Micking Screamy vocals through PA Speaker.

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:34 pm

Has anyone ever done this?

I tried recording my vocals for my band yesterday and wasted hours. I can't sing alone. I can't do it. Practice and live no problem. I dont understand. So I'm going to try and record my vocals direct at our next practice playing with the whole band just to see what it sounds like and maybe try it again. Or I thought maybe Im so use to the PA kinda giving a feedback crackle or somethin and I might try just singing into a mic plugged into our PA system and mic the PA speakers and record my voice already processed I guess. Otherwise I'm just going to give up all together and just play my guitar and never touch a vocal mic again.

Any ideas? Thanks...

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 11:13 am

What is it you can't do?
Sing in tune? Get the right amount of violence in the scream? Keep in time?

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 11:49 pm

the violence part. we recorded practice today where we recorded the vocal mics direct in then out to the PA so I could get a better idea of how I need to sing. I'm just so use to singing with the loud music behind me that when we try and record I can't find the right vocal sound. I try and sing loud to try and make up for it being quiet with no band behind me. I think I can do it right now I still need some kind of a good vocal type distotion processor I think.

Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 4:10 am

Hi again.

Apologies if I'm about to tell you stuff you know already!

Recording mics capture the "reality" of the sound. When we sing live through mics/pa etc, all sorts of stuff happens to it....compression, eq, distortion, room ambience etc.

So, often a series of processes needs to happen to the dry vocal line to make it sound "good" (at the end of the day, your ears are the judge, there are no rules, only guidelines/norms of practice).

You might want to try the following:
De-ess, to remove sibilance
Compress, to reduce fluctuations...make smoother. Especially important if going for the violence. More compression can sometimes add the bit of warm distortion that sounds aggressive (UAD 1176 great for this)
Eq, usually remove bottom end and add top end "air"
reverb to give ambience (plate reverb usually best for this e.g UAD plate 140 or waves rennaissance reverb...., mixed in at about 20% wet, to help it sit in the mix)
Try a 2 hit delay panned to either side to make vox sound bigger in addition.
Cool

Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:12 pm

well like i said we recorded practice and i was just totally singing wrong we havent tried re-recording yet but i was totally trying to make it sound like i thouhgt it sounded and i wasnt even close. i dont know if i can do it still but we'll tgive it another try.

and i do compress and eq and reverb but i could tell it wasnt even going to work before i even tried. it was just the whole wrong sound alltogether.

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