problems recording metalcore vocals

[hellraiser85]

Hi! I'm recording a few songs with my band and I've the following problem:

vocals sound weak and thin. We recorded with a SM58, and the singer has a similar voice to the Killswitch Engage singer (very close to the beginning of "Rose of Sharyn" tone).

I use a lot of compression, a small touch of plate reverb and delay, but I don't use an specific eq. (only a hi pass filter at 100 Hz).

Can you recommend to me a few good and basic settings for compression, reverb and specially eq. to get a vocal sound with more punch a presence?

Thanks!

 

[Metaltastic]

If you could post clips, it'd help a lot!

 

[spioraid]

I normally try to stay away from plate reverb for vocals. Try different kinds of reverb, or maybe even none at all. Clips would help!

 

[ahjteam]

Thin usually means not enough bass, and weak that there isnt enough power so not enough consistancy. Maybe the vocals just are weak and thin? Try to use a kick mic like AKG D112, should give a little fuller sound than SM58. The consistancy can be fixed with parallel compression, that way you dont lose the spiky dynamics, but get a bit louder and constant quiet sound.

But for the editing process: Start from the beginning, get rid of all the effects and keep it dry. Then use the compressor and EQ to try to make it good dry. Then add the effects if nessecary. But even if the preset says "vocal plate", dont use it. Use something that sounds good, maybe start to tweak from a small/medium room preset.

 

[Trep]

If its not too late i would go a guitarists view on this.

Last Time i recorded a metalcore/deathcore band, i threw the guy in a room and double tracked everything. I ended up having about 6 tracks of vocals but it sounded Fantastic. The only thing you have t be careful is get your vocalist to really get on pronuciation coz with double tracing it makes it somewhat harder to hear lyrics, but still very strong.

I will always Double track these types of vocals. Just sounds so powerfull

as for processing i usually just boost some tops in about 2k and sometimes a very small amout at about 1-1.5k but i roll out at about 40hz rust to get rid of some rumble in the vocals.

Compression- Yes but it really depends on your vocalist and if the track has a lot of vocal dynamic range, i usually dont like messing with that too much, i find that compression can ruin a great vocal track.

also try using a subtle delay rather than reverb,

Hope i could help

 

[colonel kurtz]

is the room you're tracking in treated? if not, you're gonna get a lot of nasty reflections that will wreck your vocal tracks. i tried recording a bit of vox in my room recently, and just like you said, things came out really thin, shrill, and basically crappy, because i don't have any room treatments up right now. i was totally bummed, because what i heard on playback didn't at all reflect what came out of my mouth, and i was using a pretty decent signal chain.

then as a test, i set up a cardioid mic in the middle of the room with my phones on...then i walked over to what should've been the rejection area behind the mic and from about 6 ft. away snapped my fingers, and i could hear the snap in my phones clear as day...now imagine what sort of reflections are being picked up when you're screaming/singing and stuff.

 

[Zombietakeover]

also remember you said the vocalist kinda sounds like that howard dude from KSE
I might be eating my own words but Howard usually sounds like crap on an SM58 if you ever seen him live his voice is all thin and midy sounding.....im sure he uses different mics in the studio thats why it sounds so much better......so maybe the vocalist needs another mic for his voice.......there was a thread on here not to long ago talking about how Howard sounds on 58's.....very werid sounds nothing like the album

 

[colonel kurtz]

FWIW, i remember seeing a pic of that guy in the studio a year or 2 ago, singing into a TLM103 and U87 simultaneously...

 

[gorath23]

Yeah, I remember a comment about how Howard uses Condensers exclusively when recording, no SM58's.

 

[hellraiser85]

Thanks for comment! Here's a short clip. What do you think?

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=790227&songID=6680900

 

[lordtech]

u have pretty cool music ther mate! i like the drum kick.. wat r u using?

 

[AudioGeekZine]

yeah, your music sounds pretty great.

for eqing vocals, I usually roll off lowend up to the point where you start to hear it gone, a fairly wide boost at around 200 Hz for more 'body', a wide dip in the mids sometimes, a fairly narrow peak somewhere between 3-8 kHz where the 'edge' of the voice is, and high shelf at about 16kHz and up for 'air'.

sending that to a dark sounding short stereo slap delay works well. use different delay times for left and right.
on long screams automate a send to a reverb and/or delay to extend the note.
some distortion mixed in with screams is cool too. I set that up on an aux and automate a send to it.

 

[Trep]

yeah id love to know how you did those drums, are they programmed or recorded. What samples ae you using on that Kick sounds amazing.

Is there a snare sample in there too?

Vocals sound great, what did u end up going with? Got an Unearth vibe to t. Love it

 

[hellraiser85]

Thanks for comment! Drums are programmed, I catched all samples in the FTP forum. Snare is a sample called "slysnare", I think it's a sonor snare. Bass drum is "faderhead_tama_starclassic_kick". Toms are the chimaira samples and hit hat and cymbals are from drumkit from hell. I programmed the drums with Leaf Drums, and I use 5 hits for snare and 3 hit for bass drum to obtain a more realistic sound. For the bass drum, I decrease a lot the "click" to have a warmer sound. Snare has a lot of compression and reverb. I use RVerb pluggin.

 

[lordtech]

ive downloaded the chimaira's toms too, hellraiser85. But i have no idea how to start putting those samples to my drum track. Im using Addictive Drums at the moment. My DAW is Sonar 7. Any basic tips u can share just to replace or add the existing samples?

 

[hellraiser85]

ive downloaded the chimaira's toms too, hellraiser85. But i have no idea how to start putting those samples to my drum track. Im using Addictive Drums at the moment. My DAW is Sonar 7. Any basic tips u can share just to replace or add the existing samples?

I have never used addictive drums so I can't help you with this. I use Leaf Drums. It's an easy to use program dedicated only to programming drums, and you can put any sample on this, you might try it.

 

[nwright]

for AD, I use Drumagog or aptrigga to replace the AD drum tones.

 

[Gaspard]

http://www.myspace.com/astheyburn listen to last day of sun, that's the best i ever got as to metal vocals...

I had the singer sing just like he does live with an SM57 and in front of him was an AKGC414, i mostly used the AKG, and i did a lot of EQ'ing

 

[raisedfist]

if you can get hold of one the shure sm7 is killer for aggressive vocals. They just seem to cope with that style better than any other dynamic/condenser I have tried.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

SM7, you can't pop it.
as seen here: