I Am Not Afraid

If you’ve spent any time playing live or doing live sound, you may not be a big fan of this one, but feedback is an often-used addition to the mix. There is serious energy in the squeal that comes from a singer or guitar player standing too close to an amp that is ‘cranked.’ First captured in a recording in 1964 by the Beatles in “I Feel Fine” (credit John Lennon no doubt), feedback sneaks into today’s music still. Check out the feedback in the Red Hot Chili Peppers tune “The Righteous & the Wicked” on Blood Sugar Sex Magik. It is a powerful way to get listeners to anticipate some raw energy. It triggers images of live performances – real people hitting real drums, playing loud, improvising, interacting, sweating. There’s a different approach demonstrated by Tears for Fears. Feedback is featured as they orchestrate the audio spectrum to a climax at 4:35 in “Woman in Chains” on their The Seeds of Love. Feedback in any form can be a great special effect. And through the miracle of sampling, feedback should make an excellent patch. Grab your listeners with some feedback and you’ll have them eating out of the palm of your hand.

“Hello. Is This the Person With Whom I Am Singing?”

Severe EQ is often just the ticket to bring a track to life or add some depth and interest to your arrangement. Topping this list of clichés is the ‘Telephone Vocal.’ Filter out the highs and the lows and you’re left with the midrange sound that you know so well as “The Telephone.”

Counterpoint between two singers can be enhanced by the timbral contrast you create between them. Experiment with other spectral extremes: just lows or just highs or just consonants. And don’t limit this effect to vocals. Spectrum hogs like pianos and guitars can be given some unique character through aggressive subtractive equalization (that’s engineering geek-speak for turning that EQ knob toward the “-” sign, generally counterclockwise. Got it? Good.). Doing this allows you to then enjoy a key side benefit: the sound is now easier to fit into the mix. An acoustic guitar that sounds a little thin when soloed may sound great in the mix while the singer is singing because they don’t compete for the same frequencies. Ditto for piano.

Taking a radical equalization approach to the entire stereo mix is not out of bounds either. For example, consider making that bridge, which is a reflection on childhood memories, sound dated through removal of some lows and highs – throw in a little crackle and hiss and you’re really taking your listeners for a ride. So work your EQing fingers to the bone, your fresh sound may just be around the corner.

Wha_ Did You _ay?

Some of the most valuable tricks in a mix are never meant to be heard. You have probably removed problematic frequencies from a track by zooming in on it with a parametric equalizer and cutting the bad resonance out . De-Essing is a clever extension of that. Though it is more accurately described as a cliché in the amplitude domain (the primary effect being compression), its objective is the selective, instantaneous removal of problem frequencies. If you have the gear to spare you can rescue what would otherwise be an unlistenable vocal track. You will need a compressor with fast attack and release times and a side chain input. You’ll also need a parametric EQ. Patch the gear up as shown in Figure 1 below:

	Signal flow for De-Essing a vocal

Split (mult) the vocal and send it through both the compressor and the parametric EQ. The output of the compressor returns to the console to be mixed as the vocal. The output of the parametric EQ feeds the side chain of the compressor. The goal here is to have the compressor instantly pull out the “S” by reducing the amplitude (that’s what compressors do) of the vocal track very quickly when each “S” is sung. Set the compressor to its fastest attack and release times so that when an “S” goes by, the compressor can react quickly to it. The role of the parametric is to tell the compressor when to compress – to announce each harsh “S” that goes by. This is done by setting up the parametric to boost a good 10 to 15 dB around the narrow band of frequencies that contains the singer’s sibilance. The rest of the spectrum is gently lowered so that, essentially, only the sibilance passes through the EQ.

So that’s how is works. How do you get there in practice? First of all, take your time if you’ve never done this before. De-Essing is an iterative polishing process that is also something of an art. It will take some tweaking to finally get it right. You can look forward with confidence to it being a quick and easy fix in the future. Investing some time in it now and experimenting a little is not a bad approach, but remember, you are processing the lead vocal, arguably the most important single track in the mix. When you are ready to finally use the de-essed vocal, give it a good critical listen. Rest assured that once you’ve got it right, it really works! The sibilance will be gone, removed seamlessly! I still get a kick out of watching the compressor’s L.E.D.’s flicker each instant a sibilant consonant is sung.

The first step in de-essing is to monitor the output of the parametric, not the compressor. Either patch it into your console and solo it or, if you are really hip (and have better gear at home than I do), your compressor lets you monitor the sidechain input with the flip of a switch. In either case, listen to the EQed vocal only. Before you begin ‘Searching for Sibilance’ (a daytime soap opera about two recording engineers and a producer?), please make sure you are monitoring at a low level. Don’t crack your contact lenses, or fry your ears, tweeters and amps with the rather strong, tooth-polishing sound of sibilance boosted 18 dB. Start with the EQ flat across all bands. In the band whose cuts/boosts include the presence and sibilance range of about 3 to 8 kHz., dial in a boost of about 5 to 10 dB, narrow the bandwidth to something just shy of its tightest setting, and ‘search for sibilance’ by scanning the 3-8 kHz. range slowly with the frequency sweep pot while listening to the vocal. When the sibilance begins to jump out, you are getting close. Zoom in on it the same way you search out a bad resonance in the snare drum: narrow the bandwidth gradually and fine tune the selected frequency until you are boosting only the problem frequency. In this case you want to be boosting each “S,” its related “T,” “CH,” “SH,” and so on, without emphasizing anything else. Once you’ve got this accomplished, use the rest of the parametric EQ sections to gently pull out, with broad bandwidths, the rest of the spectrum, or as much as you conveniently can. Be careful and conservative here. A neighboring band on your EQ will probably overlap with the band you have been working on. Make sure that you don’t use conflicting settings. 3 or 6 dB reduction of non-sibilant frequencies is the objective. You simply want to ensure the compressor isn’t distracted by other parts of the spectrum in your vocal track. Once the parametric equalizer is properly adjusted, return to the configuration of Figure 1 with this EQed vocal feeding the sidechain of the compressor.

On the compressor, start with a high compression ratio (8 to 12) and begin lowering the threshold from its highest setting down until you begin to hear and see it work on each “S” sung. Play with threshold and ratio settings on the compressor and the sibilance boost level on the parametric until the compressor begins to remove enough sibilance to stop that ear-piercing pain while leaving enough for clarity and naturalness in the voice. Irregular behavior in which you seem to be removing some but not all of the sibilance is often an indication that the boosted frequency in the EQ is incorrect. Remember, it is also possible that the bandwidth is so narrow that it fails to catch some sibilant frequencies. Broaden the bandwidth and tweak the selected frequency until you get exactly the behavior you want.

De-Essing units are simply a pre-assembly of the same signal flow, but through equalization and compression circuitry designed specifically for removing sibilance. The advantage to such a dedicated unit is that you can apply it much more efficiently toward this purpose. The downside is that the processor may only be able to de-ess; as a result the compressor and equalizer are less flexible and often cannot really be used for any other application, compressing a bass or EQing a piano for example. The versatility we Home Studio Engineers demand of our gear makes owning a De-Esser impractical. This sneaky use of a compressor and a parametric EQ is a good solution.

De-essing has applications besides lead vocal track triage. Building on the killer vocal track you started layering with delay clichés last month, try adding some very (one or two measures) long delays. Make them supportive of the lead vocal, not distracting from it, by de-essing them. Or consider trying to de-finger-squeak a bright acoustic guitar using the same theory. If you are willing to go that extra mile, this cliché will bend over backwards to put you in the fast lane of the yellow brick road to success.