effects and I'm good. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
I prefer a dry sound for vocals. I will have the head of anyone sneaking in reverb. Don't want it - don't need it.
I use an ev 767nd. It cuts very well, and I don't have to swallow it. I also play in an accoustic band too - so take that for what it's worth. I prefer my guitar dry too for that matter.
Rooms do a lot to the sound. I would rather use the room for my reverb. ---------- Danny
Marine, sorry for the confusion and the snarl than. Glad this topic got on subject.
Perhaps loudness is a part of it indeed.
Is feedback the reason all blues guys use dynamic mics instead of some newman or something? Those do tend to sound nicer. Perhaps because they require a preamp? Or a pa that gives phantom power, which are probably better?
I become conscious over the last several years, in part by listening back to my own recorded vocals and in part by listening to certain well-known blues musicians, of the way in which good blues vocals often involve distorting your voice to heighten certain frequencies.
The most notable example of this is Howlin' Wolf, whose entire vocal production was a self-concious creation. He didn't sing "naturally." Once or twice on his recordings--I'm thinking of a specific moment in his Sun Studio Sessions from the early 50s--he drops the "Wolf" voice and actually sings in his real voice. It's much smoother, with an evenly distributed set of frequencies. It's almost unrecognizable. Then he screws up his voice again, heightening the midrange in an extreme way, as though to produce, in the moment, the sort of sound that is produced when vocals are pumped through a tiny radio speaker. And that's the Wolf: that buzzy, aggressive sound.
Why did he do this? Well, he got the basic idea from Charley Patton, and there are scholars of Af-Am culture who will use the term "vocal masking" to trace its origins back to African tonal practices: making the drum buzz by affixing certain things to it. But I think the proximate cause is something else: a desire to cut through the noise and smoke of a loud juke joint. In order to do that effectively, you need to know how to shift the resonating frequencies in your voice upward.
I made this discovery on a gig when I realized that my voice just wasn't cutting through the guitar and drums. I constricted my throat, put some edge on my voice, experimented with my distance from the vocal mic--and voila! My voice was suddenly the loudest and most prominent thing in the band, without me turning up the PA or deliberately singing louder.
Coincidentally, I realized that the new voice, as it were, in which I'd sung was, to my ears, not really "me." It was somewhat distanced from the conversational, sincere, crooning Gussow that I'd assumed was my "natural" singing voice.
Then I listened to Stevie Ray Vaughan and realized that the whole basis of his singing voice was exactly the vocal distortion that I'd just discovered. He deliberately puts a whiskied, midrange edge on his voice. He recreates his voice in a way that highlights a particular frequency range.
If this all sounds crazy, then all I can say is: You need to start listening for the thing I'm talking about. Start with Wolf and SRV. Listen to their voices and see if you can discern the point of commonality. Then, in the woodshed, mess around with your own voice and see if you can alter it in this way.
If you want to know how this plays out on the gig, listen to the following between 1:10 and 1:15. I use something closer to my "ordinary" singing voice when I sing "Whoa whoa whoa whoa!" It's loud, it's a belt, but it's otherwise "smooth" in the sense that I'm not intentionally modifying the effective frequency range. Then, on the phrase "Well I need your love," I do exactly that. I distort my voice to place it more in the buzzy place (so to speak) in my throat. It's noticeably more forward-projecting. More midrangy. I cut the bass, you might say, which is an old mixdown trick for making the vocals jump out.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Dec 18, 2015 2:44 AM
