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You know, I was telling you about Line 6 and Ableton Live and my home recording experiences.
I enjoy doing this, I realized it is the best way to bring a new song to present it to the band. I record it at home (the guitar part, I mean) then I put a vocal guide on it and send it over to Costin, the lead singer, to put some words on it, to see how it sound, so when we get together at rehearsals, we already speak the same language.
However, if the guitar sounds better than a lot of guitars I have heard, I can’t get the voice right and I realized I don’t know how to record the vocals right, because I have never been in such a position to record it myself. Usually, you know, you go to the studio, you have the sound engineer there who already fixed things and maybe just tweak a little the sound and you just record the voice. Right?
Well, now I find myself in such a position so I need to…ih…study! Well, yeah, like I wouldn’t already have too much on my head, I started to look for how to record the voice.
See, the internet is such a great tool for learning, I can’t imagine what I would do without it these days! I have found this article here that says a few things about it. And of course, I said to share it with you.
So, what’s your experience with recording vocal parts? I mean…from the other end of the mic. Any good tips to share?
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6 Responses to “About recording vocals”
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Ovidiu OprescuRomania, 33 years
Playing the guitar since 17 and enjoying every moment of it!
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Sammy
March 6th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
I’m a singer and while recording in a non-pro, home studio, that is our biggest hurdle to having our songs sound professional. Even with the awesome mic we use and the TC Helicon processor I use, it’s difficult to isolate the vocals without them sounding “off” in some way. Either they sound too “live” or too on top or whatever.
Thanks for the link to the article. Anything helps.
Ovidiu
March 7th, 2009 at 12:33 am
That is like the biggest challenge, isn’t it? Because of the fact that probably the voice is the most dynamic instrument, able to change the volume and sound in a split of a second…
J
March 14th, 2009 at 3:41 am
Use a good condenser mike and set the levels where there’s no chance of clipping. A pop screen is useful or use the pencil trick (pencil taped to the condenser to break up the airstream on explosive consonants). Stick a finger in one ear and sing while you walk around the room. Find the spot where your voice sounds best and then place the mic. Record it dry and use plugins to add reverb, make subtle pitch changes (melodyne) and compression. If I had to guess, your vocal tracks aren’t sitting in the mix because of a less than judicious use of reverb and compression. Try panning everything else to the sides and see if it mixes with the other tracks. Chances are that you’ve got other things too hot and the vocal has no space left to be heard without too much competition. Nobody likes to have dynamics anymore and compression is usually the problem. If you have a spectrum analyzer plugin, find the center frequency of the vocal (characteristic) and carve that space out of the other tracks.
Just my 2 cents.
J
Ovidiu
March 14th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Thank you for your tips, Dr J! I will try to work a bit around what you say here. For the moment we use a Sennheiser e835s mic, the one we use at rehearsals, and the available space, well, it’s my “office” which is not the best space for recording vocals, but after all it’s a home recording environment. I have thought to open up the space for the vocal, I don’t have the spectrum analyzer or at least if Ableton Live has it, I couldn’t find it yet, but I will try to look for one. I did pan everything and let the voice on the center, but still there’s a large discrepancy between how the voice sounds compared to the guitar and the bass, for ex.
Tennyson
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Are you using a line 6 interface? I use Ableton with the UX2 and I love it - its so easy to bring ideas to life!
I find recording to be very addictive, and some times I can get anything done because of it
Tweak’s site is great too - I’ve learned a lot from it - very involved.
Ovidiu
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Yes, I have UX1 and rocks! For recording ideas works like a charm!