I recently was asked about recording vocals, and posted this response on the Holy Culture forums. After typing it out I realized that this was a perfect post to bring to Midwest Noise and share to our viewers. So hope you enjoy the read and absorb the material, and most of all keep digging for more knowledge, because in the music industry you will need a lot of it!
Compression
Compression is an essential, but too much compression will ruin it. If you don’t know what your doing with compression you can check out a VST preset, however I would never recommend using a preset because vocals are different. This is where YouTube comes into play. Do a search for “Using Compression” or “How to use Compression”, perhaps a Google search can help you out in this arena.
Preamp
Aside from Compression though there are other dynamics to consider. A preamp is definitely a recommendation, and the type of preamp can make a huge difference as well. If you have access to a mixer board you typically find that the first few channels of the mixer actually have a preamp, some boards don’t have a preamp. Other manufacturers actually sell Preamp modules similar to a guitar FX pedal (because guitars can benefit from preamps as well). A device that I have owned and personally love is the Apogee Duet, Apogee One, or the new Apogee Duet 2. These devices have world class preamps and are some of the best you can get your hands on, but also come with a price tag of about 300-600 depending where you shop. I would typically find a good buy on eBay. I also had a chance to own the Mackie 820i mixer which had 3 Onyx boutique quality mic preamps in it, and they had a pretty good sound to them as well, plus the analog feel was to be desired. If you can afford it, it can be a crucial part of your setup, and some things you’ll find just are expensive, but that is the life of a musician… it’s an expensive habit trust me.
Reverb
Reverb can add a nice touch to vocals, but too much Reverb can ruin a track altogether. Typically what Reverb does for a track is makes an instrument sound “Further” away in the stereo mix, which actually gives a wider image and makes things mesh together. The problem with using too much Reverb on a vocal track is the fact that a Vocal track should sit up front and center. You don’t want the instruments to take presence over the vocals, but rather have the vocals sit right on top of the mix. So, if you have too much Reverb what actually happens is the vocal track blends in rather than sitting on top of the mix like it should which causes your vocals to sound more inferior than commercial tracks. The catch though is that if your trying to get that effect on your vocal track you would create a layer, and put the effect on the layer and perhaps pan it somewhere in the mix, or make it subtle in the mix so that your “Dry” or non-reverberated layer is sitting on top. There are many tricks to using reverb and getting the sound that you want, but you mostly have to play around with it yourself to get a feel for it. One general rule of thumb that I was always taught was that if the Reverb sounds good you actually want to take a little bit of it away to avoid a buildup of reverb from other instruments and tracks.
Delay
Sometimes you don’t find the effect that your looking for in Reverb, and sometimes you can layer up a Delay layer to get the effect your looking for, but remember what I said about reverb and how too much can kill a vocal track, and where the position of your vocal track is supposed to be in the mix. Like reverb your delay causes your vocal track to sort of “disappear” in the mix going further out, but what a delay actually does rather than cause a synthetic echo is causes the vocal track to re-process in a specified timing sequence. Generally you have 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 etc.. and other variations and modifications. You can get a nice effect, but again too much is a bad thing.
Layering Your Vocals
Have you ever listened to your favorite artists’ albums and notice how it sounds like they are singing multiple parts at the same time? well, that is because they are. You should layer your vocals, or in Hip-Hop slang we like to call it “Stacking”. Your vocals in hip-hop are generally made up in parts of 3. For a Verse you generally have: Lead Track, Ad-Libs Track, and your Hype Track. Your Lead track is basically you going through the entire song like you normally would. Your Ad-Libs track is where you accentuate certain parts, but you don’t do the entire track all the way through. The general practice for a Ad-Libs track is to pronounciate the syllables, or add something exciting to parts of the verse to make it stick out. Some artists like to blurt certain words and have that track tied to a delay with the timing of the song (i.e. Readywriter with GodChaserz does this). Now your Hype track is where you get pumped up (Oh’s, Yeah!, Uh-Huh!, Comon! etc…). Hype tracks aren’t always used, but sometimes they add a nice touch to the song, they are the parts where you hear artists blurting out “Yeah”, “Comon!”, and stuff like that.
