"Suprised. Never figured you for the industrial music type Red. But, there goes to show what assumptions will get ya. "
Steve S.

Yep Steve, my own personal stuff that I'm writing is industrial flavored. Some day, my own self produced CD will be done. I like the Crystal Method Dance beat/Nord Lead bed tracks, with a distorted Les Paul over top of it, with some distorted vocals. Most everyone is always trying to get the prestine quality audio......That's easy, recording at high levels with new top of the line equipment running 24bit converters. I'm into degredation of audio, but yet making it still sound musical. This helps a lot with Hip Hop clients that I get.....they sometimes want that "dirty" sound.

Red

(Rednroll)"They definately sounded better than 2inch tapes, and a lot of hit records where made off of 2inch tape, as where black Adat recordings."

!!!!!!?????!!!!!! Your'e joking, right?

Hey Red, Try the Antares Tube, to get that distorted ,Ministry type vocal. I have done some things similar with it. It has two tube setting, an angelic and a devilish, of course go with the devilish and back off the output gain, but push the tube...it is nasty!!!!! Tucker

Red, What a song to choose as an example. the vox are burried and have chorus added manually to the lead with the level of fx jumping all over the place. The delays at least don't sound chorussed, and they sound similar to quite a bit of the vox on the rest of the album. I think your on the right track with stomp boxes and it also sounds like a dynamic mic to me, perhaps a 57, though a shure ribbon overdriven can sound that way as well. Don't think its nescessary to buy a marshall, but personally I would stay away from plugins and try to capture the sound prior to tracking. Personally I would start with 57 => marshall tube distortion pedal => tube preamp => compessor => A/D conv. of course dealling with all the delay and chorus after the fact. My guess is they tracked it through a guitar rig and perhaps even did the Chorus and Delay in real time as they layed the track. But that was more than ten years ago, I doubt they would do it tbe same way today; but then again...
By the way if you need a potent drummer for your project let me know. I can line up a couple of top flight drummers into that style of music. We're on the west coast though so playing producer might be a bit tough for you.
Regards,
Steve S.

I've run Vox through a Peavey 5150 with 4x12, mic'd it up and mixed it with the dry RODE NTK signal, that gets a great result!

Also, I recommend Universal Audio's 'Nigel' guitaramp sim plugin for vox distortion - just remember to keep a clean track to blend it with!

Jason

Hey Red,

Sorry, I didn't find this question .... It was under a different thread ... so I missed it until right now.

There are some good suggestions here for achieving the distorted vocal sound. Running through a good guitar amp with a cabinet cranked and mic'd up is an excellent method and will give you the smoothest response.

Just like with guitars, if you use a plugin or a direct type processor (like the Pod), you will have a "more-direct" sounding result.

When I find a part during a mix that I want to apply distortion to, I will try different things to see what works best for a particular mix. On the Ministry mix, my ears are telling me that this was done as an addtional element with a very good, warm sounding processor (maybe the pod modelling the "Modern Classic" or the "British Classic" with no additional effects and perhaps the original uneffected vocal running along side it.

I've done as described above and I've done a real amp with a cab, loud and mic'd. All of these will give you a similar result, but you need to find what works best for whatever you're doing at that moment. As we have learned from experience, treatments that work great for one thing may be horrible for another...

...Simply buss your vocal track to the input of the amp, EQ and gainstage it as you see fit by listening, acoustically, in the amp room. Mic it (I'm still a diehard Shure 57 user for guitar amps and snare drum top mic) then fine tune it in the control room. You will need to cut low frequency at about 100hz to keep from getting - what I call "muff-plosives". These LF spikes commonly occur with high gain distortion as a result of harmonic resonance.

Lately, I have been playing with (and have used it alot on mixes) the Waves "Audio-Track" plugin. It has 3 default guitar distortion settings that are pretty nasty and cool for this type of vocal treatment.

Sorry again for replying so far down the line... looks like you had already got some really good answers to your question though.

Todd

"Sorry again for replying so far down the line... looks like you had already got some really good answers to your question though."

Actually, I had given up on this thread and figured no one had any suggestions. Haven't been in the forums in over a week and finally some good replies. Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I'll give them all a wirl and see what works the best for me.

...at least on a few productions ;-) Here's a few ideas of mine to consider:

1. be careful to pick a good sounding room, if you don't have one, make one in your bedroom. Use both damping and some hard surfaces (for those important early reflections)

2. try different mikes in different positions, you can shape the sound a lot with that. The capsule in 90 degrees to the singer is seldom the best way to go. Pick a natural sounding mic, not something very bright, it will give you trouble later.

