EADGBE wrote:
market herself with.

The problem is that this girl has NO control over her dynamics. When
she sings softly or at a moderate level, I can record her fine, with a
nice clean signal and good presence. But the problem is that this girl
rarely STAYS at that moderate level. She likes to get EXTREMELY
dramatic with her singing, especially on the higher notes, where she
just BELTS it out, easily overloading my mic and preamp! She seems to
think that in order to reach ANY high note, you have to fill your lungs
to capacity and let your voice fly out with enough volume and force to
flatten Hiroshima! I'm not kidding--this girl is L-O-U-D.

1. RE-20. Keep it at a good distance. Keep the levels down so it never
overloads. If you have to use a pad on the mike, use it.

2. MAYBE consider using two mikes, one close and one far, which allows
you to switch between the two.

3. LOTS of manual gainriding, plus maybe some compression.

4. An afternoon with a vocal coach.

This is driving me crazy, because I cannot seem to get her to stop
doing this, and it's making it very difficult for me to get a "clean"
take. This girl has been pumped full of ego-inflating praise, thanks to
her mom, and the girl disregards my suggestions--she's kind of got the
beginnings of "diva-itis" and seems to think she knows all about
singing already. I frankly think that her mom has instructed her to
sing as loud as possible in order to be more "impressive", and she's
taken this to heart.

You can get her an afternoon with her mother out of the studio, and a
vocal coach in the studio. You can put a big VU meter up front of her
and tell her to sing to the meter. It will take her a _long_ time to
learn to do it right but when she does it'll help.

During our session, I kept having to move her further away from the mic
(AKG 414) in order to minimize the distortion, but then her voice lost
a lot of definition and sounded noticeably less distinct in the mix. I
was trying everything to get a nice "up front" sound for all of her
different volume levels. Geez, I even had her lean in for the lower
parts and then straighten up for the loud parts! She looked like one of
those goofy plastic birds you buy at a gift shop that rocks back and
forth and pretends to drink water!

If you have distortion on a 414, you have the gain staging set up wrong.
Use a pad and just keep the levels down. This is the modern digital
world... you can leave 30 dB of headroom on the mike and not be overwhelmed
with noise.

You may find the RE-20 is a better mike than the 414 on people who cannot
stay in one place, and it sounds like getting her moving around will be
an advantage.

What can I do to get a good recording out of this girl...or does she
simply need to get her vocal technique together before attempting to do
any more recording? She has a very good voice, but I have -never- had
so much trouble getting a good recording from a vocalist! Why does her
"acting" have to be so "over the top"?

She does need to get her vocal technique together before attempting
any recording, but she won't. Which means you're probably going to
have to deal with it.

Or is there something technical that I can/should do? I'm fully
prepared to take any blame for this problem, but I am inclined to think
that a singer should have better control over dynamics than this girl
has. What do you all think?

I think you have a gain control, and you can ride it up and down, and you
have plenty of headroom so clipping should never be an issue. You will
have to do a _lot_ of riding up and down, but that's okay if you are
billing by the hour.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."