Need some nitty gritty details on vocal recording/mixing and everything in between

[professorlamp]

So right now me and my friend are recording our bands old songs (a bit of practice more than anything) and I always find myself never having too much trouble with guitar and bass , but when it comes to the vocals they become a pain in the ass.

Right now the lead vocals are panned dead centre with a pretty harsh ratio on the compressor to try and keep things under control (i've managed to maintain the majority of dynamics) and i've high passed the low end rumble at 100 hz

should other things be done ?
double up the vocals? (find this extremely hard to do)
or shoud i copy and paste them?
How much do you rely on automation?
I've also heard about trying to EQ the sweet spot of someones voice but i have difficulty in nailing where that is.

As you can see I really just need a huge article on vocals that i can sink my teeth into for a couple of weeks/months

any advice would be gratefully appreciated

 

[006]

Often times I'll only use a low hipass around 100Hz and nothing else but compression and maybe some stereo delay sends or something. Usually you can tell when vocals have been EQ'ed too much; and in the case of vocals in particular, too much is not a whole lot really. Sometimes I will add a high shelf of maybe 2-3dB starting at 5kHz and then sweep up until I find a good spot, sometimes it's 8kHz, other times 10..12..etc. Usually I leave them be though.

A good trick I have done in the past when vocalists didn't have backups in mind, just a straightforward vocal track yanno?, is to copy the vocal track twice, then shift one of them ahead by like 3ms, then take the 2nd copy and move it behind by 3ms. Then you pan those out to around 30% L/R, to taste though, and have those on their own Group/Bus with a compressor squashing them. Then I would HP them a little higher than the main track, and any other tiny EQ to help them to help the main vocal track. Their level should be a step or two below the main vocal in the mix.

And last, but certainly not least, the most important factor in getting a good vocal sound is the vocalist's performance. Nothing you can do to save dull, lifeless vocal takes.

 

[professorlamp]

That's something i find hard though is finding that 'good spot' I can tell where the bad spots are or where that terrible ring is etc.. But finding a particuarly nice frequency is something i struggle with

edit: Well im recording vocals in an attached house where my only chance to record vocals is basically when theres noone besides me and the vocalist in the house and for now im just practicing on these vocals, not planning on doing anything with it, just to get my chops up (hopefully)

 

[006]

I don't really ever try to find a "sweet spot" personally. I don't usually do more than the HP for growlers, and like I said the occasional tiny high shelf if the vocalist needs a little more clarity.

 

[MEGA DAVE]

if you are having trouble adding distortion to the vocals then parallel them (duplicate the vocal track) then on the duplicated track compress the shit out of it and add distortion to it, I generally use a tape saturation distortion, nothing too saturated just to give it some distortion grit. now take that distortion track and turn it all the way down and slowly raise it's level up untill you find the sweet spot where it just adds that bit of grit to the vocals. you can also mess around with throwing a pitch shifter on the parallel track and pitch it a bit lower or higher to give it more body. On the main vocal group though i usually just use compression and a bit of verb and/or a tiny amount of delay and then eq to taste

 

[professorlamp]

cheers for that, I'll be trying that in the next couple of hours
Just tried your suggestion mega dave, it does help but seems to work better when i pan the parallel track a little to the left L10 and i have the original track R10 now, im also going to try the ideas brought by 006 they sound quite decent so cheers for that