Hi everybody,

I have four questions, I hope that's not too many. I think they'll be rather simple for you guys, but here it goes:

1) What is a splitter? (someone mentioned to me once that they used a panner/spliiter effect plug-in with Logic Express 7)

2) What is a vox?

3) When you do multiple vocal tracks for the same song how do you get it to sound good... do you sing an octave below or above the original, exactly the same as the original, or do you use some other method?

4) What is the best way to achieve an up-close, personal, pop sound, such as achieved by artists such as Shawn McDonald and Nichole Nordeman??(Anybody recognize?) Other than just a close-miking technique, that is. I'm thinking more about the 3-dimensional, stereo quality.

Thanks, any tips would be hugely appreciated!!

-Allen

See if this helps:


1)When I think of a splitter, I think of just splitting a single signal into two. There's a bunch of ways to do that. A splitter cable, bussing the track to two channels in your mixer, using multiple outputs from a DI box, ect.

2)Vox is just shorthand for vocals or voice

3)Any of those you mentioned. Two takes of the same performance, harmonies in higher and/or lower octaves, a take to emphasize certain words/phrases... these are all pretty common, but there really are no rules.

4)Try double-miking(or more) the vocalist and panning the two(or more) tracks left and right. But watch out of phase cancellation. Or even just use one mic and split the signal to different effects/eqs/etc. and pan.

-Jerry

By double miking do you mean stereo? I've heard that recording vocals in stereo, if your head moves around while you sing that you'll get sort of a weird phaser effect when one mic is picking up a louder signal than the other and vis versa. And thus, some people say to avoid stereo miking on vocals. However, I think it would be interesting to try. I don't think I'm too much of a head bobber anyway, so it might work. So would it be best to place the two mics right next to each other to avoid phase cancellation or should I use the 3 to 1 rule, on vocals?

I'm also kind of curious about room ambiance. If I was to place a mic somewhere in the room to get a natural sounding room reverb, where should I place it? My engineer has two mics, the Rode NTK and the Rode NT4 stereo coincident mic. So, I'm limited to those two. Would recording vocals with the NT4 and the NTK work somehow you think? Maybe if the NT4 picked up some room ambiance and the NTK was placed about 4 to 6 inches from my voice?

At any rate I like the idea of splitting a mono source on vocals and then panning one left and the other right with different EQ settings and effects. That's cool stuff, I'm excited to try it out.

double miking works fine for me. I move my head sometimes, but i've never had a negative result from it. Distance and ratio is up to you, but I put them as close together as i can. I think most engineers do. I actually get the best results when I angle them in about 90 degrees (i guess that would be the XY technique).

If you got a good room, go for the natural reverb. I can't say where to put the mic for that; you have go by trial and error there. every room is different.

The phattest sound I ever got when i duplicated the vox track was on a mock-rap thing i tried. I used a pitch shifter with the two tracks. I panned them hard left/right with one track a half-step(in pitch) down. But that method won't work well for actual singing so much. If you go three half-steps down you get an evil sounding vocal. --- anyway, try playing with short delays, reverb, eq, and compression.