I sing without headphones using a monitor and let it bleed. There are ways to use phase to get rid of bleed but I've never had an issue.

You could sing auto tune and then sing with that. Voice in phones tends to bleed less.

There's a bunch of reasons we might sing flat... Let's put a side it's a technic problem and let's pretend we are able to be perfectly in tune.
I guess one of the obvious reason is your perception is beeing tricked. Too much reverb in the monitor can do that or too much bass as well.

Then if you don't hear yourself, how can you be on the pitch, removing one ear could help you, or be worse since, you might only be in tune with your live self.

Is it an acapella song? if there's music to be added, I doubt, you'll hear the bleeding on the final product. Also, you can use a Noise gate to remove some bleeding while not singing...

The problem was with bleed. That's why I turned the cans down to begin with. I use gates all the time.

First, Keep your voice out of the mix - tune acoustically - one can off - I prefer lots of bass - and tuning to overtones.
Second, As a vocal coach/teacher I would never assume anyone can sing in tune with or without headphones. My advice based on 30 yrs of performing and teaching:

1. Know the key of the song you're singing. Know the notes of your piece - don't just think "that note is higher" by how much?
2. Write out the pitches of that key (know your half/ whole steps- write them in)
3. Most problems singing flat arise from the singer making descending steps too large
4. Really focus on descending half steps!!!
5. Make sure you support throughout the range - fail to support= flat
6. Watch your vowel shapes/ an incorrectly shaped vowel will not sound in tune because of the overtones (technically vowel formants)
7. There is a reason pro singers continue to have a vocal coach. A separate set of ears (not affected by the vibrations going on in your head) is often critical to accurate/ in tune singing - consider contacting a coach. The vibrations inside your head really make it impossible to get an accurate read on what's coming out pitch wise or tone wise.

Good Luck

Phil

That's what I was dreading to hear...it's me.

OK, back to the woodshed for some training.

Thanks!

Hey, how do I tune to overtones?

I am using 1 can off. And setting a monitor mix that includes just the rhythm section, drums bass with one "mid range" instrument.

When I say consistently flat, I mean the whole track is flat by about 1/4 tone. Hi notes, low notes, all of them. I could autotune them back up no problem, but I'd rather get it right to begin with. It is the consistency that puzzles me. Seems more of a technical problem or monitoring problem.

JohnTodd, post: 402321 wrote: The problem was with bleed. That's why I turned the cans down to begin with. I use gates all the time.

I could say buy better cans (with better isolation) but you know that for sure ;)

1/4 tone ?? That's a bit far for a difference in sound perception... and the pitch down is constant !!! :confused:
Are you sure there's not physical reasons, I meen faulty preamp or other hardware. Or try without any plugin on the project if you use a computer.

-try to record your voice while recording with an iphone or other device and compare the pitch.
-you can even try to record an acoustic instrument well tune with the tracks already there..
-well ?? try in another room for Chr..t sake!!
:)

Turn down the side of the headphones you have off your ear.

nice post Phil.

yeah, get rid of the reverb in the cans and keep one ear to the room. try different volumes in the cans or do the Jack Clement thing we were talking about with the mono ref mix and the speakers out of "polarity" with each other placed in a triangle with the mic. Jack would never use headphones ... in fact he had a rule to never even mention headphones or cans ...

this is an issue artists and recordists have been struggling with for years. it's the reason guys like F.S. and Nat Cole would sing with a live band instead of over dubbing.

Yep..Phil is correct. The fact that this is, as was described, always an issue of being flat, tells me the singing needs to improve as well as the monitoring.

If I get a singer who has a tendency to being flat, I will strip down the instrumentation to the point of just having one instrument with the beat and the bass line and that instrument will not have any effects which bring a psycho-artifact of pitch into the playback. Mute buttons on everything are there for several reasons. They are your little friends.

pitch is a bitch.

this is somthing we all fight all the time.

i love singing to strong bass .. it really helps me pull in the pitch.

One thing I failed to mention. You said you overdub. Many times if you sing a piece repeatedly you fall into a "muscle memory" approach. (This is how I sing and support this phrase that I've done 50 times.). You mentally travel down the same path. This is deadly for in tune singing. A great way to check to see if its your technique or monitoring system is to transpose the tune up by a half step. You'll shock your ear and nothing will feel right. That's the point! Singing in tune, as I tell my singers, is not like riding a bike, it's more like lifting weights. The more you repeat the tougher it gets. You never really get to relax about tuning as a singer. By recording you can learn your tendencies and fix before they occur.

Good luck...

Phil

Cool. If I xpose it back down for the recording, will I fall back into the wrong singing? IOW, can I use this shock treatment to cure me and the go back down and do it right?

