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Mixing your own vocals.


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Is it just me, or does every one struggle to mix their own vocals in a song?

 

I hate the sound of my voice and I struggle to get it to sound right and be happy with it.

 

Do you guys think it is impossible to mix your own voice objectively?

 

Thoughts or suggestions?

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I wonder if you're discovering a weakness with your mic, which, coupled with your dissatisfaction with the sound of your voice, creates a situation that can't be rectified in Logic. If you're expecting a sound from the genre you're recording that matches pro recordings from your favorite artists, this is likely the case.

 

A proper mic will make separating/lifting your vocals a breeze, and it should smooth out the transients in the signal so that it doesn't sound harsh. Maybe you're not motivated to improve your vocal technique enough to become happy with your voice, but the mic, and mic technique, can go far in making a good recording that you'd find acceptable.

 

-Bruce

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It is, obviously, impossible to be completely objective about your performance on any instrument. You are, after all, the subject in the term subjective. I work regularly with a number of pretty amazing vocalists and the best of them are never 100% happy with their performance.

 

Whether or not this is a barrier to being able to mix and/or record your own performance comes down to whether you can move beyond what you hear in your head (the ideal version) to work with what you have recorded. And, of course, that you don't suck.

 

Every performance is a compromise between conception and execution. As the performer, you'd be surprised at how often I record people who confuse the implied (what they hear in their head) rather than what's on tape (or disk). At it's worst this makes some overly confident and others hyper-critical.

 

You might want to investigate a different mic. However, I would suggest spending some serious time recording yourself every chance you get. You want to shoot for being able to move beyond the shock of hearing yourself recorded to the point where you can discern exactly what it is your don't like about your voice and set out to change those aspects that bother you. There is this idea that you are stuck with your voice, but that's absurd. If you are willing to put in the effort, and have any kind of an ear at all, you can overcome problems with timbre, pitch and time.

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+1 to everything that has been said so far.

 

For me it gets a lot easier when I maintain artistic focus on the content, and then work my voice and mix to create that.

 

Then I drink a big cup of Lighten the Fique Up.

 

The spectrum ranges from Tom Waits to Placido Domingo. They are doing artistically, exactly what they set out to do. Their performance seems transparent to the Art they convey.

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The closest analogy I can think of:

Have you ever been around a pianist who watches his/her hands .... and then at a given point in becoming familiar with the piece of music, doesn't have to any more.

It's a consistently identifiable point when the Music begins flowing and the instrument is singing. The focus has changed from "what's being done" to "the musical experience".

 

Relax, enjoy, sing.

Talk to your audience.

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  • 10 years later...

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