{"id":10891,"date":"2013-05-20T14:12:46","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T18:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/?p=10891"},"modified":"2013-05-20T14:12:46","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T18:12:46","slug":"recording-and-mixing-our-signature-vocal-sound-in-sonar-x2-by-norman-matthew-murder-fm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/2013\/05\/20\/recording-and-mixing-our-signature-vocal-sound-in-sonar-x2-by-norman-matthew-murder-fm\/","title":{"rendered":"Recording and Mixing Our Signature Vocal Sound in SONAR X2 – Norman Matthew [MURDER FM]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey world, forget\u00a0your\u00a0Monday-hate and dive in with me to make the first day\u00a0of the week\u00a0a little less sucky and a bit more murderous. Henceforth, it\u2019s\u00a0NorMonday. So if you find\u00a0crawling back into the grind\u00a0a bore, let\u2019s\u00a0get board–maybe a little chitty-chat about production techniques, tricks, voodoo,\u00a0esoterica\u00a0and sleight-of-hand.\u00a0No blahs here,\u00a0just\u00a0blast.<\/p>\n

MURDER\u00a0FM<\/a> has been blessed with some really nice response to our sound both here at home and the U.K. and the Cakewalk folks were kind enough to ask me to talk a little about the things that go into producing our sound. Hahhh! The\u00a0real\u00a0trick\u2019ll\u00a0be to shut me up, let\u2019s get to it\u2014hopefully it\u2019s helpful.<\/p>\n

\"\"The nuts, bolts and screams of\u00a0\u201cWe The Evil.\u201d<\/strong>
\nComing back from our Sold Out UK Tour,\u00a0I\u00a0really wanted to push the envelope with MURDER FM’s new record, so when SONAR X2<\/a> arrived, I immediately went to work on using it to shape what would become MURDER FM’s heavier and darker sound.<\/p>\n

I recorded the Vocals for “We The Evil<\/a>” using a Cakewalk UA-101 as my interface into X2. Using a\u00a0Nady\u00a0condenser mic, I always track as direct and flat as possible, including no preamps for multiple reasons, 1.) I have the cleanest signal for optimal mix options and preamps will color the signal nicely, which leads to reason number 2.) Cleaner signals force me to have to be a better singer and really develop my character versus letting the effects and preamps shape my tone. It’s a bit more work in the end, but much better for what I am trying to do with my own signature production techniques.<\/p>\n

\"\"Oh yeah,\u00a0screamage.\u00a0There’s\u00a0a lot\u00a0of textures in the vocals on “We The Evil”. You don’t “hear” some, but you “feel” them and that’s what I’m going for. It’s a\u00a0lot more orchestral in the arrangement than one might think when it comes to creating “big dark vocals” that feel huge, but are still intimate. There are\u00a0some lower octave vocal accents in the verses and lots of doubles and harmonies in the chorus to create that arena sing along vibe. To really make the screams punch,\u00a0I\u00a0cranked the SOFTUBE “saturation knob” about 40% of the way to get my point across!<\/wbr><\/p>\n

Mic, pre and chain (or not).<\/strong>
\nHere is where I would sing the praises of the\u00a0Nady\u00a0SCM-1000 Wired Cardioid Studio Condenser Microphone.\u00a0For it’s price, this thing is a beast and has yet to let me down. It captures my voice perfectly and really accentuates things without me having to going into a preamp. On “We The Evil” I used and abused X2’s ProChannel feature for everything I needed vocal wise. It’s such an amazing and powerful tool from the PC2A and Console Emulator Channel\/Bus to the Compressor and Saturation Knob, it really gave me everything I needed for the vocal track and is perfect for drums and my master bus.<\/p>\n

Getting my grit on: Not a perfect science.<\/strong>
\nFor FX, I used VX-64 Vocal Strip. The\u00a0doubler\u00a0really helps the chorus vocals pop out, especially in the gang vocal sections and the\u00a0Compander\u00a0in the vocal strip really brings out the “throaty” tone in verse vocals, so much so, when mixing I cranked the tracked and could literally feel the grit in my throat in my stomach, it’s really a powerful tool. TheDeesser\u00a0in the strip helps to clean up the throaty “s and p” mishaps.\u00a0The “tube equalizer”\u00a0allows\u00a0me to bring out that mid range punch.\u00a0I used\u00a0the Delay within the VX-64 on my main chorus vocal help to create the hugeness of the chorus vocal by putting it just a tad out of time with the backup vocals and harmonies.\u00a0That way,\u00a0everything isn’t hitting directly at you–but more at slight little milliseconds off of one another,\u00a0much like the natural movement of a choir…Too perfect is\u00a0tooo\u00a0bland in my opinion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Scene of the rhyme.<\/strong>
\nAll of the new MURDER FM record\u00a0was tracked at my studio, THE SOUND FOUNDATION<\/a> in Dallas.\u00a0I\u2019ve got multiple amp\u00a0setups,\u00a0drum isolation booth, a collection of different\u00a0mics\u00a0and all the latest Cakewalk plug-ins. One of my new\u00a0faves\u00a0for guitar tones is OVERLOUD. I track a mic’d\u00a0amp tone and a clean DI signal\u00a0for both\u00a0post production and editing purposes. Heavier\u00a0sounds\u00a0such as MURDER FM’s tend to\u00a0brickwall\u00a0with distorted tones. Having a clean signal helps to view the transients gives me the flexibility to plug in anything missing in the\u00a0mic’d\u00a0amp tone to obtain the fullest guitar tone I possibly clean and avoid that “thin” one dimensional tone.<\/p>\n

I told you\u2014get me going and I don\u2019t stop. But hey\u2014God is in the details and I don\u2019t\u00a0wanna\u00a0make him mad, so I spend a\u00a0lotta\u00a0time there. Besides, who wants to think about how far it is to the weekend when you could be\u00a0thinking interfaces and plug-ins.\u00a0\u2018Tis\u00a0the diff between a mere Monday and a\u00a0NorMonday.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey world, forget\u00a0your\u00a0Monday-hate and dive in with me to make the first day\u00a0of the week\u00a0a little less sucky and a bit more murderous. Henceforth, it\u2019s\u00a0NorMonday. So if you find\u00a0crawling back into the grind\u00a0a bore, let\u2019s\u00a0get board–maybe a little chitty-chat about production techniques, tricks, voodoo,\u00a0esoterica\u00a0and sleight-of-hand.\u00a0No blahs here,\u00a0just\u00a0blast. MURDER\u00a0FM has been blessed with some really nice … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Recording and Mixing Our Signature Vocal Sound in SONAR X2 – Norman Matthew [MURDER FM]”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,1836,1591,1462,1619,66,49,50,1604],"tags":[1854,1461,1253,1899,1900],"class_list":["post-10891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artist-news","category-ca-2a-t-type-leveling-amplifier","category-guest-blogger","category-normondays","category-prochannel","category-products","category-sonar","category-sonar-x2","category-z3ta-2","tag-mixing-vocals","tag-murder-fm","tag-norman-matthew","tag-normonday","tag-recording-vocals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}