dvs
Green Mountain Blues
@CaptainMoto asked me offline about the mics I'm using to record my acoustic guitar and vocals, and I thought others might be interested also. Here's what I've told him, I figure we might as well continue the discussion out in the open - feel free to chime in.
What's become my "main" vocal mic is a Samson C01 large-diaphragm condenser (LDC) mic. It's cheap ($80 street, I think) but it seems to work ok. For quick recordings of voice & acoustic (like in my Sound of Silence video), I use that mic alone and "mix" using mic placement.
I also picked up a pair of Samson C02 small-diaphragm condenser (SDC) mics (~$140 for the pair) after experimenting with my wife's Shure PGA81 mics (~$130 each), which are the overheads from her drum mic kit. Presonus sells a pair of very similar mics for even less, I think, but I had good experience with my other Samson mic, so that's where I went. (BTW, these also work well for vocals, tambourines and shakers, or as room mics, etc.)
I don't know if you saw my two most recent clips (https://youtu.be/QcG5vbIR0ng, https://youtu.be/xMShHQnGSaE) - in both of those I have the SDC's panned one L and one R, equidistant from the guitar's soundhole and I've raised the LDC up a bit so there's less bleed from the guitar. All the mic balancing was done on the mixer, and I recorded the combined stereo audio signal into the Windows 10 Camera app.
I think, though, that the main thing that's happened with my vocals is I joined a new singing website (singeo.com), worked through the first four modules (that's all they've put up so far - eventually there will be ten) and I've been doing daily singing exercises and practice using their routines, about 45 min/day, plus singing/recording/reviewing at least a handful of songs every day (well, almost every day...).
For vocal processing like in the videos above, I add only a touch of reverb from the mixer's built-in effects. For more produced stuff, like my recent tracks in Studio One, on vocals I use EQ, compression, and reverb from the basic plugins, following advice from Presonus' Josh Gilder. I've experimented with "thickening", doubling, other effects and decided those are just not for me. I'm getting a lot more mileage out of learning better singing technique and developing vocal strength than from smoothing things out in post.
What's become my "main" vocal mic is a Samson C01 large-diaphragm condenser (LDC) mic. It's cheap ($80 street, I think) but it seems to work ok. For quick recordings of voice & acoustic (like in my Sound of Silence video), I use that mic alone and "mix" using mic placement.
I also picked up a pair of Samson C02 small-diaphragm condenser (SDC) mics (~$140 for the pair) after experimenting with my wife's Shure PGA81 mics (~$130 each), which are the overheads from her drum mic kit. Presonus sells a pair of very similar mics for even less, I think, but I had good experience with my other Samson mic, so that's where I went. (BTW, these also work well for vocals, tambourines and shakers, or as room mics, etc.)
I don't know if you saw my two most recent clips (https://youtu.be/QcG5vbIR0ng, https://youtu.be/xMShHQnGSaE) - in both of those I have the SDC's panned one L and one R, equidistant from the guitar's soundhole and I've raised the LDC up a bit so there's less bleed from the guitar. All the mic balancing was done on the mixer, and I recorded the combined stereo audio signal into the Windows 10 Camera app.
I think, though, that the main thing that's happened with my vocals is I joined a new singing website (singeo.com), worked through the first four modules (that's all they've put up so far - eventually there will be ten) and I've been doing daily singing exercises and practice using their routines, about 45 min/day, plus singing/recording/reviewing at least a handful of songs every day (well, almost every day...).
For vocal processing like in the videos above, I add only a touch of reverb from the mixer's built-in effects. For more produced stuff, like my recent tracks in Studio One, on vocals I use EQ, compression, and reverb from the basic plugins, following advice from Presonus' Josh Gilder. I've experimented with "thickening", doubling, other effects and decided those are just not for me. I'm getting a lot more mileage out of learning better singing technique and developing vocal strength than from smoothing things out in post.
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