squeezing the performance out of a vocalist

Working with a vocalist on a few tracks at the moment and her performance falls flat when she monitors on headphones, have tried varying monitor levels, one ear on/one ear off, but still the performance is really flat.

Final last ditched effort, I got someone to hold the headphones away from her ears a few inches, just enough so she can hear the guide track and whammo, suddenly her perfomance came alive.

However I cant have someone holding the phones for hours on end. Anyone have any other creative ideas on monitoring without headphones clamped around your head???

Years ago I remember reading about a similar problem in a magazine article, whereby the singer preferred to monitor their own voice without the use of headphones, creating the dilemma of trying to get sufficient separation of the guide tracks being played back over the monitors and the vocal recording.  The solution put forward was to set up the singer in a reasonbly dead room with a set of monitors, position the singer in the sweet spot facing the two speakers with a cardioid mike, and flip the phase of one of the speakers.  Positioned just right the summed signals would significantly cancel by the time they reached the mike, but would remain sufficiently intact enough for the singer to hear everything.

Never tried it, but may be worth experimenting with..?

for every wrong note cut off a finger. that will fix them real quick....


on a more serious note...from another thread.....

however what WAS done and I have done this and it works, up to a point... is to take a pair of speakers like NS-10's or whatever and put them up on stands at singer's head height - make an equilateral triangle roughly 4' on a side with the two speakers and the mic at the vertices - mic pointing away perpendicularly from the base of the triangle opposite...  you can play with the pattern on the mic...  you'd think a super cardioid or hard cardioid mic would be better than a sift cardioid or omni and it should but side lobing on some of the more directional mics is not always even and symmetrical, so it can get tricky - feed a MONO cue to speakers and have speakers be out of phase from each other...  speakers should match reasonably well in response and gain...  have a couple wide dead gobos up behind the singer.  If you have things set up reasonably well you should be able to crank up the speakers with cue and foldback and have enough of a null at the mic so feedback is not instantaneous...  wiggle things around and play with the setup and you can get a decent enough cue level for a single to sing to without cans...  and generally the singer won't need so much of themselves in the cue mix as with headphones, unless they have Moreme's disease.  At some point you get the gains up too high and the movement of the singer's face gets to be a problem but back off a bit distance-wise and that gets better...  this does not work with people who can't sing at volume and have crappy up close mic technique - especially if they have unsymmetrical faces...  (joke that last bit) anyway...  this works in smaller rooms that are pretty dead and larger rooms where you can get some distance from reflections...  it's a gimmick...  but if you have someone come in with a Bouffant and no in-ear's then this may do the trick...

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;D Cool, thanks guys for the idea, I'll give it a shot .... the things we have to do to get these rock stars to perform!!!

Hi,



    there is absolutely no reason why a singer cannot present a performance with headphones. It may take some experience. This is only gained by practice! You can work with a handheld dynamic mic in the control room with the monitors low, and even try phase cancellation. You need to record WITHOUT compression to achieve this, or it won't cancel. You definitely make a rod for your own back if you go down this route. This game is all about control, and you lose a great deal of control this way. Do so at your peril. And you'd better be sure that the backing track is NOT going to change! You also cannot really alter the timing of any part of the vocal. Pandering to the whims and vagaries of an inexperienced singer is tantamount to folly. Give 'em an inch . . . . . Making a fuss about headphones is often an expression of "Red-Lights, Brown-Pants Syndrome". Concede too much, and you will create a monster, believe me! There is a very good reason why we do it the way we do! I prefer to only let really experienced singers do it in front of the monitors. - It is ok if you are Freddie Mercury or Bono!

    I tend to try to keep the volume down in the headphones, and try to keep the vocal as quiet as possible, the singer listening to themselves in the room, with one ear off. When i am singing, I do not like to hear myself in the mix at all. It also helps to keep the compression as gentle as possible. I always record with some compression going to tape(well, Tools!). This makes the singer put some expression in, as they are working against the compressor. If you over do it, they stop working it, since it all sounds the same to them anyway.

    Try a different pair of headphones. I find some types are very uninspiring, and some even seem to cause great singers to have pitch issues. As a good alround workhorse, that are bombproof, minimal spill, and sound pretty good, I recommend the Beyer DT150's. Closed back phones are essential in my book.

  ALso, try sitting with the singer in the same room, and you monitor with one ear off too, checking them "in the room". This is by far the best way to judge a take in my book. It is so much easier to vibe them up when they are with you, sharing the whole experience.

