Dirty Vintage Vocal Sound?

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 12:57 pm

what do you think is the bet way to get a dirty vocal sound like some of the early 60's rock bands. Vintage mics? Any suggestions. I really like the sound of the vocals from this one band from seattle called the sonics. Check it out and let me know if you have any ideas?

myspace.com/thesonicsmyspace

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:01 pm

Tubes. Tubes. Tubes. Then drive those tubes into a light distortion. I don't know, thats all I can think of. Maybe give the singer 2 packs of cigarettes before singing. I think it has far more to do with performance and style than simply equipment, but tubes will sound far more convincing. Theres always after effects. I've also heard of certain ways, but am completely untrained in them, to make your recordings have a "vinyl" feel to them. Its probably worth researching.

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 11:44 am

do you think tube mics or tupe pre amps on those mics?

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:34 pm

run your mic into a tube pre that's driven fairly hard, then run THAT into another tube pre if you can.

one cool trick is to use a compressor with incredibly fast attack and release times. this way when the singer gets louder, the compressor distorts more. it ends up giving parts the impression of loudness without them actually being any louder, which also makes things easier to mix.

you can even use some overdrive and distortion pedals or run the voice through a guitar amp or something. not sure how usable your results would be. just experiment.

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 3:07 pm

cool yeah I'll mess around with what I got

Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:34 pm

Whats interesting about the The Sonics recording is even the mastering was quite poor. I don't know if it was intentional but it seems like frequencies started rolling off around 80 to 120 hz on the low end and even the top end like probably somewhere after 5 khz. That hard driven tube sound where the frequency bandwidth seems to get narrower.
Its not just the vocals but also the whole mastered project. Of course they probably bounced tracks back then I'm sure so tape saturation probably played a part as well.
It would definitely make a trademark sound for any new recordings today. Curious to know what comes of this thread.

Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:09 pm

JOL52644 wrote:

what do you think is the bet way to get a dirty vocal sound like some of the early 60's rock bands. Vintage mics? Any suggestions. I really like the sound of the vocals from this one band from seattle called the sonics. Check it out and let me know if you have any ideas?

myspace.com/thesonicsmyspace

you could also try using just a regular old dynamic vocal stage mic. i know rage against the machine used that technique to give their vocals a more live sound.
i would also reccomend using a crackling vinyl effect in your program or something as well.

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