3. try to record with as little in the signal path as possible. I recently did some vocals in the control room and was very surprised that even the shorter cable runs affected the sound! Stay away from cheap compressors (tip: use one for monitoring only!), dirty sounding cheap tube gear and any other processing (including EQ). The best simple preamp you can find is enough. If you can't get one, use the "direct-out" or "insert out" on your mixer channel to skip all EQ, buses, faders and such.

4. try this for reverb; feed the output of your favourite reverb to a pair of good speakers, put them in a large room or hall (or church...) and record it from a distance with your best mics in stereo. This can give you huge depth without flooding the whole mix.

5. finally, good news on the old blackface-ADATs; I've found that my old recordings sound great when played back with other converters, in other words, the A/D's were not that bad, but the D/A's degrade the sound a lot.

Martin

I'm still completely unclear from a specific standpoint what sound exactly we are talking about here in this thread. It's never been specifically defined from (Rahman) the initiator's standpoint.

I'm amazed that all of these techniques have been described in this thread of how something was created when nobody here knows exactly what Rahman's talking about because it has never been specifically described.

Everyone here has offered some great input, but let me remind everyone that a question can not be correctly answered unless it is correctly asked.

I'm dying to find out the answer to what "That Sound" actually is.

tmrpro,
That was my first answer too. I guess everyone else here has their own viewpoint of "that sound"....and "that sound" that they achieve must be the "that sound" of the original post. At least I got some good suggestions for my distorted vocal sound, but that's because I knew how to ask the question as you pointed out.

******At least I got some good suggestions for my distorted vocal sound, but that's because I knew how to ask the question as you pointed out.******

I couldn't agree more...

Did I miss something on the way? I thought Rahman asked for a sound described as:

"smooth, airy, silky, warm ambience, like reverb with space. "That sound" could further be described as a very slight "airy" sounding reverb, that is mostly noticible when the music is at a lull."

I feel stooooopid.


Martin

******Did I miss something on the way? I thought Rahman asked for a sound described as:

"smooth, airy, silky, warm ambience, like reverb with space. "That sound" could further be described as a very slight "airy" sounding reverb, that is mostly noticible when the music is at a lull."******

Hey Martin,

He went on to say: "...that is prevalent in all commercial releases."

Then later commented: "...listen to any Sade, Gil Scott, Erica Badu, or Sting ballad, and you will hear "it". ...

...Maybe I'm missing something here, but the later statements cover such a huge range of different vocal sounds, techniques and vocal textures that a book could be written defining all of the methods used to record vocals and still not cover the multitude of techniques that may have been used to obtain that undefined number of final products.

I'm sorry, but I know of an endless number of methods of achieving "smooth, airy, silky, warm ambience, like reverb with space" that range from gear used on the front end, gear used on the back end, enviromental elements, vocal techniques (both in delivery and in proximatey), gain staging, and/or a combination of any of these things .... there are a ton of techniques that can produce results that could be loosely defined as "smooth, airy, silky, warm ambience, like reverb with space", but only specific things produce specific results. ...AND in order to define that, you must talk specifically about a specific recording.

You're right of course, but I still have a feeling that Rahman was talking in more general terms about how he FEELS about vocal sound, which btw is an excellent way of dealing with audio, imho.

You have to start somewhere, with simple gear but beautiful visions and dreams of "that sound"!

Because later, when you think you've learned all the tricks of the trade and have access to the best equipment there is, you might find that some elements that affect the result are still out of your control, like the energy of the singer, time of day, humidity and temperature in the room etc.

In the end, all you have to work with is your ears, and your own vision of "that sound."


Martin

Clarity in audio starts with clarity...

"Clarity in audio starts with clarity..."

Rahman, what's your point here?

Martin

Sorry, that's tmrpro of course...

Martin,

Did you not notice "my point" as being a sarcastic undefined response to your previous statement? ... Which BTW was as unclear as Rahman's undefined sound.

Here's the bottom line:

If you want to ask a pro a "technical question", please put away your canvas and palette, stop being "artsy-fartsy" and be a little more specific. This way you won't waste people's time.

Dear Tmrpro,

funny, it seems I'm immune to sarcasm... :-)

I'm also very happy being "artsy-fartsy", a dreamer playing around with "canvas and palette" as much as I ever can. I also try to ask as many (sometimes stupid) questions as possible, because I have so much left to learn.

Somehow it doesn't stop me from working fulltime with audio, it actually helps! What might seem really strange to you is that it even helps me to work with pretty technical stuff like designing and building audio equipment.

I'm sorry if you feel that people like Rahman and myself waste your precious time.

Peace & Love & Beautiful Music,

Martin