Yesterday I did a vocal recording for Memorrhage LP2. I had to do 8 throwaway takes to get one good take due to not having a good vocal recording stack. When I finally got a decent take, de-essed and de-hissed, I learned some things.
1: I have a lisp. No one told me about this, and it's very mild -- but it means when I de-ess, you just hear the th instead. Need a de-eth plugin, too.
2: My vocal distortion when recording is WAAAAY higher than I thought it was when just practicing. I thought I was in hardcore-range, but my vocal distortion is closer to the most extreme of post-hardcore. Garry said "Zao, but filthier". I said "whisper-scream harmonic content, death-roar volume, blackened-crust pitch". I have to dial that shit back and get shoutier when recording, the level of distortion is just insane -- the waveform looked like someone ran it through a fucking bassist's fuzzbox with the gain maxed. All I did for recording was use Airwindows Density2 to stand in for a mic preamp since I'm using a USB mic, and throw on some compression to help normalize the volume. I did that distortion with my raw voice.
3: Holy shit, I burnt my voice. I'm feeling it today. That shit is crispy. Gotta be more careful and maybe try not to do 9 g-d damn takes of max-distortion high-pitched shrieking.
4: Actually, I'm a g-d damn good harsh vocalist. I kinda suspected this, but hearing it for real is a different story. When Garry put it in the track, pretty much just some mild EQ work and a delay based on Static-X vocal delays to fill, it took the guitars in the chorus and dragged them up by the high-frequency hair. Yes, the chorus -- this is a keystone vocal feature. I've never actually felt vindicated on this level about my skill before. Legitimately, the vocal stem, for all its flaws (recorded in a garage while cars were going by on a subpar microphone, vocalist lisping, vocalist didn't know their own power) sounds INCREDIBLE.
Today, I need to rest.
