Gearspace - View Single Post - Is home studio worth it for a singer-songwriter?

Lenzo · 14 hours ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trem ➡️

Here’s my problem. Listen to the first 20 seconds of this Lana del Rey song. At around 13 seconds she sings the words ”stressed” and then ”tested” and then ”like” and then ”debutants”.

The way the t’s and k’s and s’s sound. There and through the song. I don’t like it. And my recordings have that too! In fact the whole sound is very similar. I also have sparse arrangement and vocals upfront. And the songs and type of singing are similar too.

But I don’t want the consonants to sound like that. I don’t really think it’s singing technique - is it?

It sounds like artifacts of the recording or processing to me.

Compression brings it out but I need that to make the vocals sit up front, and be close. I don’t use a lot. The Retro STA-Level. The middle setting everyone seems to use (double mode, 10-20 db GR).

Mic is M49V, into V72, into Burl B2.

I don’t track with the STA-Level on the way in (it raises the noise floor too much). I do a re-run after it’s recorded (meaning it does another pass through the B2 input transformer on the way back in. The DAC it goes out of for that is the Lynx Hilo.)

The sound is, like Lana’s, really good EXCEPT for those consonant artifacts. My voice sounds a tiny bit too airy and thin/bright/cold maybe (I believe the M49V does that) but I believe I can give it a low mid boost with the Curve Bender once I’ve got the recording right. I’ve tried that and it works. But if you know other means to get that right I’m interested too, or if you think a ribbon mic would work better.

I’ve debated with myself, and as much I as I would love to, and as much as it would be the best, I’m simply not ready to share anything of my own here (I have my reasons, and I’ll know when/if so let’s not
discuss that).

So if you have a minute, listen to Lana and how that sounds, it’s a very similar problem. There’s gotta be ways to fix it.

O.k. just wild guessing here. But some of it might be her mouth. And then the compressor adds to it, or a de-esser that was put on there. I've done a lot of vo sessions where people just had weird clicking or other essy sounds coming out of their mouths. Sometimes mic placement, like singing further away or under the mic a bit would help. Other times different mics would help. I think I heard someone say sucking on a piece of apple would help essy mouths, but don't hold me to that. And I'm going to add to this to say, that I would be willing to put money on the fact that the average listener would never, ever notice something like this and it would have no bearing on whether they liked the song or not. When making a recording sometimes we want it to be as perfect as possible. There is only so much time in a day if you want to get something done. Maybe it's not a bad idea to put on the hat of the average listener sometimes. My wife is often telling me to STFU when we watch a movie or show where I point out the minor flaws in the editing or sound that no one else would notice.