  Kindest regards,


    ANdyP

Making a fuss about headphones is often an expression of "Red-Lights, Brown-Pants Syndrome.

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HaHa
can i use that in my signature?

I find sometimes bucket loads of reverb in the head mix can make inexperienced singers more comfortable.

strangeandbouncy said:

   there is absolutely no reason why a singer cannot present a performance with headphones.

 
    ANdyP

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I would have to respectfully disagree with this premise. I know alot of people think this way but I see it slightly differently.

Musicians are artists first and foremost, not usually disciplined technicians. Yes some become incredibly proficient and consistent with dedicated practice over much of their lives, but in the real world some naturally work better with certain facets of making/recording music than others do. We all have different skills, some stronger than others, and using the mantra repeatedly espoused on a number of recording sites and perhaps in a similar vein to the view above, - that the fault is therefore the singer and the solution be to find other artist to record (well maybe I am assuming more than Andy was inferring here and not trying to misquote anyone) - may be finding a simple answer to a more complex issue in my very humble view.

As a case in point, I have known guitarists whom have incredible tone and absolutely tasty riffs. Yet those same players often have terrible rhythm, particularly if they are more " lead guitar" orientated players. Get them to record the same riff twice so you can layer their riff and you cannot even get two takes that are even closely in time. What's the message here then? That the guitarist is incompetent  and there is no reason why the guitarist cant practice and get better rhythm? My senses tell me this isnt true and these players are often really gifted musicians, but they simply have a leaning to more fluid formless styles of playing. I have also seen violinists with great phrasing and timing and terrible pitch problems that they admit themselves.  

Just like a triathelete will often find their running and swimming is better than the bike riding, or vice versa, some singers have a beautiful quality to their voice but are thrown with guide tracks and headphone perception issues.

We would all like to work with Bono and Freddy Mercury and its true artists of that level could probably be trusted more to break recording conventions, but the reality is not all people will be in a position to record such artists and those singers who have bad microphone technique may have other wonderful qualities that shouldn't be wasted.  Sure some may become prima donnas that need to be put in line, but my view on this entire phenomena is that if one is a good producer, and I mean producer rather than recording guy, then the producer's greatest role is to think creatively about ways to coax the best performance out of the artist. In fact I believe that was title to the question originally posted.  - how to coax the best performance from the artist - and that is the artist you have here and now, with all their imperfections and idiosynchracies.

Just my 2 cents

Elvis and Frank Sinatra hated singing with headphones.
It is very alienating. It's the duty of the sound engineer to do his best to find the solution.
Worst case, I'd rather have a lot of spill from a monitor speaker with a good performance than no spill and a terrible performance.
There's also some psychoacoustics involved (and psychology from the SE). The talent has only a two-word vocabulary: louder and softer  .
The SE must be capable of translating that in much more varied actions, such as EQing, adding a touch of reverb or slapback echo, modifying the balance of instruments mix,...
One has to fight the natural tendency to increase the level of something when the talent says he can't hear himself, where in fact reducing an ear-crushing bass is the solution.
But I agree that sometimes, it is just impossible for the artist to work with headphones; in that case, I'm ready to explain the customer/producer that we're gonna have to use a trick that I recently invented but was used long ago by the ancients.

Good discussion! I want to note that the vocalist was not complaining about wearing headphones, it is just that it became obvious after hours of trying, tweaking, coaxing and encouraging her, that the performance was not coming through, maybe the cans gave her a false sense of security.

I had another experience a year ago with a male vocalist, again the performance was not there when trying to get him to work at a reasonably consistent distance from the mic, he was most comfortable jumping all over the place, going on and off mic. Getting him to stand still killed the performance. I eventually recorded him with a Beyer M88, held in hand, he threw his body into it and around the studio and the performance was instantly fantastic. It may not have sounded technically as good as the U87, but the magic was there and thats all that matters.

We do need to try a bit of magic from time to time to capture the performance, no two artists are going to be or react the same in the studio.
Cheers

I have to agree on that.
Performance is always more important then sound. No one will notice a no so perfect sounding vocal track if the performance is brilliant.
Use a good dynamic mic and have him/her sing on the monitors.

mrclunk said:

I find sometimes bucket loads of reverb in the head mix can make inexperienced singers more comfortable.

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Apparently that's what John Lennon used to ask for when recording his vocals.

deuce42 said:

I would have to respectfully disagree with this premise.

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Me to.