This is asked in good faith: I will remain attentive at all times when singing.

Kurt Foster, post: 402336 wrote: nice post Phil.
it's the reason guys like F.S. and Nat Cole would sing with a live band instead of over dubbing.

Hmmm....I never sing flat when I'm just singing with speakers and "the band", just for fun. It's only in the cans that I have this problem. My tone suffers, too. My SO says that I don't sound like the recordings; that the recordings sound flat (as in lifeless) and I sound better singing around the living room than when I am tracking.

Here's a surprise.. Recording is hard. Singing is hard. What you can learn from transposing up is that if you get it right take that approach and go for it in the regular key. You sometimes have to inject physical energy/ action into the recording process that isn't necessary in live performance.

JohnTodd, post: 402364 wrote: Cool. If I xpose it back down for the recording, will I fall back into the wrong singing? IOW, can I use this shock treatment to cure me and the go back down and do it right?

This is asked in good faith: I will remain attentive at all times when singing.

I turn the headphones way down so I can hear myself more naturally. Works awesome. Especially for low freq vox.

I sound better singing around the living room than when I am tracking.

from an engineering pov i offer humble thoughts. your relaxed and comfortable there. your also not hearing yourself under the scrutiny of a recorder, or in the un-natural (to you) way of hearing thru the can. red light fever is a real thing. some people just get used to it, and belt out regardless. recently a performer felt much more comfortable using a 'dummy' mic, where he used a handheld mic, and moved around, like he was used to, while the record enabled mic remained in it's spot. it felt more natural, and gained an instantly better performance. any compromise in technical audio 'quality' was steam rolled by inspired performance. a quality they don't make a pluggin for yet. relax.

You sometimes have to inject physical energy/ action into the recording process that isn't necessary in live performance.

i am in no way trying to contradict this, just telling a quick story.

I don't think you're contradicting my point at all. The movement helped the singer feel more natural. The key word there. Is sometimes. Whatever works is the right thing to do to capture a quality performance. With the exception of pulling a gun.

you know John, from what i heard on your "stairway" post i don't think you are really singing that flat. i think you might be psyching your self out. i do the same thing. people tell me they love my voice but when i hear myself on a playback its total torture. i am always trying to auto tune myself in spite of the fact that i hate auto tuning. i can't stand the way i sing. there's a lot of big stars who fell the same way too (not that i'm a big star, lol).

maybe you need to give your self a break ... or post some more examples of your singing and let us hear if it's as bad as you think it is.

Well, its only happened since I started turning the cans down to lessen the bleed. Isn't there some sort of law regarding volume vs pitch perception?

I'll try stripping down the mix in today's session. Might be I'll just have to turn the cans back up and live with the bleed.

Well, as mentioned, you might be flat because your monitoring is off, or you might be flat because you just sing flat.. and if that's the case then you need to conquer that particular facet first.

I'm a session drummer and vocalist. It makes up about half my income, so yeah, you could call me a "pro".

I always insist on the driest possible cue mix. Don't give me tons of reverb and delay, and let me hear the dominant mid range tonics, like piano and guitars.

There are times I've needed to pull one ear off the cans to hear myself "outside the mix".

Singing while monitoring through headphones is a very isolative environment and it can be very difficult, as we aren't really meant to monitor or hear ourselves that way. It takes some getting used to to be able to do it, to train our ears and our brain to acclimate to that perception.

Try this... run a track of a song you know well... it can be anything...a current hit, a classic rock song, whatever....

Now, play that back through speakers, and sing along to it thru a mic, in the room, without headphones... just monitor what the speakers are playing in the room, sing along to it, and record it.

If it sounds good to you and you are on-pitch, then it's likely a monitoring problem and you need to adjust your cue mix accordingly or you need more time getting used to using cans.

But, if you are flat simply singing along to a well known track and something you are familiar with, then you have a pitch problem and it might not hurt to take a few vocal lessons with a pro to isolate that problem and fix it.

Because in the end, if you are inherently flat, then you need to fix that problem first, because no cue mix, no matter how perfect, will solve that problem for you.

fwiw
-d.

JohnTodd, post: 402379 wrote: Well, its only happened since I started turning the cans down to lessen the bleed. Isn't there some sort of law regarding volume vs pitch perception?

I'll try stripping down the mix in today's session. Might be I'll just have to turn the cans back up and live with the bleed.

85 dB is where we hear things flattest. look up [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.songsoft…"]Fletcher Munson Effect.[/]="http://www.songsoft…"]Fletcher Munson Effect.[/] did you already tell us what kind of cans are you using?

if they are open backed you might try something like Sony's that have an enclosed ear cup. those are what i use and don't have issues with bleed, no matter how loud they get.

