yes...
I went through this trying to do inexpensive multitracking with young local musicians a ways back... there really is no true solution, but we ended up with track 1 the music track (bounced and ready for vocals...) and recorded on track 2 with 1 simple mic. Head phones panned FULL LEFT(track1), mic hanging in the air to the RIGHT of the singer singing past the mic not into it.
singer holds the left earphone only over left ear, sings out straight, other side of head is mic, slightly up. You adjust the volume in that left earphone as low as practicable. Their right ear is open so they dont oversing.
you might end up with a teensy bit of "bleed", but its low signal level... AND since this is adobe, heh heh, theres tricks for it. You could easily "gate" the low level music out of the vocal track. What I do is go to edit window with the captured vocal track with low level bleed, and immediately mouse click "silence" inbetween all vocals... but i SAVE the original track in a separate folder. I sample the background noise of lead in silence and get good results from the digital noise reduction stuff built in.
you dont really NEED it out when the singer is singing, as his line level signal should CRUSH the bleed when hes singing. If not, your signal isnt hot enough (just dont clip)
Cheap scrap wood, a few screws, and bed sheets stapled together make a tiny but convincing shower-sized improvised vocal booth. experiment with hanging mic position until you find the sweet spot. Surprisingly cheap mics can give half decent results with effort and digital noise reduction built into adobe.
all you need is lead in silence on the recording track... sample that, remove it FFT, BANG! for the cost (nothing...) the results arent bad for "cheap demos".
EDITORS NOTE: if you notice in a lot of pictures you see of star vocalists in the big vocal booths?? A LOT of them are holding the headphones on ONE EAR ONLY... I wonder why?? the mics TEND to be hanging and slightly up on the opposite side of the headphone ear. Hmmm...
tech tip: make sure you use a style of headphoen that is big and cushioned over-the-ear style... it will allow for less audible bleed over.
tech tip #2: one of the BETTER improvised vocal boths I saw was a large scrap of strong carpeting taken from some dumpster. They cleaned it at a drive thru car wash, LMAO, and stapled it to scrap 2x4's... in a circle. It was like stepping into a tiny carpeted missle, LMAO
funny: the WEIRDEST home vocal booth i ever saw? many... people have tried singing short vocal lines down sheeet metal ductwork and recorxing it for mixing in background stuff later... duct tape and cheap plastic sheeting and old bed sheeets and old coat hangers foir framework made experimentally into weird shapes... bigger and smaller. *shrugs* I give them an E for effort.
carpet or bedsheets in a small circle in a corner somewhere is a good happy medium. Mic above and over to other side of headphone side.
thia cuts down your expenses to nothing except a half decent mic.
