Most wars are won or lost before the shooting starts.
Okay - this is going to sound incredibly dorky, but for some reason I just started thinking about being a boy scout, like a million years ago.
Here is something we had to memorize way back then
“A boy scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent”.
All good values for people to have. I actually dropped out of scouts after a year or so because I hated all the hazing and peer pressure. Camping was fun though. Ah, those were the days.
Ok - i decided to check out the tc helicon “correct” voice processor a little more to see what it is doing and to figure out how to get the 2kHz boost that I need to cut.
One of the problems I have is that the device gets jostled in my gig bag so all the settings get changed each time I take it out. I definitely think that theres a lot of coolness to the textures that the device can add, but some of the settings sound just terrible. Yesterday the pedal was off through the whole rehearsal, which I guess was a good thing since things didnt sound that bad.
Still it would be good to dial in the “right settings” so I don’t have to figure it out during a show.
There are a couple basic features:
Pitch Correction: this is the big one and can be disabled with a footswitch. Generally I find that a small amount helps smooth things out, but setting it higher than 50% adds a lot of distortion to the voice. The pitch correction also doesnt really work if you’re just singing the wrong note, so it wont help if you have no monitors.
Warmth: this is a mild chorus effect, which doesnt seem to hurt at all.
Auto-shape: slightly better on. The “shape” knob has more influence on the sound. Since I’m usually light on top end, set this to 3oclock.
Auto-compress: this really muffles things with my mic - LEAVE IT OFF. Set the compress knob to 3oclock to make up for the tight working range of the OM5.
De-ess: since i’ve emphasised highs, a lot of hiss can get through. Turn the de-ess up to about 3 oclock to help with this.
Pitch correction: 12 oclock is about right. Maybe a little less though its easy to turn off if it becomes annoying.
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Tried these settings live and they dont really seem to work. The biggest problem is a little excess gain around 5kHz which results in nasty feedback. In order to cut this down we have to turn down the whole unit which makes the bulk of the vocals softer and a little indistinct. There doesnt seem to be any real way around it for now so I’ve taken this out of the equation.
I wish I had a handy parametric eq to compensate for the mic a little. Dont know if a rack mounted unit is the right choice though…
We’ve been having a lot of trouble with our live sound lately - mostly centering around my live vocals. The two big problems are not being able to hear me clearly over the band and me being pitchy because of pushing and not being able to hear myself over the band. 
Today I was able to get the guys to come play in the garage where things are a little more separated and I was relieved to find that my pitch problems mostly went away. I could sing at a fairly comfortable volume the whole night - sometimes pushing a little, but never really having to scream to be heard. I was using the TC Helicon to smooth things out a little, but when I would look down at it, it seemed like it wasnt doing that much. When I went to check it out after the rehearsal i found out that it was in bypass mode, which makes the result of the practice even more satisfying.
There were a few rough spots, but things sounded more or less the way I intended with a few exceptions.
The first was that the vocal tracks winded up with a lot of guitar. I think this was because we left Kris’ mic pointed at his amp, but theres a chance that the vocal compressor is picking up guitar. This shouldnt really be the issue because the OM5 I’m using is supposed to have a very tight polar pattern. Actually one of the problems I have is that the working distance of this mic is very small - maybe an inch or so. Backing off even a little can cause you to totally disappear.
Second problem was that the first song was a little pitchier than the others. The solution to this is to practice the chest-head voice transition and .
The final problem is that my setup is letting a lot of power through in the 150-750Hz range (frequencies sort of centered at the soft palate). The guitar basically has enough distortion that it occupies the entire band from 50Hz-5kHz at a constant level, so to cut I need a lot more power (10db?) in the 1-3kHz range, either by changing the eq setup or vocal technique. The problem with using on-board eq is that a lot of feedback can happen right around 3kHz, which will only cause the engineer to turn me down.
Things i need to do:
- stay right on mic all the time and learn to control volume by how loud I sing
- sing at a moderate pressure level that I can maintain
- warm up and practice the voice transitions
- see if I can boost the 1-3kHz range to get some clarity above the guitar using both fx and technique