Hell, I hate even playing my bass with monitoring trough headphones (and I have zero problems with performing with headphones on my head, I just don't like "feel" (whatver that could be)).

Hi,


  we were talking about singers, not bass . . .


  Abbey, you are right. As an engineer, it is your job to come up with the answers. As a producer, you should not be putting that responsibility on someone else. - the buck stops with you. It is also the engineers job to capture the best possible recording . . . . and that also must include how it sounds as well as the "vibe". The two should not be mutually exclusive.


    I do use speakers if the situation demands it. I always take a "live" sm58/whatever vocal in the control room if I am recording a live band. This nearly always constitutes the mainstay of the vocal. This is usually the best take since the singer is not thinking that he/she is under the microscope, and I patch it up with the same mic in the control room with the speakers on. I will ALWAYS go for vibe over sound/spillage etc. but I still maintain that there is no reason . . . . etc etc etc. I also get fantastic results with headphones, especially if you can disarm the singer. keep it light, keep them distracted, keep them laughing, keep them talking, whatever it takes to stop them from thinking to much about what they are doing. None of this has ANYTHING to do with headphones, more to do with headspace. If you indulge the "can't do it with headphones" mentality, what becomes the next achilles heal? Can't do it unless I've had a drink/spliff/line/blowjob . . . . . and then have to deal with tuning/timing/downright stupidity as well . . . .

      keep it routine and matter-of-fact, and ALWAYS keep the guide vocal!!!!!!!


  If a singer is not delivering, there are many possible causes. Not using headphones is AN answer, not THE answer. Go out for lunch, have a cup of tea, play a game of ping pong, alter the lighting, distract and smokescreen the task at hand, whatever it takes. Just don't sit there waiting for something magic to happen - as producer it is YOUR job to make it happen.


  Kindest regards,


        ANdyP

I hate performers that have issues with headphones.  If you want to be a professional, stop being an itchy vagina and learn to use them.  That's like getting a job at a tire shop and saying you don't like to work with impact guns. 

One thing I've done is, given a singer two takes.  You pull together the best of the two into a comp.  If it sucks then you spit out a rough mix for the singer and force them to listen to it.  A few times if necessary.  If they're any good and have any self respect they'll beg for another crack at it. 

Sometimes I force people to hear what they're doing wrong and make them live with it for a day, a week, or whatever.  Learn from your mistakes and improve.  Improvement comes with practice and time.  Unfortunately, time is not always a luxury.

Hey Miko,



    ;D ;D ;D


 
          Yay!



      Wish I could be as direct as you!



          ANdyP

I disagree. it's not about the artist learning to sing with headphones on. there an artist, what the F*ck do they know anyway? the engineer is supposed to capture  the best possible performance by any means necessary. If I am with a singer who can't wear headphones o.k. figure out a work around.  Sometimes they work some times they don't. what's a little bleed through anyway when it all gets mixed into stereo. Some of the best vocals have been in the control room without headphones and a SM57. done deal.  Before a person can sing in the studio he or she should be ready to do so. If you really think about it how often do singers practice with headphones on.


years ago some really retarded nu-metal band was in the studio and they had wedge monitors and a monitor board in the studio with them.  No one in the band used headphones at any point in the recording process.  worked well for them....

Maybe, you guys are right.  I mean the rest of the world revolves around singers, why shouldn't the recording session?  ZING! 

MikoKensington said:

Maybe, you guys are right.  I mean the rest of the world revolves around singers, why shouldn't the recording session?  ZING! 

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and there went the coffee out my nose.

it's not so much the rest of the world revolves around them, it's just that they think it does...

There was an article about this in tape op, not to long ago....about how our brains play tricks on us. and it states that with headphones with some people will actually HEAR the notes at a different pitch therefore the *out of tune* -ness.

So maybe not so much an artists' "Fault" as we might think. I don't know how true it is. But I like to keep it in my head that if the performer can't sing on pitch with the headphones that it is of no fault of theirs  and my problem to fix. It keeps my brain space and session happily moving along...

Yay for bleed and good performances

In my case, the vocalist actually liked workin with cans, she said it sounded great, she could hear her mistakes and any pitchiness, but the performance was flat - no life, when we pulled the cans 6" off her head, which I guess meant that she could not hear herself as clearly, then her performance came to life.

I did try running her levels in the cans really low, but this also didn't do the trick.

I don't belive one size fits all, we gotta do whatever is necessary to capture the performance, if I gotta stand on my head, then thats what I gotta do!