These days every musician wants to make professional sounding recordings from home.  Fortunately, the technology available to musicians today makes it very possible to produce pro-level products at a low cost.  Doing it yourself takes a lot of practice and research, but it may save you thousands of dollars in expensive studio time!

Of course, the first thing a listener will notice in your home studio  recordings is the quality of the vocals.  This can be one of the trickiest things to make sound decent, so a lead vocal will often make or break a recording--especially to non-instrumentalists, who probably make up the majority of your band’s fan base.

To help you get the best possible results with your vocal tracks, I’m writing a three-part blog on vocal recording.  Part one will outline the basic gear that you’ll need to capture a professional sounding tone.  Part two will explain vocal recording technique and some tips to help you get a high-quality sound out of your singer.  Part three will cover mixing lead and background vocal tracks so they stand out above your wall of distorted guitars and your over-zealous drummer.

Okay, enough banter, let’s talk about GEAR!

Obviously, if you’re going to record vocals, you’re going to need a microphone--common sense, right?  But you probably don’t want to use the same Shure SM-58 that your singer uses for live performances at the Recher Theatre.  For most singers, what you need is a large-diaphragm condenser.  This is a microphone that’s going to pick up a wide range of frequencies, all the way from your vocalist’s lowest guttural barking to the squeaky high-frequency overtones that allow the human ear to recognize speech and language.  A condenser is responds much faster than a dynamic mic to transients--sudden increases in volume, such as those at the beginning of a word or syllable--thus providing a more clearly defined lead vocal.  Your condenser will require phantom power to produce sound, and most recording interfaces and preamps provide phantom power (the button may say 48V).

The most important thing, however, is that the microphone you use complements your vocalist’s voice.  Some singers sound like crap on a $4000 studio mic but shine when singing through a $200 condenser.  My favorite so far is the Røde NT-1000.  It’s crispy as all hell, but it really makes your singer sound like he or she is standing right there in the control room with you.  If you don’t have that kind of cash, check out the AKG Perception 420.  I couldn’t afford either one of those, so on my a cappella recording of “Candy”, I used the MXL R40.  The R40 is a bottom-of-the line ribbon microphone (not a condenser).  It has a much less treble-heavy sound than the Røde, and I find that it responds very well to a wide range of vocal timbres.  Great for bass singers, though, it really captures the boom and the low end!

So now you’ve got a very sensitive microphone, and that’s a good thing, but it can certainly provide some additional challenges.  To make this recording sound professional, you’re going to need two things for your mic: a pop filter and a shockmount.  A pop filter is a circular device made of either a metal mesh or thin fabric such as nylon that does just what it says it does--it reduces the barrage of air thrown at your microphone by plosives (popping “P”-type sounds in speech or singing) and also somewhat reduces sibilants (lispy “S” sounds).  It can also protect your microphone from spit and harmful moisture.  The pop filter attaches to the mic stand and hangs right between the front of the mic and your singer’s inflated head.  The shockmount is a device that attaches to the mic stand and suspends your microphone using an elastic band.  This reduces excess noise from your vocal track, such as footsteps in the room, noise from appliances in the building, bumps to the mic stand, and other vibrations carried by the floor.  Oh yeah, and makes your mic look cool as shit!  Many entry level condenser microphones will come with a shockmount that is custom fit to that particular mic model.

Get a decent shielded XLR cable to run from your mic--shorter cables receive less interference!  Then plug that cable into your recording interface.  What?  You mean I can’t record straight into the line-in on my laptop?  NO. YOU CAN’T.  Your interface is going to be some kind of device with mic preamps and somewhere between two and two bajillion mic and instrument inputs.  I highly recommend getting a firewire interface--stay away from USB if you can, it’s way slower and can cause annoying lag in your tracking!  I typically use the Presonus FireStudio Project.  I got it for its eight separate mic preamps, mostly so I could record an entire drum set in eight separate channels.  When I’m using ProTools I use a Digidesign Mbox 2 Pro, which is no longer in production.  The new version is the Avid Mbox Pro.  Note: Your interface will override your computer’s sound card, so you’re going to need some decent headphones or external speakers (or studio monitors) if you want to hear what you’re doing!

The preamps in those interfaces are alright, but if you want to get real fancy, you’ll want to use your own super expensive external mic preamp.  Your microphone is putting out a very tiny and quiet signal when it reaches your recording interface.  What the preamp does is boost that barely audible signal to something that you can actually use for your recording.  Any time a weak signal is boosted, some extraneous noise results.  That’s what makes an expensive preamp better than the one that’s built into your interface.  The more you crank up the gain (input volume) on your preamp, the more important it becomes that your preamp is providing a clean and uncolored sound.  You can spend thousands on a great pro-level preamp if you want.  Have fun with that.  I’m good with the ones in my interfaces for now.  For all six vocalists on “Candy” I used the MXL R40 running directly into the preamp built into the Mbox 2.

So, for now, gather your supplies: a large-diaphragm condenser mic, pop filter, a shockmount, a mic stand, a cable, a firewire interface, a mic pre, some extra headphones and oh yeah, a computer!  It’s an expensive undertaking, but if you want pro quality sound, that’s what you’re going to need.  In the 1950s, a recording studio was defined as any place where somebody had enough cash to invest in a decent microphone.  Now technology has advanced to make home recording a lot easier, but we have it good--musical equipment is becoming increasingly more affordable, and that’s why home recording is becoming widely preferred to professional studios!

Come back a bit later this week for part two, vocal recording technique!