Can anyone point me to recordings that do this? Off the top of my head, Lou Reed/VU come to mind.

Basically, I don't have a unit and I don't like the sound of cheap units, so I'm going to try to do my vocals without it and/or use the room. If anyone could point me to recordings or give me some tips on how to make this would it would be great.

So you want a little character on the vocals? Try singing into a corner or into plastic buckets and such.

For a reverby vocal, you'll need a stairwell. Somehow it sounds better when you're not supposed to be there. I don't know why.

Obviously it won't be a "reverby" as doing it in a stairwell, but bathrooms are usually good for a bit of reverb.

If you have the facility for simultaneous playback and recording, try putting a speaker in a bath and them miking the bath. Then playback your dry vocal and record it again onto another track.

The method works for other receptacles too. The choice is yours.

Nico Adie wrote:If you have the facility for simultaneous playback and recording, try putting a speaker in a bath and them miking the bath. Then playback your dry vocal and record it again onto another track.

This works well in a room as well. What ends up happening is that you'll get the vocals with the resonant frequencies of the room amplified.

See Also: "I Am Sitting in a Room" - Alvin Lucier

thebookofkevin wrote:

Nico Adie wrote:If you have the facility for simultaneous playback and recording, try putting a speaker in a bath and them miking the bath. Then playback your dry vocal and record it again onto another track.

This works well in a room as well. What ends up happening is that you'll get the vocals with the resonant frequencies of the room amplified.

See Also: "I Am Sitting in a Room" - Alvin Lucier

i just want to make sure i'm understanding this correctly:

I would record the vocal (in a room/bath), then play that vocal back through a speaker and record the speaker?

correct.

And Mr Lucier's 'I am sitting in a room' is pretty much the logical exension and repitition of this until there is nothing left but the sound of the room. Also potentially of interest is his work 'theme' which from memeory has four speakers (people speaking, you understand) the microphones for these actors are placed inside unusual objects like emu eggs.

For a more 'pop' manifestation of that kind of thing, Tom Waits had done some pretty cool things with roomy/weirdly resonant voice sounds. There are any number of good records that demonstate this (probably anything after Swordfishtrombones). But I remember it most as a feature of Mule Variations. It seems to go hand in hand with a lot of his hobo narratives.

It is fun to play a track (vocal or other) back thru a speaker in a room or a Leslie or other things. Reamping is a pretty commonly done thing with instruments nowadays. I have had interesting results putting vocals back out through a tiny unhoused speaker and placing the speaker on a tightened tympani drum face down. I use that tympani for a reverb champer far more than I use it for a tympani. You can also get tricky and tune the drum in a sympathetic tuning to what you are playing through it.

It is also nice to put organ tracks back out of an amp and mic it through a snare drum. It depends on the organ part but I have had luck with stabby, short organ bits sounding more crispy and somewhat percussive with the addition of the snare rattle and fuzz. It finds a very different place in the mix than a regular organ.

I had fun recently experimenting with this exact topic. The reults I liked most for this particular song came from doubling the vocals using a kick/bass mic (a CAD KBM412) and engaging the -10dB pad on my mixer. Those vocals then just tucked right in behind the lead vocals and I delayed them by about 20ms for an early reflections effect.

it made for a nice delay/reverb effect acheived by physical means rather than plugins or processing. Not that there's anything wrong with that. This was just more fun.