Newbie question about recording vocals

[SwingBell]

Hi, I'm a novice singer and novice producer who was wondering about the process of recording my vocals. I know from watching vocal processing tutorials that I need to create a chain of effects to get the recorded takes to the final product, but those videos are usually from the perspective of a producer tweaking vocal files that were given to them by the artist. So my question is: when you're *recording* your vocals are you also supposed to have that chain running, so that you're hearing processed vocals in real time through the headphones as you sing? I know you need to have the vocals dry in what you actually record, but in terms of what's going on in their headphones, I didn't know if singers are actually hearing themselves with effects and processing as they sing or whether they hear just their raw vocals through the microphone. Thanks!

 

[Slouching Raymond]

I prefer to hear reverb while singing, makes it sound real.
But you can still record it clean, and experiment on treating the recording later.
I don't bother with anything more, due to being a lousy singer.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

In real life when you speak or sing, you hear the acoustic environment affect your voice. It's part of how your brain perceives it. I think it makes sense to reproduce that during the recording process, at least in monitoring. Adding a bit of slapback delay and/or reverb makes sense as long as it's not being recorded. I tend to avoid having compression on vocals in the monitor path.

 

[ashcat_lt]

Given that you are the performer, there is a strong argument for leaving off all of those plugins so that you can hear what you’re actually putting into the microphone and start to develop your mic techniques and dynamic control which then might mean you won’t need quite so much processing in the mix stage and will just overall make you a better performer.

But in the end what we really want is a convincing performance and different people need different things to get comfortable enough to do that. Whether it’s you or somebody else you’re trying to record, if a little reverb or compression helps the vibe and whatever so you get the performance you need then it’s the right thing to do.

We usually want to be kind of sparing with the plugins we put on live sources just for processing and latency reasons. A lot of things we commonly put on a vocal channel can do lookahead or add delay for other reasons, and that’ll usually mess you all up trying to sing with that echo.

I personally am not a great vocalist. I don’t usually want to hear reverb or delay in the headphones. I do often want just a touch of compression to bring it up over the backing track, but not so much that I feel it fighting against me.

 

[rob aylestone]

Pretty standard for analogue hardware mixers and now for digits - I record dry, but it's easy to route that input to effects and processing and squirt that back in to headphones. You have to do this for the monitor mix anyway - giving the singer your rough mix from main left and right works if the singer is you, but if you have a singer, using L+R means you cannot fiddle while they are singing, so a monitor mix is pretty sensible to separate it from what you are doing. Then popping reverb, or treatment on it is simple.

 

[TalismanRich]

I can't say what most people are doing, but I simply use a dry feed to my headphones when recording vocals. No reverb, or compression. If I can get a track that sounds right straight in, the I can use the tools to fill it out, add reverb, etc.

I'm also not chasing someone else's "sound". Not being a commercial studio, there's no pressure to try to get a rap vocal that sounds like JayZ, or make a lady sound like Taylor Swift or Beyonce. It's more important to me to try to sing on key than to worry about if it sounds nice while I'm singing it.

 

[Papanate]

Hi, I'm a novice singer and novice producer who was wondering about the process of recording my vocals. I know from watching vocal processing tutorials that I need to create a chain of effects to get the recorded takes to the final product, but those videos are usually from the perspective of a producer tweaking vocal files that were given to them by the artist. So my question is: when you're *recording* your vocals are you also supposed to have that chain running, so that you're hearing processed vocals in real time through the headphones as you sing? I know you need to have the vocals dry in what you actually record, but in terms of what's going on in their headphones, I didn't know if singers are actually hearing themselves with effects and processing as they sing or whether they hear just their raw vocals through the microphone. Thanks!

I record vocals with the effects on a buss - you get the way you want it sound but aren’t committed to the sound - however somethings are always on the tracks - Compressor, DeEssor - those kinds of things - but they aren’t recorded either - so you can manipulate the vocals anyway you choose after the recording.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

I avoid putting anything other than eq and reverb on vocals in the singer's monitors. I want them to hear what they are actually doing and not start depending on processing to compensate for performance deficiencies.