Okay, kind of a strange topic but one I’ve been mulling over for a while. Have you noticed in many commercial recordings that the pure ‘ee’ vocal sound is often modified to something else approximating to it? E.g. kind of a ‘ee’ slant on ‘ay’. And I’ve been wondering what the reasoning behind this is. Is it just the vocalists who sing like that (so many seem to have affected accents)?
Recording my own voice I am aware I have a certain reediness in it in small peaks between 2 - 3 kHz. This is especially apparent on pure ‘ee’ sounds which causes an unpleasant ‘ringing’ to the vocal sound. I usually filter this out with a couple of dynamic eqs. But despite my best efforts whatever I do affects those frequencies on all aspects of my voice resulting in too much de-essing and general drop around those frequencies.
I need to take out that ringing and then pull back up the remaining frequencies. Is there a recognised technique for doing that?
Now I totally accept I am not the world’s best vocalist but I produce guide tracks for lead singers and now just sing the odd backing vocals. But I want my vocs to sound as good as they can be.
So my solution is to modify my vocal takes (as in many commercial recordings) so I sing a kind of alternative ‘ee’ which isn’t so pure. And that’s surprisingly difficult as it involves modifying tongue positions which have become embedded in my singing technique over many years.
I just wondered if anyone else has come across this issue and what your solutions might be.