Facade -- a project that could have failed.

[RECORDING THE SQUASHED PIANO]

Let me share how to get a fine production from some dubious ingredients generated by an amateur recording artist/engineer using a single mic and having no concept of recording techniques. I can talk about this because it's my daughter, Terah Lynn, who wrote the song, playing piano and singing.  She's a good songwriter, but lacks understanding of recording. (She's middle 30's, married, has a daughter, and a second child on the way, a firefighter/paramedic husband, and seems to have little time to call Dad to come help her out. I live an hour away. But actually I think she just thought there was nothing to getting sound recorded.)

This song is a blend of Pro Tools (piano, vocal) and Audition (all the rest, including processing), and was VERY difficult to get together. On her own she recorded her piano and vocal with an SM58 Beta mic into her Pro Tools Lite setup on a Mac. She's still too enamored with the sound of  "PRO TOOLS" to think of anything else. And having a Mac eliminates her use of Audition anyway, but she knows Audition is better and easier to use because she's seen me at work with it -- and always shakes her head in wonder.

RECORDING THE SQUASHED PIANO
First, to record the piano which is 3 inches from a wall, she placed the mic at the center of the top of the piano sticking downward IN that 3 inches. This is very wrong, because the mic's going to get a bunch of swirling sound between the back of the piano and the wall.  With one mic the piano should have been moved away from the wall at least a foot or two, then the mic should have been placed above the piano a couple feet.

GETTING THE VOCAL AND SOLVING THE SONIC PROBLEMS
Second, when she recorded her vocal she sang about  4 inches away from the mic, capturing pl-e-n-ty of breathiness and an abundance of plosives. But these weren't the worst of the problems. Certain frequencies were being accentuated now and again and were very annoying. This had to be fixed or I wasn't going to do any more work on this song because it wasn't going to sound good at all. Using the Parametric EQ with a super narrow Q I scanned her vocal and came to discover her mic was literally vibrating inside at many different frequencies all over the place. THAT was the annoying sound problem. I found maybe 6 or 7 frequencies that would resonate inside the mic, totally destroying the natural sound of her voice. So -- the mic itself was an issue, and her close proximity to it abnormally increased the coloration. To fix this I used the same Parametric EQ with a little broader Q settings on the offending frequencies, decreased their volumes by -8dB, one by one over the entire vocal file, and began to get the pleasant sound I was wanting. Next I took care of numerous occurences of  "emotional breathiness" that she thought was enhancing the presentation, painstakingly located all the plosives and treated them accordingly, and diminished a great deal of sibilance. I then suggested she never use that mic again -- for ANYTHING.

After discovering this particular mic had these characteristics, I did nearly the same processing on the piano file, as well as dealing with the unnatural low resonances because of the 3 inches between piano and wall -- a lot of mid low attenuation and drastically rolling off everything below 70Hz

And finally those parts became workable. All this took maybe 10 hours of work. From there it was a matter of my adding the strings and other instruments using a Kurzweil 2000 keyboard, recorded into Audition, tweaked and mixed and tweaked and mixed, then put through final processing to smooth it all out.

From this, though, she learned how to best mic a piano (she's opted to use a digital keyboard), and how to optimally place a quality mic and herself to get vocals that don't have to be re-sculpted by software. She's since done another of her songs which I'll put up for listening soon -- a bigger and broader production by Terah Lynn.

Considering the rather unpromising technical start to the project, it doesn't sound too bad. I can't say that I'm entirely convinced by the vocal sound in the mix though - mainly because it doesn't exactly come across as 'integrated' with the backing; it's like she was in a small non-reverberant vocal booth, but the backing was being performed in a somewhat larger acoustic.

Since you've managed to restore some semblance of a better vocal sound, albeit at the expense of losing some of the lower registers, it would seem, I can't but help wonder if, as well as a little reverb, you couldn't warm up the sound slightly with a slight bass tip-up (a gentle slope probably) and/or possibly a bit of harmonic exciter applied below 1kHz. I tried this in a very crude way (center channel extracted the vocal, and processed it with Ozone) and it certainly showed signs of fitting better... (IMHO)

I can't say that I'm entirely convinced by the vocal sound in the mix though - mainly because it doesn't exactly come across as 'integrated' with the backing; it's like she was in a small non-reverberant vocal booth, but the backing was being performed in a somewhat larger acoustic.

