Making a whispered speech fit in a heavy punk mix

[theRev]

Hi!

I'm mixing a song for friends, really nothing fancy, it's a fast punk song tracked with 2 overheads, kick and snare mics, and a sm57 for guitars. Well it's simple stuff but we are very satisfied with the outcome (I even made samples for the kick )

Now the point is that in final mix there'll be a girl whispering some verses, some poetry stuff (she has a preatty sexy voice too, but the band swear she's ugly as hell. I don't trust'em, the bastards!!

)

So I'm basically thinking how I will approach this in mixing, keep in mind the instrumental part it's a preatty heavy wall of sound.

I'm a cople of things in mind to try, obv some EQ involved, but my fear is to ruin the instrumental "quality" by removing too much shit in order to fit the vocal. So other stuff I'm thinking off is some sidechain compression to let the vocals duck the music.. By a very subtle amount obviously.

Anyway, any other tip to share?

 

[AHChris]

Just compress the whispering to fuck and automate the parts that seem to drown up.

 

[Jordon]

God, this probably isn't going to help much at all, but here goes.

I don't run into the "whispered vocal" thing too often, but here's what's helped me.

I usually start off with a sensitive and very clear vocal mic. My mic of choice for this application is a TLM103, the clearest mic we have at the studio for vocals IMHO.

I run this into an LA2A then into a Neve Portico. I set the LA2A to Compress with the peak reduction and gain a bit higher than when tracking your standard vocal, probably in the 60-70 range for PR. Then it's run into the Neve and into PT.

After tracking the vocal, I usually slap another compressor on there with some fairly heavy settings and start EQ'ing post-compressor. I take everything out up to about 250 with a HP and then start figuring out which frequencies will have to be boosted or cut to get it to sit in the mix. Send it to the vocal verb bus (if there is one) and play with that until the verb just starts helping it "blend" into the mix so it doesn't stick out too far.

Basically like working with a regular vocal, but tailoring things from the start to flatten the dynamics of the whisper. I think that's the toughest part about a whispered vocal. Sometimes it can be WAY too dynamic and it just drowns in the mix.

Of course I could be way off base.

 

[theRev]

Well thanks!

Obviously the point is to reduce dynamics on the vocals. I'll keep it in mind.

On a sidenote, the vocal is the only thing I'm not gonna track, they are doin' it themselves and I fear they'll do something cheap like recording with soundblaster mics and stuff like that...

 

[Jordon]

Well, hope and pray that if that is the case, it lends a "cool" "lo-fi" quality to the vocal.

 

[espartaco]

i think side-chain is going to give you the better results.maybe give the girl voices a different reverb, or effect (chorus maybe?) to state that is not something that belong to the music. hopes thats make sense