Mix Engineer Ken Lewis on Protoolsmixing.com shares some tips on getting great vocal performances.
Recording vocals is an art. A lot of people suck at it. (no offense to those who suck at it, i was one of you once. I’m better now, and I’m giving you some tips to get your vocal game together.)
I’ll skip all of the production explanations about working out parts in preproduction. fast forward to the vocal booth. Here are a few recording tips for you young engineers, and do it yourself home recordists.
- NEVER put the singer in the booth until you are SURE that your entire mic chain is working flawlessly, good signal, no hum, buzz, or crackle.
- NEVER put a vocalist in the booth until you have a great rough mix for them to sing to. The more the headphones sound like a record, the closer to a record quality vocal performance you can hope for from the vocalist.
- NEVER put a vocalist in the booth until you have at least a really good guess at compression levels, input levels, EQ, mic placement, etc… You should NEVER have to spend more than 1 take getting your signal chain together, and i try very hard to have everything set really right before i ever put the singer in the booth, so i can capture the first take if its a great one. My only exception to that rule is when i use a ribbon mic on vocals. Ribbons NEED a ton of EQ to sound great, but usually once they have it, they can be magical on certain singers. So, if i am going to use a ribbon mic on a singer i will specifically explain to them why i need to spend the first take EQ’ing them, and to please bear with me. Then i will be lightening fast getting the sound together when they sing. 1 take. thats the max.
- I ALWAYS have my assistant scream and yell into the mic while the music is playing when I’m setting my levels (before putting the artist in the booth
). this will tell me where i need to set my maximum compression levels, and also, i can balance the vocal mic where i want it in the singers mix, typically so they are a bit louder than where they would be in a final mix, but not so loud that they lose the tonal center of the music. Also, I have my assistant set the volume of the headphones themselves so that they are loud, but not blowing the singers eardrums out.
- I almost always use (in addition to outboard compression and EQ), almost always i will use a plugin compressor on the monitor channel………………………………………..
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