Introducing Laurie Ann

[Analog4]

Hi All,

This is a remake of a tune I had posted here at nowhere
called Heartbreak Avenue. A friend of mine, Laurie did
the singing....What dja think??

http://www.nowhereradio.com/laurieann/single

[TheRealWaldo]

Pretty damn good!  The kind of thing I like listening to for sure!

Only one thing, gotta do a little cleanup on the vocals and smooth out her power.  She's got a hell of a voice, but it's distorting the mic and fuzzing high when she cranks it up.  

Once them spikes are cleaned up, it'll definately go on my playlist

[Analog4]

Hey Waldo,

I don't have any compressors which I think I definately
need to record Laurie's voice......
Believe it or not I had to trim wa-aaaaay back..
She's got big power.

Got any tips??

Graham.

[TheRealWaldo]

What're you using to mix down?

W.

[Analog4]

Waldo,

I'm just using the EQs on the 4Track deck with no outboard accessories at present.
I then upload it into my cakewalk 8.0 program basically
to convert to MP3 file---My gear is pretty primitive--
any suggestions other than getting a whole bunch of new gear??

Graham.

[TheRealWaldo]

Hehe, well if you check the post 'Here's a change..' or something like that on HomeRec that I made, you'll note what I am using to record with, and I assure you, it's less than what you got

With the vocals, isolate them as much as possible, i.e. sit her down in a bathtub, with the bathroom door closed, and the mic at least a few feet from the tub, angled at her.  Have her sing 'up' in angle, but otherwise normally.  It'll give the recording natural reverb, and possibly a little more low end.

If you have to baffle the mic, do so, but as long as she isn't peaking your inputs on your 4-track, you should be fine.  Import into cake-walk the vocal alone, and use a DX compression plugin.  Hell, you can just use WinAmp to do this, there is compression plugins for it, and you can dump raw to disk as well.  Normalize it the best you can, and then just play with it until it sounds right.

She'll learn to keep her power consistent eventually, but until then, it's up to the recording artist