Now when you get into your Chorus you typically don’t have a hype track, or an ad-libs track. Instead you have the following: Lead, Harmony, and Background. Lead is once again your regular part. Harmony is perhaps the same sequence of notes, but in a different octave. Background is generally like your humming, whistling, singing, or whatever you see fit. It all depends on what you visualize in the track. This doesn’t mean you can only put 3 vocal tracks either. What this simply means is that your tracks recorded will fall into one of those 3 categories. Also remember that too many vocal layers will kill your vocal as well…
There is a reason why in the music industry we call an artist a “artist”. It’s due to the fact that you just gotta get your creativity flowing and do “you”. The best tip I can give is for you to “Be Yourself”. Don’t try to follow a trend and jump on some “Auto-tune” bandwagon, or copy your favorite artist, but rather do what comes natural to you. Be Yourself, Be Creative, and have fun doing it.
The Track
As a lyricist, or an artist you also have one challenge if you plan on mixing down your vocal into your instrumentals yourself. That dilemma is a whole another ball court and if you do not know what you are doing I highly recommend saving up money and paying someone who knows what they are doing. If you are like many other people though that do not have the money to do it and decide to do a DIY method one thing you need to understand is the aspect from a song writer, producer, or “beat-maker”. Just like an artist gets creative on an arrangement of vocals, a song writer does the same to an instrumental (and hopefully you get it from someone who knows what they are doing as well). When a songwriter who has the “know-how” to mix his own production you’ll find that every song is mixed different than another, and this is just part of the creative process and getting various effects. Because of this every vocal has to be mixed slightly different as well. You have to listen to a track as an engineer and picture exactly where you want that vocal to sit, and then do what is necessary to make the vocal sit in that place. This is why I said earlier that I don’t recommend presets in vst plugins, because every piece of production varies, and it varies drastically different between different songwriters, beat-makers, or whatever name/title you want to slap on their name.
The Microphone
Perhaps one of the most crucial pieces to your setup. The selection of microphone can be either your best or worst decision. Certain microphones are good for certain tasks because of how they “color” or produce sound. I owned a Shure SM7B thinking it would be good for doing hip-hop vocals, and it did decent, but as well as other microphones. I did however find that it was excellent for a pop/rock type of sound, and was very excellent for doing voice-over work for commercials and advertisements, in fact probably would be my recommendation if you were doing that line of work. A microphone can make or break the bank, but it also can make or break your studio altogether if you do not have the proper mic for the proper application. It sounds kind of funny, but my recommendation would be to call a place like Sweetwater (Sweetwater.com) and tell them the sound your looking for, and then get a recommendation for a particular mic to do that style, and then of course do what I do, and that’s go straight to ebay and look for that microphone. Mainly because if you have bought a lot of equipment like I have you will know one thing about Sweetwater, and that is the fact that they charge an arm and a leg for hardware, but their customer support is phenomenal.
For Hip-Hop and Pop I would deem the AKG C414 a worthy microphone, but it’s also an expensive one. If your on a lower budget I was surprised to find that IV His Son and Jovan Mackenzy were doing their recording on an Audio Technica AT2020 which you can nail for 100-150 bucks. This particular model to my knowledge there is a USB model and an XLR model. The ones these guys use is the XLR model, and if you listen to any of their music you just may be shocked at the quality music they release on the microphone they use. It’s not what you use, but how you use it! You can check those guys out at: http://www.IVHISSON.com and http://www.JovanMackenzy.com
I hope this was useful to somebody. I encourage you to do some searching through your favorite search engine to get more in depth information about each of these topics individually and do some research prior to making a purchase because each of these are essential in their own ways, and yet how you use them can generally affect how you will sound ultimately. The crazy part is that this is just a tip of the iceberg! Good luck, and I wish the best of luck to you!
