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Reverb - Practise with or without?


kickingtone

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Do you practise singing with or without reverb and other bells and whistles?

 

What do you measure your progress against? The full monty (the works) or the raw vocals?

 

There seems to be pros and cons with each. At the end of the day, a production is going to be the full monty, so you'd be practising blind if you didn't at least have some idea of what that would sound like.

On the other hand, the altered vocals are less transparent in regards vocal technique. You can end up fooling yourself if you ignore the raw vocals. Which is more important do you think?

 

I have tended to add a trace of reverb to my clips because I am working with a cheap, entry level mic (for speech, not singing).

 

With a trace of reverb added

 

https://soundcloud.com/kickingtone/whstml0090

 

Raw

 

https://soundcloud.com/kickingtone/whstml0091

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Practice with reverb ? That would imply monitoring yourself back through headphones via a mic. I would argue this is not the best way to go over exercises , your scales, sirens or whatever daily practice routine you may have.

 

The reason I say this is because good singers go by how it feels...not the sound of it... They can feel when the coordination is right and the placement is where it needs to be. If you only ever sing exercises via mic & headphones you will naturally focus on the sound rather than the sensation. Putting the cart before the horse as it were. Good singing is a by product of good technique, good technique is building up the muscle memory of the right subjective sensations. If you go mostly by how it sounds in your headphones the chances are you'll overdo trying to correct something you're hearing.

Applying reverb during practice will only gloss over any inadequate technique, I would avoid using headphone/mic setups altogether never mind adding reverb. Just sing into the room.

 

On the other hand performance recordings intended for others to listen to are routinely airbrushed to within an inch of their lives. Reverb is the of least of it. If you're laying down a studio vocal to backing track then it's common practice to add a little " comfort" reverb into the cans , it just feels more natural to the singer than a dry direct signal.

 

 

 

 

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If you're recording or monitoring through headphones in a dry acoustic space then I would recommend using reverb. Reverb will give a dry recording more dimension and gives feedback on how a vocal may sound like in a natural space. Your raw recording sounds pretty dry from what I can hear, so a hint of the right kind of reverb might make it sound more natural. You could probably still tone down your reverb a bit. Without some musical context like background music, the reverb will stands out a bit too much.

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HELLO COSMIC DOLPHIN!!

imo YOU SHOULD ALWAYS PRACTIC AMPLIFIED THRU A MIXER EITH EFFECTS AS THAT WILL USUALLY BE AVAILABLE AND IS MOST LIKELY TO BE ENCOUNTERED

WHILE u DO GET BETTER SOUND WITH OUTBOARD RACK GEAR SUCH AS lEXICON DIGITAL REVERB IE lEICON mpx lEXICON pcm ALONG WITH A CHANNEL STRIP IE pRESONUS STUDIO CHANNEL fOCUSRITE vOICEMASTER BUT BETTER MIXERS USUALLY HAVE LEXICON EFFECTS IN THEM SO GET USED TO USING THE MIXERS EFFECTS AS u WILL ALWAYS see THEM EVERYWHERE

ALSO MAKE SURE u KNOW HOW TO OPERATE A MIXER u NEED TO KNOW ABOUT lIVE SOUND rEINFORCEMENT BUY A BOOK ON IT TO START LOOK AT aLLEN&hEATH MIXERS

​MAKE THE MOVE TO PHABTOM POWERED HNDHELD CONDENSER MICS ASAP

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the first one is defently the best in my opinion but can you produce that special effect with a microphone and mixer to impress a live audience?

 

 

A half decent mic would pick up the natural reverb in the room. The one I am using at the moment picks up nothing. It hardly picks up the direct sound. Reason I am using it right now is that it compensates for nothing and forces me to work hard.

 

I have used a half decent mic before and the reverb was a lot more than the reverb added in the first clip. So I will have to find a way to cut it down, once I settle on a proper recording system.

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I prefer to practise singing without reverb or effects so that i can really hear my clean voice. That helps me to hear mistakes and things i have to work on much easier. I think effects can really distract you and make your voice sound better or at least different then it is.

Thats why i prefer to avoid that during practise

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I prefer to practise singing without reverb or effects so that i can really hear my clean voice. That helps me to hear mistakes and things i have to work on much easier. I think effects can really distract you and make your voice sound better or at least different then it is.

Thats why i prefer to avoid that during practise

 

I think both are important.

 

Even without any processing, reverb happens depending on where you sing. The "instrument" is the whole works, yourself and your environment. And, if you record as well, your voice is being processed for better or worse the second it goes into a mic. So, you have to be aware of all these things.

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I think both are important.

 

Even without any processing, reverb happens depending on where you sing. The "instrument" is the whole works, yourself and your environment. And, if you record as well, your voice is being processed for better or worse the second it goes into a mic. So, you have to be aware of all these things.

 

Yes you are right. I normally use all the effects on a special practise so that i can focus on that as well. It depends on what i want to get better at. Sometimes i shift my focus on my voice only to work on that and sometimes i practise "how to get the best sound out of my voice" with effects etc.

So like you said. It is a combination out of both

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Also practicing with the device you can not hear what you really sound like too, practicing without you judge your self much better

 

​Maybe you could practice without first off and master that

​Then when your song is ready and as good as it ever will be then start practicing with device after?

​As I think learning the basics needs to be first and not second

 

 

That's a good way to approach it. It allows you to understand how your voice works dry, then when you add all of the stuff, you learn if you need to work it any differently, and how.

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Scary as it may seem, you don't have one "real voice". You never hear what you "really" sound like. You sound different in different places. On top of that, the way you hear yourself is different from the way other people hear you. (And different people almost definitely hear you differently, too.) The only "unprocessed" versions of your own voice you get to hear, nobody else hears, for sure. All you can do is listen back to a processed recording of your voice in a lot of different settings. As soon as you pick your mic and a recording system, you are picking a processor. You can pick one that forces you to do as much work as possible, or one that you could use in a production. Both are good for training.

 

Yeah, so most people like to pretend they sound fantastic in the driest recordings that they never publish. It's all part of the BS game of pretending you were born a pro.

 

 

 

 

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