I'm soliciting feedback for an EP I'm going to try to release over the summer. I have virtually no mixing/mastering ability, and I'm a little too close to the material to really judge it at this point. I'm also trying to work on these pieces as purely electronic/sampling pieces. One of the main issues is with recording of vocals - my voice has a certain frequency that it just resonates really really strongly at, and i'm not clear on exactly how to cut it out. Not sure if its a mic placement thing or something that can be fixed with some targeted EQ. I'm using an AudioTechnica mic which is supposed to have a really really flat response.

I know we don't really use donewaiting for this sort of thing, but I thought it would be a cool way to use the message board. Or whatever. You can make a snarky comment - as long as its hilarious. Or I'd love some withering criticism as well - actually i'd kinda love that - as long as its specific.

The EP will be called "Five Songs about Memory":
http://snd.sc/NPHfMz

I think the vocal tracks sound fine. I can hear the frequency you are talking about, but I wouldn't get too self conscious about it.

Are you using a 4033 on your voice? What mic pre? Are you printing compression/limiting or doing it after the fact?

You might move the mic around the room and try singing. The frequency might be coming from early reflections somewhere. You can also try singing to it with the mic off axis, like, tilted forward, not sideways. Or set it so you are singing just over the top of the mic.

If you have a mic w/ variable polar patterns (like an AT4050), you might try using figure of eight. I've had good results on male vocals w/ figure of eight. You just gotta make sure what the back lobe of the mic is seeing is not a weird reflection of your voice or something.

If you wanna get further out into he weeds, you might check out Raygun Suitcase by Pere Ubu. David Thomas has a kind of crazy voice vaguely similar to yours, but the recordings of his singing are smooth. Google around and see what they used at Suma for that record. The mics might have been hand made one of a kind tho. I remember reading they used an altec passive eq for a bunch of that stuff. I also read David Thomas did a lot of vocals outside so there were no reflections at all, but i dunno if he stood outside on Raygun Suitcase.

i LOVE this guy.

Ah. Thx for the feedback by the way. It turns out I was doing all sorts of things wrong. Lol. For instance, I'd been recording things into a hard disk recorder on a really poor setting. The reflections and mic placement comments were very helpful, so thanks for that.

Is there anything that using a particular mic would do, aside from giving a different frequency response? (well, aside from pickup pattern, and maybe proximity effect issues (that's technically different from pickup pattern?)). Presumably one can identify the frequencies that one's voice resonates at, and pick a mic appropriately based on its frequency response?

Oh, i was using super cheapo equipment. Expensive compared to what I had before. AT 2025. Mic Preamp was a Yamaha mixer... Compression added after the fact. Recorded into a TASCAM DR-07 - on the setting that I use to record lectures for class. I fixed that last thing.