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Smoothing out the "buzziness" in a low male vox.


rasputin1963

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I'm recording myself singing harmonies,  in overdub,   for a client's project.    A solemn country/gospel type song,   and I'm trying to make the backup male harmonies sound like,  say,  the Sons of The Pioneers or the Jordanaires.

 

Something starts happening when you line up untreated all-male harmonies:   the natural vocal-cord "buzziness" in lower notes starts to add up,  creating a "too busy",  too thick,  buzzy/raspy   sound...  

 

What's the secret to making low-pitched male vocals sound smooth as dark molasses,   not overly buzzy/vibrating?

 

Thanks,  Dave aka,  ras

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Hafta hear it. But vocal approach?  Arrangement? Needing different mics? Too close to the mics? Too much proximity effect? No usage of a high-pass filter? 

Who knows? Some or all of these things?

I almost always record background vocals with the vocalist backed off with the microphone. Sounds better to me, blends better with the lead vocal, sounds more natural. I really don't like background vocals to be recorded with vocalists right up on the mic. As always, YMMV.

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Once recorded though... Buzziness? This implies some highs mayhem. Listen to each track and find the source. It won't be on all most likely. Either notch out or de-ess at a probably lower freq than esses.

 

Get your highs from the non offending backups and tame only the true offenders. Then group and compress and eq all together after the cleanup.

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Something that came to mind about this and it could have nothing to do with the problem... Perhaps there's too much information outside the fundamental frequency of each vocal. What intervals are you using? What's the chord structure? Have you used similar structures and achieved good results? 

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