How to Enhance Your Vocal Recordings

All musicians strive to create their best work when compiling a masterpiece. The art of recording great vocals is often attempted, but rarely perfected. While rookie musicians think they can simply hit the record button and time the beat with words, experienced musicians know that without great vocals, the song is merely an instrumental with blabber. Below I will explain the proper way to go about getting the most out of your vocal recordings whether you're in a home or professional studio.

The Vocal Recording Basics

The most important thing to remember when recording vocals is to record them with NO EFFECTS. Although you may have the urge to add effects after hearing them dry, don't add effects, save them until the end of the recording process. While recording the vocals first may save you a lot of extra work at the end, you also must make sure you have a better than average microphone. Sure the $20 microphone you got from Best Buy may have worked in the past, however if you're aiming for the stars, discard it and get a real microphone. Look for brand names such as Shure, Audio-Technica, Behringer and Sennheiser, these are name brand microphones high quality microphones. Another great add-on on invest in is a pop filter. These are the circle shaped devices that have a stocking like coating over them; they will eliminate unnecessary sounds such as wind and spit. When recording your vocals, make sure to record them twice. This doesn't mean simply selecting two different tracks to record at once. This means recording the vocals first and then going over them again with a completely different recording.

Breaking Down the Details

Now that you have the basics of vocal recording down, here comes the complicated stuff. I'm going to break it down as simple as I can, all of you rookies try to keep up. When mixing and adding clarity to the vocals you should stick to a mix roll of below 85 Hz. This means that you shouldn't let the music mix max out your vocals. In order to prevent this from happening mix male vocals at 3-4Db and female vocals at 325 Hz. If you are confused by all of this, simply look at your analog board or digital recording program and find the timeline, there you will see all the specifics regarding the tracks, volumes and properties, match the properties with these numbers. By adding the mentioned effect to both male and female vocals, the vocals will not only have a warm feeling, they will sound cleaner than how they were first recorded. When using the panning feature, only use it on your second recordings. When using it on your second recording, use the pan with a delay. Before adding any other effects you must remember to use the EQ. This means before compressing the song, adding reverb or echo, you must set the proper settings for bass and tremble. The last effect to learn how to use perfectly is reverb. Not only will reverb clarify all of your unheard words, it will give the song feeling. Using reverb the incorrect way however will result in a catastrophe. Don't overdue the reverb by adding too much bass behind it, everything will sound all over the place. Set the reverb at a comfortable level with no feedback and a delay. By deselecting the feedback option it will make less room for error.