Compression and EQ while recording
So i had a couple requests to write a blog about my views on using compression while recording, and I'll expand it to also include equalization, delays, effects, etc....
Now, if anyone read my blog a few days ago, you already know i compress vocals to tape. almost......... ALWAYS. I also almost always add equalization, at least a touch, but here are a few of the guidelines that my brain subconciously travels thru when I'm recording. First, follow your experience. I have the luxury of owning my favorite gear. Before i started making big gear purchases, i was able to use a ton of different mics, pre's, compressors, etc... on a ton of different sessions over many years. Then i went and bought all my favorite pieces and now thats what i use every day, mostly.
Rules. there are none. Ken's guidelines, here are a few. First, experience. I know my gear, I've used it ALOT. I have a pretty good sense of where to set the knobs for a given performer or vocalist. I almost always capture the first take. Sometimes its magic, most of the time its the artists warmup. For the 3 percent of the time that its magic, its preparation well spent. So, use your gut and experience for a starting point. Grab what you think is going to be the right mic/pre/compressor, etc... for what your doing.
I've heard many engineers say they always try to have the singer sing on 2 or 3 different mics, and mic chains to hear what the best sound is. If you are the engineer for a whole album, or a bunch of songs, or you are this artists main engineer, great, thats time very well spent, as long as the artist is in the mood to let you play. Find what sounds best on them, and use that. And further, if they have to go work with some producer who has his own engineer, do that guy or girl a favor and call them to at least inform them of what you think is the best vocal chain and why. Might save some headaches.
THE REALITY is that 90% of the time, the artist (and probably the producer) dont want to sit around and watch you turn knobs and swap mics until you get your idea of the most awesome sound. They want to record. Instead of the perception that you are doing your job to the fullest, the actual perception will often be "this engineer doesnt know what he's doing", and then before you've recorded a single note, everyone has already lost faith in your abilities, and the session vibe is blown. The most important thing in any session ever is the VIBE. A great vibe will usually translate to great feeling takes, which is a bit more important than the most amazing vocal sound. a bad vibe will equate to unusable takes, even is sonically they are wonderful. VIBE. believe it.
So, use your gut. Dont put an SM57 in front of Mariah Carey. Use your BEST judgement. and check your gear before the artist gets there. I've put up Tube U47's before that sounded like SHIT. a U87 can sound great or terrible depending on its wear and tear. But excpet on rare occasions, if its another session with another artist and your the engineer booked, man grab your best guess and go with it. If its really sounding bad, then stop and ask the producer if you can change up.
The engineer is doing their job the best when they are transparent to the session. When nothing they do is slowing down the creative process. Secondarily, the assistant has a similar job. If the assistant is slwoing things down, thats when i get REALLY F'ing irate, and most of the time i'm a pretty easy going guy. When you are assistant, you dont walk, you run. If the artist needs water, run and get it. they are waiting on you. if the producer needs a pad of paper, RUN and get it. they are waiting on you. Their idea might be lost by the time you stroll slowly there and back for paper.
OK, so back to the title at hand. YES. I compress and EQ vocals to tape almost always. and I have a great signal chain, and i still EQ and compress. yes, it is possible to ruin the sound with compression and EQ as easily as you can make it sound better. So, be careful, use your ears. use your ears, use your ears. are you paying attention...... use your ears. and let your ears guide you to the sound. BUT DONT SPEND ALL DAY GETTING A VOCAL SOUND. do everything you can to be ready with a great headphone mix, a great guess at vocal levels to tape, but dont keep the vocalist behind the mic to check the mic, get levels, get basic sounds, etc... all that can be done before the artists teps in the booth, and it should be done. I always have my assistant scream into the mic loud so i know where my loudest levels are going to be. Set your levels and compression accordingly. also, know what kind of vocal your going to be recording. if its really soft, obviously checking the mic by shouting probably wont help you.
One last tip. If your recording in pro tools, monitor the vocal back with another compressor plug in compressing it further. That vocalist wants to hear every subtlty they are giving. If every time they sing soft, their voice gets buried in the music, they arent going to be as expressive and dynamic. If you have a plugin compressor on the channel (not going to tape, just monitoring with it), it'll help the vocalist. I usually use WAVES RVox for this. its convenient and easy and sounds pretty good. So, dont get me wrong, even when i'm using a plugin compressor on the monitor back, i am definitely compressing with my Avalon and probably EQ'ing with my Avalon and/or my Lang. I dont always EQ to tape, thats where the whole "using your ears" comes in.
Vocal recording is an art. so many people are bad at it. The art of it is not only getting the best vocal sound, the art is in the flow of the session when you are sitting in the engineering chair. How comforable the artist is, the producer is. How good the vibe is. How quickly you keep things flowing. is everyone waiting on you between takes? Cuing up the song to the right place for the part you are recording. If you give them 16 bars of music before they've got to come in and sing, they are going to be bored silly by the time they have to come in. Man i could go on all day, but i cant give you almost 20 years of vocal recording experience in one blog. Back to my session at hand.
-Ken
Now, if anyone read my blog a few days ago, you already know i compress vocals to tape. almost......... ALWAYS. I also almost always add equalization, at least a touch, but here are a few of the guidelines that my brain subconciously travels thru when I'm recording. First, follow your experience. I have the luxury of owning my favorite gear. Before i started making big gear purchases, i was able to use a ton of different mics, pre's, compressors, etc... on a ton of different sessions over many years. Then i went and bought all my favorite pieces and now thats what i use every day, mostly.