I tracked a singer once who insisted in having the cans far too loud - painful to hear, and they were bleeding badly into the vocal track. I tried all sorts of gating and downward expansion and managed to reduce the bleedthough when there were no vocals, but the bleed was very evident during vocalization.

I thought about it, and did a take asking the singer to pretend that he was singing while actually wearing the cans and going through all the motions as though for real but not issuing any vocal sound. It resulted in a track with just bleed, and subtracting that from the real take solved the problem without causing any other deleterious effects.

Boswell, post: 402384 wrote: singing while actually wearing the cans and going through all the motions as though for real but not issuing any vocal sound. It resulted in a track with just bleed, and subtracting that from the real take solved the problem without causing any other deleterious effects.

I was about to propose that! Thanks Boswell.

I also wonder why the bleeding is so bad to you. Is the vocal track over compress ? Are you too far from the mic? Are you singing very softly? Is the mic chosen picking up too much? (Some mics pickup to much in omnidirectional for vocal and are more suited for room, stage or choirs recording) Is your room threated (natural reverb could amplify bleeding)

Personnaly, I never had a customer's signer that generated too much bleeding. Once, a drummer asked for a click so loud I could here it in the breaks.. It was a problem because we needed the cymbals fades so I could'nt use a gate.. I asked him to play some punchs without a click and I manually replaced the ones with the click bleeding..

I guess It would be bad if you wanted to do a part of a song without any instrument but needed a guitar as a guide and to keep singing on pitch. Then bleeding is a major concern. Other than that, if the bleeding is a tinny part of what will be there anyway on the final mix, I don't mind it, it'll be masked anyway.
And sometime, bleeding is needed ! Yes !! Needed !! hihihi . I had another customer who brought tracks from another studio and they were not synchronised properly. I used the bleeding of the drum to align everything thumb

Just a thinking : You can try to sing about 45 to 90 degrees from the mic and try a unidirectional mic. The mic will record what is in front of it (your voice beeing projected) and it will miss a bit of the cans that does'nt project that much. I honestly don't know if it'll make a big difference, but worth a try :)

i saw a video of Kieth Moon where he had gaffers tape wrapped around the phones like a headband. can't say if it was to control the spill or to just hold the phones on his head. it had to hurt when he pulled the phones off though ... that's dedication. i miss him.

I still think that a good way to nail down the source is to try what I proposed earlier in this thread:

Try this... run a track of a song you know well... it can be anything...a current hit, a classic rock song, whatever....

Now, play that back through speakers, and sing along to it thru a mic, in the room, without headphones... just monitor what the speakers are playing in the room, sing along to it, and record it.

If it sounds good to you and you are on-pitch, then it's likely a monitoring problem and you need to adjust your cue mix accordingly or you need more time getting used to using cans.

But, if you are flat simply singing along to a well known track and something you are familiar with, then you have a pitch problem and it might not hurt to take a few vocal lessons with a pro to isolate that problem and fix it.

Because in the end, if you are inherently flat, then you need to fix that problem first, because no cue mix, no matter how perfect, will solve that problem for you.

The good news is that you can hear when you are flat, and knowing when you are pitchy is a thousand percent better than not recognizing it, at which point, it's game over. ;)

fwiw
-d.

Ahhh, Fletcher Munson effect. As a side question: Is this the reason many professionally done recordings in the hard rock/heavy metal genre sound thin (less bass) and dull (less treble) when listened to at sane levels? Then when you crank them, the drive and character emerges. Were they engineered to be played back really loud?

OK, I'll try these experiments. I tried a stripped out mix in this morning's session and my takes were darn near perfect. I believed it was a technical problem and not me. For those of you not familiar with me here, I do music full time. Sometimes in my own tiny studio, and mostly paying live gigs and "real" studio stuff. I'm a musician first and engineer second. I totally LOVE studio work on both sides of the glass. Decades of experience tell me it's not me singing flat naturally, it's a tech problem.

As for why bleed? I use closed-back Senheisers, usually one ear off. I put the mix only in the other ear. When I'm tracking with a dynamic (ie SM58) I don't get bleed too much. But lately I've done a couple of songs that require a ribbon and soft vocals. Then the bleed gets in. So I turned down the cans. Then I started singing flat. Then I got frustrated... and so on.

But nobody told me how to tune to harmonics. Is this a guitar thing? Or is it something in the cans?

