"Ricky W. Hunt" wrote in message news:bMMTa.133866$Ph3.17297@sccrnsc04...
"vxman" wrote in message
...
i record a singer's vocals who likes to harmonize
with himself. i am careful to record each
track with clarity, warmth, 6db compression, and
no clipping. they sound great alone. however, when i
put them all together it sounds a bit harsh, especially
when he belts. they are lead and one to four harmonies,
plus reverb (on bus, track, or group). he likes to have
the harmonies just a few db less than the lead. hard
panning helps, but what can i do to make them sound
less harsh altogether. any technical tricks?

Well anytime you stack tracks (vocals especially) tracked by the same singer
in the same room with the same mic you are going to get obvious buildups
especially in the 200-500Hz range. Any peaks whatsoever in his voice, the
mic, the pre, the room are going to double for every track and it gets nasty
very quickly. Try an EQ on each track and EQ each one a little differently
or put them all through a subgroup and EQ them there with one EQ and maybe
cut some of the 250-350 range, maybe some 1k to 3k too.
Yea, and some voices' overtones just work better when layered(ala
Steve Miller). I've found that rolling off the bottom of backgrounds(
maybe even as high as 180hz) cleans up a mix quite well. Think a bit
darker in the sibilance range. You dont want to EQ each additional
layer until it sounds good like the lead vocal, not that you make them
sound bad, just different. Of course if the singer's arrangement isn't
all that great and he/she wants everything loud (the "I can do it all"
ego mix) that's a tough battle to win. Listen from outside the
room/studio and see what the balance is in mono since your panning
really only applies to a stereo environment. Sometimes a dynamic mic
works better for the layers. Often I make a male singer purposely sing
some of the higher parts in their head voice(which some men hate to do
since it sounds 'wimpy') to differentiate the parts...song dependant.
good luck,
kelly