Rules. there are none. Ken's guidelines, here are a few. First, experience. I know my gear, I've used it ALOT. I have a pretty good sense of where to set the knobs for a given performer or vocalist. I almost always capture the first take. Sometimes its magic, most of the time its the artists warmup. For the 3 percent of the time that its magic, its preparation well spent. So, use your gut and experience for a starting point. Grab what you think is going to be the right mic/pre/compressor, etc... for what your doing.
I've heard many engineers say they always try to have the singer sing on 2 or 3 different mics, and mic chains to hear what the best sound is. If you are the engineer for a whole album, or a bunch of songs, or you are this artists main engineer, great, thats time very well spent, as long as the artist is in the mood to let you play. Find what sounds best on them, and use that. And further, if they have to go work with some producer who has his own engineer, do that guy or girl a favor and call them to at least inform them of what you think is the best vocal chain and why. Might save some headaches.
THE REALITY is that 90% of the time, the artist (and probably the producer) dont want to sit around and watch you turn knobs and swap mics until you get your idea of the most awesome sound. They want to record. Instead of the perception that you are doing your job to the fullest, the actual perception will often be "this engineer doesnt know what he's doing", and then before you've recorded a single note, everyone has already lost faith in your abilities, and the session vibe is blown. The most important thing in any session ever is the VIBE. A great vibe will usually translate to great feeling takes, which is a bit more important than the most amazing vocal sound. a bad vibe will equate to unusable takes, even is sonically they are wonderful. VIBE. believe it.
So, use your gut. Dont put an SM57 in front of Mariah Carey. Use your BEST judgement. and check your gear before the artist gets there. I've put up Tube U47's before that sounded like SHIT. a U87 can sound great or terrible depending on its wear and tear. But excpet on rare occasions, if its another session with another artist and your the engineer booked, man grab your best guess and go with it. If its really sounding bad, then stop and ask the producer if you can change up.
The engineer is doing their job the best when they are transparent to the session. When nothing they do is slowing down the creative process. Secondarily, the assistant has a similar job. If the assistant is slwoing things down, thats when i get REALLY F'ing irate, and most of the time i'm a pretty easy going guy. When you are assistant, you dont walk, you run. If the artist needs water, run and get it. they are waiting on you. if the producer needs a pad of paper, RUN and get it. they are waiting on you. Their idea might be lost by the time you stroll slowly there and back for paper.
OK, so back to the title at hand. YES. I compress and EQ vocals to tape almost always. and I have a great signal chain, and i still EQ and compress. yes, it is possible to ruin the sound with compression and EQ as easily as you can make it sound better. So, be careful, use your ears. use your ears, use your ears. are you paying attention...... use your ears. and let your ears guide you to the sound. BUT DONT SPEND ALL DAY GETTING A VOCAL SOUND. do everything you can to be ready with a great headphone mix, a great guess at vocal levels to tape, but dont keep the vocalist behind the mic to check the mic, get levels, get basic sounds, etc... all that can be done before the artists teps in the booth, and it should be done. I always have my assistant scream into the mic loud so i know where my loudest levels are going to be. Set your levels and compression accordingly. also, know what kind of vocal your going to be recording. if its really soft, obviously checking the mic by shouting probably wont help you.
One last tip. If your recording in pro tools, monitor the vocal back with another compressor plug in compressing it further. That vocalist wants to hear every subtlty they are giving. If every time they sing soft, their voice gets buried in the music, they arent going to be as expressive and dynamic. If you have a plugin compressor on the channel (not going to tape, just monitoring with it), it'll help the vocalist. I usually use WAVES RVox for this. its convenient and easy and sounds pretty good. So, dont get me wrong, even when i'm using a plugin compressor on the monitor back, i am definitely compressing with my Avalon and probably EQ'ing with my Avalon and/or my Lang. I dont always EQ to tape, thats where the whole "using your ears" comes in.
Vocal recording is an art. so many people are bad at it. The art of it is not only getting the best vocal sound, the art is in the flow of the session when you are sitting in the engineering chair. How comforable the artist is, the producer is. How good the vibe is. How quickly you keep things flowing. is everyone waiting on you between takes? Cuing up the song to the right place for the part you are recording. If you give them 16 bars of music before they've got to come in and sing, they are going to be bored silly by the time they have to come in. Man i could go on all day, but i cant give you almost 20 years of vocal recording experience in one blog. Back to my session at hand.
-Ken
posted by Protools Mixing at 9:15 PM
4 Comments:
When you use plugins on an input, such as your example of using a compressor to help the vocalist, do you ever have any delay issues? Some plugins don't have that much delay in them, but others have more. Depending on the vocalist, they may not hear the delay. Others will notice it immediately. What's your experience with this?
most of the plugins on an HD system incur very little delay, i'd guess around 1 millisecond. Not at all a factor in timing issues. But Kenny, come on now, with all my harping on the importance of vibe, and putting the singer in the right comfort zone, with the right headphone mix, the last thing in the world I would do is give them a mix with their voice time delayed. Systems that run off your computers CPU sometimes have these problems, HD uses proprietary PCI cards and does not tax the computers processor.
-Ken
Thanks Ken. One day if I ever make enough money I will pay you for your words of wisdom. Thanks once again!!!!
Hey Damon,
When you get your career established, just make sure you give back some of your knowledge to somebody else on their way up. Thats more payment than i could ever ask for.
-Ken
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