Quote:
Originally Posted by Mbroady
So far I recorded a bunch of songs tracking the guitar and vocals separately and 2 songs with using the figure 8 set up, singing and playing at the same time.
Sonically the tracked songs do sound better but they do not have the synergy of the live performance.
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I've done it both ways and have found it much harder to get a great performance doing both at the same time. But in the beginning I ran into the same issue as you: the separately tracked performance didn't have the synergy of the simultaneously tracked performance. The way I overcame it was to teach myself to sing silently. I mouth the words and do everything with my mouth and head and body that I'd do if I were actually singing except for the singing. It wasn't an easy skill to master but once I did, I was able to get the kind of synergy I wanted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mbroady
However, When played back with a hard pan the live performance sounds great. When played in mono you can hear a small amount of phase issue. I think it’s worth the small loss of fidelity considering its feel much better. And I will experiment with mic placement as well reversing the phase and/or EQ (good learning moments for me)
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Panning hard like that might sound okay with the speakers in close proximity to each other but I can't imagine that's a good technique when the speakers have some space between them. To my ears, it would be very unnatural to have the guitar coming from one direction and the vocal from another.
As for the alignment issue, there are plugins for that. I use one called
SoundRadix Auto-Align. It's quite simple to use and it really makes a difference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mbroady
The other obsession is with the ability to tweek the pitch of the vocals when tracked separately. I have good pitch but not always perfect. But once again, I prefer the feel and vibe of the live takes and can live with a few slightly off pitch notes, as long as the emotional content is on. Ifs it’s really noticeable I will just do another take.
As a side note, I tried using melodyne In polyphonic mode on the vocals (both guitar and voice are recorded in one stereo track. and ........) I’ll leave it as it is 
I guess the technology is not there yet. |
That should be some incentive for learning to track separately with synergy. Melodyne is a great tool but you're wanting it to fix just the vocals on a track with vocals and guitar and that doesn't sound all that workable since there will be times your voice and guitar are both sounding the same note in the same octave. When you fix one, you pull the other out of tune.