how are you guys treating vocals

[josephjobling]

Hi i am at college and started working on a project with one class mate called joe. We are working on a hip hop track (i know this is a techno forum but hoping you can help) anywho - got some sweet vocals from him and looking for the best way to treat them to get the best sound possable.
Can you point me in the right direction. He has a very rough/gritty voice.
Cheers
Joseph

[rhythmtech]

firstly a good condesor mic (with a pop shield!) (for a rough voice you might want to use something smooth like an se4400 or shure SM87a not the beta! or if you're lucky enough to have highend then an AKG414 or nuemann 87)) thru a high end pre-amp (if you have one) if you havent then run it thru a good pre-amp IR on something like acusticaudio nebula or one of the input sections on urs classic console strip.

next you wanna de-ess it to take away sibilance, then compress fairly heavily for that upfront hip hop sound. the LA2A comp is fairly industry standard for this kinda thing. then its a case of eqing and placing it in a reverb space (if recorded in a very dead room).

just remember that the right way is the one that sounds best.

[josephjobling]

cheers - used a nuemann 87 (not mine it belongs to the college) the room recorded in was pretty dead - so i have added some reverb - ta for the advice that changed it for the better. compression wise i am using a plug in - sonalksis. have added quite heavy compression because we are new to this and joe (my subject/rapper) moved around alot and some of it is quiet.
i could do with some advice on this as i still can't get the quiet parts to the same volume as the rest - what else could i do to improve this or is a re take in order (i was trying to avoid doing a re take)
thanks for the help

[rhythmtech]

no need to re-take if you're happy with the sound.

what ill usually do is have the lead vocal track dry and route it into an auxilliry track with heavy compression on it, that way you can mix into the compressor rather than have it pick up the vocal.

to get the quiter bits sitting right just do a few automation passes with the fader and then zoom in and tidy it up.

[josephjobling]

sweet i'll have a crack at it - when i woke up this morning i thougt i'd have a nice day chillin process joe's vocals get it soundin sweet - this production business is hard man - however very worth while its starting to sound nice - cheers for the help