The Return of Spring: Post 2 (Vocal Tracking)

I finally got a few hours to myself this week. I've been wanting to work on the vocals for "Falling in Love Too Fast" for a while. Today, I was able to dial in the basic sound I want for the song.

I had to make a decision today. What kind of vocal sound do I see for this album? Well, seeing as how I'm good at delivering the style I have, I decided to stick to "business as usual." I like a straight-up, natural sound. I use a Neumann TLM-103 and an Avalon 737 pre-amp. There is some play with compression and EQ that can be done in the pre-amp stage, but I like to avoid too much tweaking on the front end. I usually limit at 4:1 with a high threshold and fast attack and release times.

My voice isn't suited for doubling as much as I'd like it to be. For that reason, I usually avoid doubling tracks. Although, for most of the Collapsis stuff I made a clear effort to double...hey, it was the 90's, right?

I enjoyed listening back to the tracks I've recorded for this sparse, acoustic based song. The hand drums are great. Also, the bass guitar has nice dynamics and range to it. I avoided playing low until the middle of the song. That helps to bring the song up a bit in the middle.

Next week, I'll need to spend a good amount of time getting the vocals just right. I think I can do it in a single three hour session. It's so important to not use Auto Tune on this album, as it's not transparent on acoustic songs. I inserted it for a second on my scratch track and it sounded silly. I really like the vocal sounds on the latest R.E.M. album as well as their early 90's stuff. It seems to me like they didn't use any pitch correction on these albums. Besides, pitch correction is cheating. And, I'm a good enough singer to not need it.

I'm really happy with the sounds I got today. I'll most likely use a Distressor in mixdown set to it's magnificient Opto mode; that setting helps to bring out the nuances in the vocal without obviously compresssing it.