Yes, I felt that way too, she's brighter than the rest, along with the piano, and a bit dryer. I'll pull up the session and see if I can't get something done about that. And just before I posted the mp3, I actually took out about 2dB from 1K to 5K.  So -- it must have been really bright before. I guess I was thinking that a drastic cut in that range was going to really dull it up.

Since you've managed to restore some semblance of a better vocal sound, albeit at the expense of losing some of the lower registers, it would seem, I can't but help wonder if, as well as a little reverb, you couldn't warm up the sound slightly with a slight bass tip-up (a gentle slope probably) and/or possibly a bit of harmonic exciter applied below 1kHz. I tried this in a very crude way (center channel extracted the vocal, and processed it with Ozone) and it certainly showed signs of fitting better... (IMHO)

I don't have Ozone, but will look and see if I have another plugin sitting around somewhere I haven't installed yet. Do you know of one that's reasonable and free (as in, quick to get)?

Per your observations Steve, I did some work on it. I think now it feels as though she's clothed in the ambient rather warmly, having given some low end to the vocal and piano and added reverb to better match the strings. Vocal now sounds solid and a part of the whole. Please listen and see if the tweaks are right.

Thanks again.

Given the starting point - a nice recovery

Vocal now sounds solid and a part of the whole. Please listen and see if the tweaks are right.

Well, I have to say that this is a considerable improvement! It sort-of doesn't matter that there isn't much reverb on the vocal (is there really any?), because the sound matches the backing so much better with the tweaks that further integration isn't really required.

The only real snag now is that your daughter (even though she may not have told you in so many words) will now think that you can fix/rescue just about anything - I hate to think what she'll give you next!

Actually, Steve, there is reverb on both vocal and piano, but it's long:4 seconds, and very subtle: no reflections with the coloration having all the highs from 800K to 8K greatly diminished (-20dB)leaving only the lows and extreme highs for just a sense of reverb in a large room without hearing it. She doesn't like "sproingy" reverb, I don't either -- and especially in this song that's to feel lush and broad.

And runaway, in light of your comment, I've also included here a little over a minute of the two tracks she gave me, the piano and the vocal in their raw state before a lick of treatment. It hurts my ears - both mic quality and singing technique.

She knows I can fix a lot, but she knows, at least NOW anyway, I won't do it again. She ain't "ignernt" anymore. Thanks for the comments and help.

Actually, Steve, there is reverb on both vocal and piano, but it's long:4 seconds, and very subtle: no reflections with the coloration having all the highs from 800K to 8K greatly diminished (-20dB)leaving only the lows and extreme highs for just a sense of reverb in a large room without hearing it.

I suspected as much - which is why I said "is there really any?" It strikes me that any reverb with all the artefacts at a level lower than the background isn't really going to give a 'sense' of anything - if you can't hear it, then surely you haven't sensed it in an auditory context? Or have you... ?

Whatever you've done has to be perceived, at the very least, otherwise there wouldn't be any point in doing it, would there? Whatever it was you did seems to work though, so it's hardly worth arguing about it. As a friend of mine said years ago (although in a slightly different context) - "if it works, it's neat".

Yep - she certainly owes you big time

There is something I like about the raw vocal .....  added bass guitar to balance the vocal better...

There's a beautiful performance here. Tried sculpting the vocals physically after Parametric EQ sweeps.

Brewer

Brewer -- interestingly, today she and a band are going to record this piece along with a couple other songs, which will include a couple guitars on lead and rhythm, bass, drums, and keyboard. It will be a totally different feel. I'm sure some other stuff will be added, but the basis will be a band feel as opposed to orchestration.

I'm doing the recording -- so we probably won't get finished until they do it right.

Cal - your intro orchestration / her vocals there were great - it'd be interesting to get that into a rock song. You could always then present the song to a music supervisor and get an edge on placement as it sounded perfect for film / TV.