Tips on Reverb for Vocals... Help needed please.

[kasperjensen]

Lately I have been a little bit obsessed with how vocals are mixed in modern music.

It seems to me most modern upscale productions use a dry sounding vocal, but it's really not dry at all somehow.

Like this:

In this particular one I do hear some trail here and there, but it's not wet. And somehow not dry either. It's... Boom! Right there, without being offensive.

Can anyone shed some light on what I should work to get closer to that kinda thing?

I try different combinations. Sending only a little to the Reverb Bus, with a long Reverb... Sending a lot, and then turning down the bus, etc etc....

A little bonus question... Do you automate the compressor on a vocal track to try and make it sound a little less compressed in places? Or do you automate the volume for the track, so the comp gets a more or less steady flow?

 

[stephen sawall]

Not sure if it will be any help ... try a plate reverb.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm interested in this thread myself.

Hope someone gives an answer.

 

[mentoneman]

that core modern presence of her vocal sound -alive, in your face, and balanced-is typical of a ssl type sound, married with the warm body of a nice neumann type mic and a bunch of powerful compression and high pass filtering.

listen to this wide vocal reverb demo i applied to an orchestral track pulled from a royer mic demo cd. hopefully it sheds light on what you are interested in. the original track was panned mono, and the stereo effect created on a lexicon pcm 91 processed the outcome in a w/d/w type sound (use headphones).

http://soundcloud.com/mentoneman/7-pcm91-trk12wvxverb-orc2

for me it's not that the reverb decay is so long or obvious as is typical with what one thinks of as reverb, but it dictates size and a 3-D condition around the source material while being both harmonically apparent, and yet transparent enough to not give the effect away per se. i love that about lexicon pcm reverbs and seem to be why they are so loved. not too milky, not too thin.

with the pcm 91 you can control how far the source moves from center in degrees of percentages, and dictated by time it takes to move from center to L or R, then decay. the guitar player mentality is reverb as an "effect". the studio engineer perspective is placing the source or track in a particular environment from dramatically large to intimately small. my demo was fairly big but you can imagine being in control of the size to shrink the effect.

the higher the quality of the reverb, like lexicon, the more control you achieve and the better it sounds when you fine tune. many reverbs offer tons of parameter "controls" but the changes don't seem to provide musical or expected results.

 

[kasperjensen]

that core modern presence of her vocal sound -alive, in your face, and balanced-is typical of a ssl type sound, married with the warm body of a nice neumann type mic and a bunch of powerful compression and high pass filtering.

listen to this wide vocal reverb demo i applied to an orchestral track pulled from a royer mic demo cd. hopefully it sheds light on what you are interested in. the original track was panned mono, and the stereo effect created on a lexicon pcm 91 processed the outcome in a w/d/w type sound (use headphones).

http://soundcloud.com/mentoneman/7-pcm91-trk12wvxverb-orc2

for me it's not that the reverb decay is so long or obvious as is typical with what one thinks of as reverb, but it dictates size and a 3-D condition around the source material while being both harmonically apparent, and yet transparent enough to not give the effect away per se. i love that about lexicon pcm reverbs and seem to be why they are so loved. not too milky, not too thin.

with the pcm 91 you can control how far the source moves from center in degrees of percentages, and dictated by time it takes to move from center to L or R, then decay. the guitar player mentality is reverb as an "effect". the studio engineer perspective is placing the source or track in a particular environment from dramatically large to intimately small. my demo was fairly big but you can imagine being in control of the size to shrink the effect.

the higher the quality of the reverb, like lexicon, the more control you achieve and the better it sounds when you fine tune. many reverbs offer tons of parameter "controls" but the changes don't seem to provide musical or expected results.

Nice one

I see what you did, and I am beginning to understand it more.

Thanks!

 

[Milerky2]

Sometimes that "reverb" sound is a light delay. Often 1-2 repeats after the tail of a phrase. I sometimes pass the lows at 300hz and the highs around 2-2.8kHz based on the voice to "darken" or "warm" the delay. It can be ridden in on a seperate fader and automated, or if you have a TC 2290 laying around, it kinda "auto-ducks" the delayed sound so it doesn't muddy up.

I use this technique live on the vocals at church with a simple mono delay built into my DM2000 mixer.

 

[snakeman1986]

I'm having a lot of trbl with this as well. I'm just trying to record a 4 song demo to help get shows around here...nothing special but I would still like it to sound as good as possible. Right now the tracks are...okay...for the first time that I have ever recorded and tried to mix a whole band. Especially for the equipment I'm using. We r only using two mics for drums...very challenging.

 

[Milerky2]

I'm having a lot of trbl with this as well. I'm just trying to record a 4 song demo to help get shows around here...nothing special but I would still like it to sound as good as possible. Right now the tracks are...okay...for the first time that I have ever recorded and tried to mix a whole band. Especially for the equipment I'm using. We r only using two mics for drums...very challenging.

Dude, check out The Home Recording Show. It is a weekly podcast, they get real geeky, but some great info on recording from start to finish.

 

[snakeman1986]

I'm having a lot of trbl with this as well. I'm just trying to record a 4 song demo to help get shows around here...nothing special but I would still like it to sound as good as possible. Right now the tracks are...okay...for the first time that I have ever recorded and tried to mix a whole band. Especially for the equipment I'm using. We r only using two mics for drums...very challenging.

Dude, check out The Home Recording Show. It is a weekly podcast, they get real geeky, but some great info on recording from start to finish.

Cool I'll Check it out. Thanks!

 

[Milerky2]

I'm on Twitter as Milerky2. I have an entire list for sound production. Check out everyone on it. They are all super helpful. I have talked to most of them about something or other, and you can always hit me up too.