PLEASE HELP! Questions on RECORDING

[JonPaulP]

Hi! I really don't know anything about recording music! My dad has a microphone called "Shure Beta58A" or something like that. I was wondering if this was a professional microphone that was capable of producing cd quality vocals (sounds like a real cd). It doesn't look like the condensor microphones that I saw, but my dad says that it is a professional microphone...

Also, how exactly do you record vocals?? I attempted to to record vocals last year with my cousin, and I told her to sing the song sentence by sentence, then I just put all the best ones takes together... Is this what you are supposed to do? Or is she actually supposed to sing the whole song? ...And does using the Highpass (in Adobe Premiere) filter make it sound better?

Lastly, what software are you supposed to use? Since I was more of a filmmaker than a sound recording person, I thought that I could just mix the tracks in Adobe Premiere (a semi pro. video editing sofware), but was wondering if that was ok to do. I heard you had to use Cakewalk or something?? What is Cakewalk anyway?! and are there other programs to use?

Thanks so much,
Jon Paul P.

 

[Seanmorse79]

Your microphone is a professional microphone. It's not top-of-the line, but it's a decent mic.

It's difficult to recommend a method because I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish. I'll take a stab and see what happens...

Assuming you're recording a song and not a speech track of some sort, you should use a multi-track recording program. I'm not familiar with Premiere's audio tracking capabilities, so I'm not sure what you're already able to do.

Cakewalk is one example of a multi-track recording program. It allows you to record (or use an existing) track, and add more tracks (like vocals), add effects to individual tracks, mix levels, panning, etc... and mix down to a stereo file that you could use with Premiere.

A highpass filter allows the high frequencies to "pass" through while filtering out the lower frequencies. Obviously, a lowpass filter does the opposite.

Rather than using Cakewalk, you can download a shareware multi-track program from hitsquad.com, import the music, add your vocal track, mixdown, and import back into Premiere. If your working with a song, I'd highly recommend having your singer sing the whole song through. If you like, you can have her sing complete multiple takes, then compile ("comp") the best parts from each.

You will also probably need a mic preamp or a mixer to make your microphone work correctly. Otherwise, you'll be recording a very weak signal and it will sound pretty nasty. The MIC input of most consumer sound cards are worthless - they sound horrible. You'll want to use the mic preamp or mixer to boost the microphone's volume and record via the LINE IN of your sound card.

...hope some of that helped.

Sean