Recording Vocals
One of the biggest challenges in any recording project is getting a great vocal recording. For many different styles of music, especially popular music, the vocal is incredibly important, and arguably the single most important part of a track. Maybe you have a thing for guitars, bass or drums, or you get particularly attached to the Kazoo, but for most people the vocal will make or break a song.
How to get a great vocal sound
A professional studio will have a selection of esoteric and industry standard mics to choose from; a choice of pre-amps to play with and a proper vocal booth or acoustically designed recording space. So how can home recordists get a great vocal sound on a budget? Luckily, I attended a Sound on Sound Seminar at Sounds Expo 2006. Paul White and Hugh Robjohns gave a very practical demonstration of some tried and tested techniques in vocal recording and vocal production to a large crowd.
Setting up the recording space
Pro studios will have an acoustically designed room for recording vocals. Home studios are not normally blessed by such luxuries, but with a bit of ingenuity, anyone can create the right environment for a great vocal recording. Unless you have a large budget, and can afford a professional studio designer who can build a room that is neither dead or too live from an acoustic point of view. The best thing that a home studio engineer can do is try and deaden the recording area. The idea being that the vocal recording is not coloured by the sound of the room. Trying to remove natural reverb is quite difficult, so the best thing to do is record with reverb and the room sound itself deadened as much as possible.
Duvets Rock
The Sound on Sound crew demonstrated the use of a couple of duvets to act as a low budget vocal booth. Using a couple of boom microphone stands, 2 duvets and some carpenters clips (£1 in the pound store). Paul and Hugh created an L shaped recording backdrop.
Duvet Vocal Booth Front
In front of this they placed the microphones, which were aimed toward the duvets. Normally you would use a cardiod or hyper cardiod microphone to record vocals. This means that the microphone is "focused" in one direction. So by aiming the mic at the duvet booth, any room reflections are muffled and muted by this portable audio screen. This makes it possible to get a more intimate vocal sound, one that has less noise, and is easier to effect with compression, eq and reverb to get just the right vocal sound for your track.
Duvet Vocal Booth Rear
Choosing the right Microphone
Once your happy with your vocal booth, you can then choose a microphone. It maybe that you have no choice in the matter, maybe your stuck with a dodgy old dynamic microphone. Many rock singers will deliberately choose a Shure SM58 or SM57 dynamic microphone to record with in the studio. For the Sound on Sound seminar they set up three different microphones; an "industry standard" AKG C414 XLS (approx. £550 /$900 ); a Shure SM57A Beta (approx. £80 / $140); and a Audio Technica 2020 (approx. £100/$100). The AKG and Audio Technica mics are condenser microphones. In order to use them you would need a recording interface with "Phantom Power" or plug them into a pre-amp or mixer before your computer interface. The Shure mic is a dynamic model, which does not require any phantom power to work.
Battle of the Mics
Luckily for the assembled audience we were treated to an excellent display of vocal talent by Debbie Powell. Recording through the three microphones simultaneously onto three separate tracks. We could then determine which microphone suited Debbie's voice best. On playback each vocal take was soloed so we could get an idea of each microphones inherent sonic characteristics. Expecting the AKG to win hands-down I was somewhat taken back when the cheapest microphone on test, sounded the best, to my jaded ears anyway. The Shure sounded a little dull and flat, the song was quite delicate though for a dynamic mic. The AKG sounded smooth and relaxed but to me the Audio Technica sounded a whole lot better. I was quite relieved that Paul White came to the same conclusion. He also pointed out that this was to be expected. A lot depends on the vocalist, choice of material, and the style of music. So don't dismiss a microphone because it is cheap, and conversely just because you have swapped your Grandmother for a Neumann, won't mean you have a killer vocal sound.
Microphone Placement
The microphones were placed about 6 to 9 inches from the singer. Popshields were placed about 3 inches away from the mics. A popshield is a device that diffuses explosive "B" and "P" sounds, which helps stop the microphone from popping with the explosive nature of these sounds. You can buy a popshield from your favourite music shop, or make your own. An old coat hanger and a pair of your mum's tights will work fine. Not so good if your mum wears fishnets though. Paul suggested a frying pan cover as a cheap alternative, available from most good pound shops.
Headphone mix
Probably more important than a good microphone, is a great vocal performance. This should start with making sure the singer is comfortable. Make sure they like the sound mix in their headphones, not too loud, enough reverb, backing track levels. Always use closed back headphones to help reduce microphone spill too. One trick to help with nervous vocalists is to ask her/him to sing the song so you can check the level. Record this take, chances are it will be the best take of the session. Whatever you can do to reduce any pressure, nerves or tension in the studio, will make all the difference to your final recording.
Recording Levels
With 24Bit recording, it is not essential that the overall recording level is high. 16Bit recordings definitely benefit from near maxiumum sound levels. Fortunately 24Bit offers a considerable benefit in signal to noise ratio than 16Bit, so you can back off a little when recording, which will help stop any horrible clipping. Alas GarageBand V3 records in 16Bit, so the recording level is very important in order to get a good signal to noise ratio. Whatever you do, try and make sure you don't clip the recording and remember it doesn't matter on the mic, computer or app used. It's what you do with it that really matters.
Recording Vocals Summary
In order to get a great vocal recording, do this:
- Create a "vocal booth" using duvets, sound tiles, blankets etc
- Try several different microphones to pick the best one for the project
- Use a pop shield
- Record as far away from any noise as possible - i.e. noisy G4s.
- Use closed back headphones
- Make sure you don't clip the recording (over record)
Discuss Recording Vocals
