(by CSP)
Our next planned release, “Turn Me Into Snow,” is currently in its mixing phase. This means all the parts have been recorded and we’re tweaking the sounds so that they go together in a way that will make the listening experience as enjoyable as possible.
The purpose of our last Thursday meeting (Heavy Therbsday) was to work on a different article we had originally planned for this newsletter. Before we got too deep into writing and formatting that we ended up checking out my latest mix of “Turn Me Into Snow.''
I was highlighting some processing I had done on Jinxz’s background vocals, when Jinxz noticed that the delay was causing a lot of high pitched “tuh,” and “snuh” sounds.
I explained that this was due to something called sibilance, which there was a decent amount of in recordings of the particular background part we ended up re-listening to. Sibilance is the sharp or hissing sounds your mouth makes when the tongue and teeth touch, such as “ss,” “ch,” “sh,” or “z”. Too little sibilance can make words sound unnatural but too much can be hard on the ear and make a recording unenjoyable to listen to.
We spent a little while discussing how we wanted to proceed. I had taken some steps to reduce the sibilance, however it was too prevalent to fully remove the offending sounds without compromising the parts of the vocal recording that were really good. We considered keeping it as is and seeing if further tweaking of the mix would help. However we ultimately decided it made more sense to re-record the parts.
We headed to Google to see what could be done to possibly reduce this sound in our vocal recordings. After only a small amount of digging we found several online articles detailing various tips we could try employing to reduce sibilance.
Jinxz by his computer recording vocals for Heavy Herb's fifth debut single "Turn Me Into Snow"
Mic Placement
The first thing we learned we could experiment with was the placement of the mic. Previously, Jinxz had been recording with the microphone very close to his mouth and we realized this was probably a big contributor to the issue. We had Jinxz do a take close to the microphone, then another a little further away and then another even further after that.
After reviewing the takes we found that the recording where Jinxz was the closest to the mic had the most sibilance. The recording where he’s the furthest from the mic ended up picking up additional sibilance from the room Jinxz was in, in addition to a lot of loss in the main sound of Jinxz’s voice.
This left the one where he was only a little bit further from the mic than in the first recording, which still had some sibilance, but not as much as the other two distances.
Next, we tried re-angling the microphone so that instead of pointing directly at Jinxz’s mouth we would angle the mic slightly downward. This made it so any of the sounds being made by the tongue and teeth aren’t in the main field of the microphone’s capture range. This also helped reduce a tiny amount of sibilance.
T-Shirt Time
Another recommendation from the internet was to use a pop filter, which Jinxz had been using. Since so much sibilance was coming through on the mic he was using, just for fun, we decided to see if putting a t-shirt in front of the microphone would help at all.
To our surprise the t-shirt managed to reduce a bit of sibilance without having major implications on the overall vocal quality. Just for fun, again, we decided to see what adding a second t-shirt would sound like.
While I thought it would dampen the main vocal too much, it ended up improving the sibilance issue just a tiny bit and to my surprise warmed up the vocal slightly. I don’t think we ended up experimenting with three t-shirts. It might have been worth it to try but at the moment I think we felt that maybe that was just too ridiculous. Might be something to re-visit.
Jinxz demonstrating how to be too close to the mic in order to pick up a lot of s, c and t sibilance. After some research and adaptation we re-recorded the vocal tracks from about a foot away from the mic in a silent room (we had to unplug all the fans).
She Sell Seashells by the Sea Shore
There were several tips we weren’t able to try in the moment, such as using a different microphone to record. The last one we were able to play around with was experimenting with how Jinxz would pronounce his words.
We sat there for a couple of minutes reciting the lyrics and identifying which syllables had the most sibilance. Just like everything else we had tried so far we found that just by trying to focus on this aspect of vocal performance we were able to reduce a little bit more of this troublesome sound.
Hit Record
At this point, we felt like we had sufficiently exhausted the number of tips from the internet that would help us resolve our recording issue. Jinxz went ahead and recorded 5 to 6 takes of the sections we were re-recording. He sent them to me as soon as he felt like he had what we needed and then I added them to our project file.
After a little tweaking with the gain, and some copy pasting of the previous vocal mix settings we got to hear the new vocals in context. They ended up being amazing. I would say that the difference completely exceeded our expectations. Based on how minimal all the changes sounded when we were assessing them during the recording process I really thought it wouldn’t make that big of a difference but I’m happy to have been wrong.
No set date for “Turn Me Into Snow” but we’re working hard to make sure it’s available to you as soon as possible. If you made it here, thanks for reading!
