First vocals on this track were laid down yesterday, and hence the first version of this song being posted. This is the first track post “Fire Fire Fire EP” to be worked on, and while we were looking through our “sketch” folder yesterday we realized we’ve got another four or so songs to work on in the near future.

Most likely we’ll try to finish this track before moving on, we’ve still got some work to do on the ending of this song, and this is a very rough mix, so there will be more work to do on the vocal track as well.

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Måns testing mics

We were not so happy with the vocal sound on some of the tracks, so we decided to do a microphone test. It has been difficult to get a sound that is both pleasant yet can cut through the mix. We chose the song Fire Fire Fire to try different mics on, partly because it has both very soft and quite loud vocals, and partly because it was a song where the vocals were hard to mix.

We connected four mics we had available to the four mic inputs on my Motu Traveler. The mics were (left to right in pic):

• T-Bone SC400 large diaphragm condenser
• Sennheiser MD 541 dynamic (no bass cut)
• Sennheiser MD 421 dynamic (no bass cut)
• Studio Electronics B1 large diaphragm condenser (no bass cut)

To make the test at least pseudo-scientific Måns connected the mics and I connected the mic inputs, so we didn’t know which mic went what input. But then I had to cheat: two mics needed phantom power, so I knew which were the condenser mics at least. All mics were set to give approximately the same level to the track.

Måns sang a verse/chorus and then we listened. Track 1 sounded pretty good, but a bit thin. Track 2 sounded crap in comparison, less treble and with some ugly resonant frequencies in the lower mid. Track 3 lacked a lot of treble. Track 4 was similar to Track 1, but less sticky.

So what was the result? Track 2 was the T-Bone mic. It sounded quite bad, so we won’t use it for vocals. Track 3 was the Sennheiser 541. I bought this second hand from an auction and have used it as a snare mic. Compared to the others it sounded almost broken since it lacked so much treble. It will stay in the drawer when we record vocals.

The mics that sounded good were the 421 (Track 1) and the B1 (Track 4). The 421 had a quite sharp quality that made the vocals cut through the mix. Unfortunately it sounded a bit unpleasant on the louder parts. The B1 sounded the most “natural” of the four mics, but it didn’t cut through the mix as well as the 421.

We re-recorded the whole song using the 421. We’ll see if we are happy with this take or if we want to do it again.

What we learned:

• Mics sound really different.
• It’s hard to say if a mic sounds good or bad if you don’t have anything to compare with. A/B testing is recommended.
• We want to try a really expesive mic!

We performed an advanced microphone test on these vocals. You can read more about that test here.

All in all, I am much happier with this mix and the sound of the vocals now. Before I felt that they were muddled but now it cuts nicely through. What do you think?

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In my opinion, this song is starting to become something more, and I will now go ahead and change the status from “sketch” to “song” here on moonpalace.se. I’m still not entirely pleased with the song structure, and I want to shake things up a bit to make it more interesting, especially in the second verse. I’m thinking of adding some vocal harmonies. We’ll see.

On the bright side, I think this is the best vocal sound we’ve had yet. And I don’t mean the cool tape reverb slap-back effect, but just overall “sound” of the voice on this track is better than what we’ve heard so far. I think. What do you think?

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Also, Anders had previously tweaked the mix and sounds, so there are some changes, especially after the second chorus, during the break and outtro.

I made a mistake when exporting the song, so there’s about 10 seconds of silence in the beginning, before the song starts. Sorry about that.

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I don’t know if the snare really should go there, but I feel like something should fill that space. If not a snare, then what?

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Studio Projects B1

This is the mic we most often use for the lead vocals. There are a lot of good large diaphragm condenser microphones for about $100, and I guess this is just one of them. But I like the design, and it got good reviews when Swedish music magazine Studio tested it. They sound a bit harsh around 5kHz, but that is pretty useful. I’ve got two of them, so we also use them for stereo recordings of piano and as drum overheads.

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So this is the result of last night’s session. We did lead and backing vocals, added some synths to the ending, and Måns cut out a piece of the vocals to make a radio-like reply. And a fade out!

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