As a side question: Is this the reason many professionally done recordings in the hard rock/heavy metal genre sound thin (less bass) and dull (less treble) when listened to at sane levels? Then when you crank them, the drive and character emerges. Were they engineered to be played back really loud?

yes exactly! good connection. not really loud though ... 85 dB.

a lot of enegineers use a loudness or decible meter to get their monitors to that level to check a mix. it is also why we often mix at low levels ... it's easy to get something to sound good loud ... getting it to sound good a softer levels that's the trick! this is also why stereos have a "loudness" switch .. it boosts the bass and treble for playback at lower levels.

do a google search on Fletcher Munson effect .. there's more stuff available than just that link i posted.

it's easy to get something to sound good loud ... getting it to sound good a softer levels that's the trick!

Absolutely agreed.

Good Gawd. Let the pigeons loose. Kurt and I actually agree on something. (y)

Small point but an important one about harmonics/overtones (yes I know they're not exactly the same but for our purposes here....). Physics time...when any pitch is produced there are naturally occurring notes that occur above the main pitch (fundamental). My advice was to listen to the bass and try to line up with the naturally occurring overtones that the bass creates. The better it is played/tuned and recorded will all play a factor as will your monitoring system and ears as to whether or not you can actually hear them. A lifetime of rock-n-roll tends to create a bit of havoc on many people's ears.

If you want to hear what it should sound like, find a well tuned acoustic piano. Hold down the far right pedal and play a low G (octave and 1/2 below middle C) After a few seconds the G will disappear(the fundamental) and you should hear a very strong D above middle C.
Try to listen for that 5th on your bass lines. If you can tune to that overtone you will definitely be in tune with the fundamental and (for many, myself included) it is easier to hear the overtone than the fundamental on very low pitches.(e.g bass lines)

The real challenge with singing is that your singing overtones change with every vowel AND every pitch - like changing instruments every note! If our brains weren't capable of making incredibly quick changes it would be impossible. There is a reason we've had drum machines for almost 40 years and no one still has a sampler that can create or recreate the human voice. Yes auto tune can fix problems but nothing yet exists to make a singer obsolete.

Phil

OK, makes sense. I studied the overtone series in music theory in college. We did the piano thing a few times. A little time passes and a whole galaxy of overtones will emerge plain as day from that one note.

I'll try an additional experiment. All my bass lines are MIDI, so I'll throw in an extra track xposed up a 5th, just for tracking vox.

Try and get those mid range instruments prevalent in the mix, John.

Guitar, pianos, and other stuff that occupies the same basic range as your vocals can help quite a bit when locking to pitch.

fwiw
-d.

I rarely have this much trouble with headphones and vocals. What make/model headphones are they?

Senheiser HD215. But I hasten to add that I didn't have this problem until I turned the volume down.

JohnTodd, post: 402431 wrote: Senheiser HD215. But I hasten to add that I didn't have this problem until I turned the volume down.

Did you take one side off before or after turning down? That is, did taking an ear cup off make you have to turn down or did turning down make you have to take an ear cup off?

Is the unused side firmly sealed against your head? Can you cut signal to the unused side of the headphones?

Maybe you need to try another approach. Put both ear cups on, crank the backing tracks to rock levels (within reason), sing louder/stronger, keep your vocal just loud enough in the cans to hear clearly but not so loud that you back off too much on your projection. Perhaps put some slapback delay (say 30ms, minimal repeats) on your voice just at the threshold of audibility. Be sure the ear cups are firmly sealed against your head.

I've been tracking with HD280s for years without this much trouble so it has to be possible.

What I am doing now is:

One cup off.

Cue to on-side only.

Drums, Bass, and one synth-organ sound. Got darn near perfect takes today with that.

I can't sing stronger - have a light voice. I'm a lyric baritone, so if I get up to "rock" levels, I loose control. Me no opera - need microphone.

The trick is to have one side of the headphones (monitors) on, and listen to yourself on the other side with just your ear. What happens often after a while when you have headphones on, you either sing in lower or higher scales.

Also, sometimes someone just does not have what it takes to record vocals, or be a singer. I'm not saying that that is the case, but think about it.

drummers who crush the cymbals, usually get them turned up loud enough, that they hit them more softly, during tracking. One thing i learned for tentative sounding vocals is to push your hand against your belly button, which should help associate the singing muscles. i suck at singing, but i love hearing about the techniques that help singers. there's a video called 'the zen of screaming' which offers some great warmup techniques, it's geared toward heavy screamers 'not' blowing out their chords. flat from my experience, is usually tentative, shy, not from the belly, or strained, sounding. i give props to anyone who sings. just keep at it, don't forget your punch in button either. if you can sing along to your best snippets all at once, you've markedly improved.

Tell you what...I've been working out and the crunches are helping my diaphragm!