working with a vocal unit and reverb. your thoughts?

[S&L]

working with a vocal unit and reverb. your thoughts?

 

I have been working with a few rock/pop bands with female vocals in small and medium venues - halls, bars and such. I have been using a reverb unit and vocal process unit dedicated to the main female vocal. alesis midiverb 4 and behringer vx2000. I patch from a post EQ aux send to both units and back to desk. reverb uses a little gate and I change the decay dependant on the female, the band and most importantly the room. on the vocal unit I use:

1. the gate, in an attempt to stop spill into the mic from the often too close band and from the monitors.

2. compression to level out the female voices - these girls struggle with huge variations in level and in some cases are still learning mic technique. the compression hopefully allows them to sing more naturally and bring quieter vocals up in the mix (to compete with rock guitars) without moving the fader every ten seconds as well as (in theory) levelling out some of the too close too powerful vocals in their louder passages.

3, EQ section which adds warmth and roundness to their voice.

 

in a studio one may add EQ, then reverb and then compression in that order but here with the gear I am using I am (dependant on how I patch) either:

a) adding EQ from desk then reverb then gate (gating the reverb with vocal unit) then compression, then vocal unit EQ ..or

b) adding EQ from the desk, then gate (which would only gate what goes into mic and not reverb) then compression then vocal unit EQ, then reverb.

 

So my question (which occured while I was mixing this weekend) is in two parts:

first which way round would you connect the above and why

second in what other additional or alternative ways would you cope with female singers who vary their volume while not compensating distance to mic.

 

I should say that generally on the desk all that gets added is a little top end.

[savage1]

If you wanted the same signal path as you have in the studio you could just put the mic in to a channel on your desk add some eq then take a prefade aux to your midiverb which comes back to another channel which you then insert the vx2000 on... You'd have to use the wet dry controll on the midiverb to do that.

 

Personally I'd just have the vx inserted on the vocal channel and the midi verb on an aux (then back to 1 or 2 channels)

[Wilflet]

 

 

Personally I'd just have the vx inserted on the vocal channel and the midi verb on an aux (then back to 1 or 2 channels)

 

seconded. dynamics inserted and effect on aux.return is the normal way for live.

 

are you working with the same acts repeatedly, somtimes a bit of friendly advice on mic technique goes much futher than anything you can do on the desk.

[S&L]

Personally I'd just have the vx inserted on the vocal channel and the midi verb on an aux (then back to 1 or 2 channels)

 

and weirdly I didn't think of this - time for a lie down in a dark room I think!

 

are you working with the same acts repeatedly, somtimes a bit of friendly advice on mic technique goes much futher than anything you can do on the desk.

 

yes, I do work (mostly) with the same acts - with the young ones I am working on it, I work mostly with teenagers giving them an opportunity to put a better polish on their performances and sound set ups... I do work with one band who are my contemporaries and we will have to see whether the 'older' hand can coached too!