Mixing Growling Vox?

[The Ocean King]

How do you make it sound wide and full? what's the trick? doubling the take? the track(and moving the other one a few ms') and then make hard pans?

Which are the best (post-) effects to use?

The mic i'm using for this guys is sm58. We have tried different kinda mics but this one seems to work best for his growling vox.

 

[Zombietakeover]

when i did an album with my band .....the engineer used a Sennheiser 421 U5 ....its the oldschool one that comes from germany....its a dynamic mic like the 58....but it has alot more presence...
if ya want to check out the vocals goto:
http://www.myspace.com/draytonsawyer
Over dubbing the tracks also helps....but make sure the tracks are dead tight.......you dont want any vocal hangovers...it makes it sound really unprofessional
hope that helps

 

[xmarcelx]

yeah often the vox seems to be panned hard left and right maybe this is what you mean with wide?

 

[Benny H]

I don't know any secrets, but as far as reference goes, Deicides 'Blame It On God' has gotta be one of the best growling vox I've ever heard.

"blame it on god.... blame it on god" haha..that bit sounds so monstrous. Maybe over the top, but check it out.

 

[Ola Englund]

I also used a SM58 on the vocals of Facing Death... You can listen to the mp3s if you follow the link in my signature.

Nothing special used, hard compressor, a tad of distortion and delay.

 

[Suicide_As_Alibi]

Try and keep them dry, they'll sit higher in the mix that way. EQ-wise, don't forget about the high-end - all the studios I've recorded in instantly start taking huge chunks out of everything above 4KHz. 4-5KHz is where most of the presence is, so make sure you've got something there, and the extreme high-end (15KHz up) adds some crispness and helps them stand out a bit.

Other than that: compress the crap out of them, maybe add some distortion to the highs. Personally, I don't like double-tracking; but if you find it works, go for it.

Steve

 

[nwright]

For my band, we double tracked the vox and to me that was the thing that made them sound so good and stand out in the mix. Our vocalist did them pretty tight, and he would change his voice slightly for each track, so summed it was huge. We experimented with a little bit of panning and it was cool, but didn't fit the vibe of the songs or EP, so we cut those. But, if you were to pan, my vote would be subtle panning and not hard panning. You get a nice effect panning them hard left and right, but the stereo spread leaves the middle empty and makes the vocals feel a little wimpy, IMHO. Even with 10% panning on each side with 2 vocals takes opens the space quite a bit. Also, we didn't add reverb or anything to the vocals tracks, just a lot of compression (we added a touch of plate reverb on the master buss, though). For backups here and there, we added additional overdrive to the vocal tracks. I wouldn't use distortion for the main vocals tracks myself, but if you do, a LITTLE goes a LOOONG way, IMO. I'm no pro, but these are what I found to be when I recorded my bands album.

 

[Descent]

I also used a SM58 on the vocals of Facing Death... You can listen to the mp3s if you follow the link in my signature.

Nothing special used, hard compressor, a tad of distortion and delay.

yeah thats all i do, just compress hard and maybe a touch of drive. de-esser can be necessary sometimes depending on the growler.

loud growlers tend to sound fine straight away, quiet growling vox take some work i've found.