Making a quiet singer sound "loud"

[Jeremy Garber]

I have a quiet singing voice myself. I use a large diaphram condensor for my voice. I've tried a few different positions. For my last track, I had the diaphram on top, setting just below my mouth kind of leaning back, looking up at my chin maybe. I get kind of close to the mic, though not directly aiming my mouth at it. Lots of gain. I don't use much compression. Sometimes double tracking my voice sounds great, sometimes it gets too confusing. I think it depends on the song. I also have kind of a low voice so it occupies a bit more space on the sound stage.

[logancircle]

If all they are is quiet, turn them up. If you're using a DAW you can try things like Vintage Warmer, or Renaissance Vox or whatever. But your case sounds different. I've dealt with singers with soft voices, but who had normal sibilance, which made it hard to just apply a single-band compressor, which can often make the voice sound unnatural and, err, compressed. A multiband compressor works better cos you can compress the high freq sibilance (a de-esser) the highs and then have the control you're used to on the lower bands.

[@?,*???&?]

Welcome to the inflation of 'Elliot Smith'. Larry Crane should be able to give tips on how he achieved that with a very timid singer.

[hammertime]

I'm intererested.

Welcome to the inflation of 'Elliot Smith'. Larry Crane should be able to give tips on how he achieved that with a very timid singer.

[KennyLusk]

FWIW, what works for me sometimes is the pro vla with the Threshold set to -20, Ratio cranked to Infinity, Output at +8, Fast attack and Fast release. For male vox for this affect I like the Dave Thomas (Advanced Audio) modded Apex 460 on Omni but the "Alice" absolutely rocks on those settings as well. IMO the pro vla does this very nicely.

It's also not a bad little trick for solo work on nylon strings. Just try to have a quiet room because at those settings you can hear a gnat fart from Tularosa.

[glagola1]

When I think of "loud" I think of reverb.... or more accurately, the excitement of the space the souce sound exists in. And compression.

To me, "loud" is a psychoacoustic term. Peoples ears naturally compress loud sounds and we also notice the effect of the sound in the space.

So compress it and add a reverb that suits the psychospace you want to create. I dunno.

[The Real MC]

I don't know. That T-bone (i think it's walker or something) was talking about the 50's or 60's so I assume he's just talking about alot of compression, and maybe a bit of eq. I heard Bon Scott sang through a 57 or something with like a 10:1 ratio of compression with about 10db of gain reduction. I think most of the magic probably came from the singers, though.

That isn't that much compression for a vocal...

Huh?

I use 4:1 on good singers. 10:1 is extreme and might be needed for singers with poor control of dynamics.

Mark Knopfler is a good example of a quiet singer who sounds loud. I've been making more of a conscious effort to use push less air while singing, and it does make your voice sound better. But it requires practice to control pitch with less air!

[tsw]

Just a bump, I guess. I'd really LOVE to hear Larry's thoughts on recording Elliott's vox in relation to this thread. Seems like the ideal example for this lesson.

Larry???

[maxadocious]

Didn't Hendrix have a small voice? I think so, but it sounds nice because he had it mic-ed big (ie: really loud) and recorded in a large room. The trick to making a voice have that sort of power to it is to up the volume in a large space. There's probably an effect for that but I don't know it.

[supafuzz]

(i heard Sylvester Stallone is like 5 feet tall or something), making someone appear bigger than he actually is.

He is 5ft 8 or so. I am 5-11 He stood right next to me at the opening of the Planet hollywood in NYC a number of years ago. I was working in Neon then and was finishing up the last of the installation with an hour to go till the opening!. He showed up. We chatted for a bit and that was that,,,,he was pretty cool..no star attitude....to me at least...