alternatives to headphones for vocal takes?? youtube clip

[broddie]

This is a problem for me as a singer. It's quite simple: I sing better when I'm not flooded with the sound of my own voice.

I'm experimenting with overdubbing using speakers for playback rather than headphones...in order to help my vocal "breathe."

Ever seen the movie "Sympathy for the Devil" that shows the Stones recording the song of the same name?

For the background vox, a bunch of Stones (and wives/girlfriends) are all standing around a couple mics going "whoo-whoo" They're also recording their part at the same time Jagger is cutting his vocal.

None of the bg singers are wearing headphones. The playback is coming over a speaker and just bleeding into the mics. Not sure if this was the final take, of course....

Here it is:
YouTube - typying sympathy for the devil

I guess this is to show that there is no one right way to do things....

Anyone had a similar situation?

Does everything always need to be isolated?

[PeterPav]

I'm experimenting with overdubbing using speakers for playback rather than headphones...in order to help my vocal "breathe."

It may seem obvious but the monitor mix will be part of your vocal track. If your voice is louder than the mix O.K. but then theres the flooding thing again. Some singers like just one ear covered, find what works. You can always change your mind about it.

[PeterPav]

Originally Posted by broddie

Does everything always need to be isolated?

Bleed through doesnt bother me much, but I like a loose mix sometimes. Great clip. Ahh the good old days.

[zwh]

From what I've learned in my audio recording class, live recording and bleed through was popular back then. I'm a big fan of "live" takes myself. Sometimes too much isolation just sounds unnatural to me. You can see they at least had some borders up for some isolation. I'd kill for a setup like that over a bunch of isolation rooms.

I also know that for vocal takes you can use a pair of monitors, with one speaker wired out of the phase from the other, with the mic directly in the center of where the two speakers paths meet. Supposedly you can minimize bleed from the speakers this way and can do your vocal takes without headphones. Worth a try.

[malatestasid]

I too dislike recording a vocal with headphones on. I've found that I can minimise bleed from the monitors by facing the monitors and singing into a cardioid microphone. Cardioids pick up far less sound from behind than other pick-up patterns. The mic and the two monitors should form three points of an equilateral triangle, if possible. On the recording software, the channel you are recording to should be turned down to avoid your own voice being fed back into the monitors. It works best if you are using a fairly close-mic technique. Hope this helps.

[fmw]

It is not necessary to monitor your own voice while recording it. You can just monitor the accompaniment if you prefer. That's what I do. I'm not sure I understand the problem.

[brandondrury]

I've tracked without headphones and sometimes it is great. It just depends on what the band wants and the singer.

Your mixing options are a bit limited because you can only get away with so much compression.

The bleed can sound horrendous in certain situation so quite a bit of work with mic placement is necessary.

You also have to be very aware of elements that may be removed later such as hi-hat clicks and such.

Brandon

[Vulconizer]

I was just reading up on this the other night and the answers there were very much along the same lines as we are getting here.

It pretty much boils down to the same as other recording situations, as far as I can see: Experiment. Try things until you get the sound and the take that works best for the song.

The one speaker out of phase trick was one I saw mentioned in that earlier reading and I do believe I want to try it in my next attempt on vocal takes for my newest song. Just to see the merits it may hold.

[adorian]

On my projects I started bleeding some monitor mix back into the room as it seems to jel things a little better and give the vocal a perspective to sit in. I make sure the bleed is very small though, one or two notches on the meters. You can go more drastic when you're tracking a singer with a dynamic mic - sometimes you might get a few of these.

When tracking studio projects I usually go for as dry as possible although sometimes a performer would crank the headphone amp so loud that there'll be bleed anyway.

It usually depends on the genre - most of the time I am tracking metal and rock with the occasional eletronica, classical, folk guitar/singer so every situation is different. Basically when in a roaring rock mix I don't seem to have a problem whether there is a bit of bleed from the backing track. In other genres where the editing gets pretty heavy you might get a problem if you replace the background music.

I think there was even a Christina Aguilera song that you can hear that on a verse - it was pretty obvious that the initial arrangement was a dance track when they cut the vocals and they changed to a ballad later so some of that dance mix is bleeding through from the vocals. It was actually a cool effect as far as I am concerned - it added a sense of realism although it was from another reality Just not the overproduced commercial rubbish - had an air of authenticity if you will.