In your face vocals

[Jonas BlitzParticipant]

[Jonas BlitzParticipant]

How do I get vocals to sound close and intimate? What kind of microphone? Plug-ins etc?

 

 

[Mikkel JunkerParticipant]

My two cents:

It starts with the performance: You won't get an intimate sound, if the singer is not close to the microphone - try to have him or her imagine the intimate space when singing. Personally I wan't to be able to hear every breath, every lip sound - well maybe not hear, but sense...

I normally try to be very sparse with effects - gentle, serial or parallel compression, and a reverb, that's gotta be spot on. I my opinion that is the hardest part.

If you happen to have a well sounding room you could try and experiment with a room mic.

You can use basicly any well sounding microfone, but be careful with condensers if the singer has a loud voice - not all condensers can cope with the power of a really loud voice close up.

Try and use what you have and experiment - actually my own voice sounds really good in a SM58 - not the beta - but the oldest, cheapest mic out there... 🙂

[Brandon BarteeParticipant]

I like recording close vocals right up on the capsule (like 2 inches away with a pop filter) in a large space.  Be prepare to deal with some plosives, but there are great tools out there for that.  Loving Melodyne 5 at the moment.

[Ruud DegelinParticipant]

Close and intimate....I presume you are talking about soft vocals?

Microphones:  all microphones should do (like MJ said)  but in this case I would choose a condenser (unlike MJ..), because if you talk about close and intimate and you have the power of a really loud voice close up then something went wrong in the communication.

To get that intimate, close up sound one step is to get very close to the microphone so that the proximity effect starts working and as long as it is soft sung (with popfilter as someone already said) you should not have any problems.  If you have problems (pops etc) you have to tell the singer (s)he has to imagine the microphone is a baby ear that expects a lullaby and have him/her sing not straight in the mic but more from the side, you don't sing right into a baby's ear, do you? Now, I have to admit I havent tried that yet but I think it comes from Bruce Swedien so it cannot be all bad....

And you cant get a close and intimate vocal if your recording is not dry....so that means some absorption behind the mic but even more important is absorption behind and above the singer because the head resonates in all directions, not only from the mouth, it seems strange but trust me, it does.

Now for the big revelation:  for close and intimate a reverb is a dangerous tool, if someone talks intimately to you you dont hear reverb, you only hear early reflexions but that is another matter...

You can use reverb but then you have to set your pre delay pretty long, think about 100-120 ms.

And now we are talking vocals, a little boost at 4,7 kHz wouldn't hurt either.

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