Recording Vocals

J

jeffoest

New member
Last January, I took a day and built a little 'vocal booth' of PVC and moving blankets - similar to what many have done here. Mine is about 4'x5' and about 8' high - I drape comforters over the top.

The idea was to eliminate natural reverb so I could add it later. I used to record vocals in a separate room (my large dining room with 12 foot ceilings and hard-woods) about in the middle of it. I got a pretty nice natural reverb from this situation but 'nice' only for certain songs/tempos, you know?

Honestly - I don't know if I can tell any difference in the approaches. The vocal booth is extremely convenient for me in that now I can record in the same room as recorder because of the bit of sound deadening, I have a light, a place for my headphones, have a simple-method for affixing lyrics to the wall of the booth, etc., etc...

Is there one approach that is just simply better here? One of my garageband.com reviews for my lastest song "Boyfriend" said the voice sounded like it was recorded in a little closet so I thought, hmmmmm.... maybe I'm going the wrong direction with this. OR maybe I just post-processed it poorly, or maybe the reviewer didn't know what he was talking about because 24 other reviewers didn't say anything about it....

Opinions, thoughts....? Is the 'vocal booth' approach a good one, but maybe it should be bigger? smaller?

I'm just a home guy - I really don't want to deal with 'soundprooffing' and all that... just want to maximize my current environment with reasonable solutions...

Thanks!

PS - anyone that wants to hear the difference ifyou can hear it - the songs from my website (below) "Boyfriend", "A Little Love" were recorded in the booth. I can't remember if "Superstar" was recorded in the booth or not. The others were recorded in the living room....
 
Listened to the stuff - nice. You've obviously spent time mastering your craft and putting thought and work into your songs.

In answer to your question, make yourself comfortable and you'll get the best results. When I knew strangers were listening to me thru the door of a rented space I sang like I had a pole up my butt. When I changed to a friendlier environment I couldn't figure out for a little while why it was so easy for me to hit all those high notes...
 
Thanks for the listen - much appreciated.

I suppose that makes a lot of sense - just being as comfortable as you possibly can probably goes a long way towards a nice vocal performance.

Thanks again.
 
I won't be any help to your situation, but I also listened to the song. Personally, I think the vocals sound good. I also agree that the volumes are well balanced. Good stuff! Can I ask what you use in your recording setup?
 
Sounds good.

My suggestions:

1. Consider more depth in the vocal sound in verse portion. Sounds a little dry.

2. Vocals/music sounds slightly odd on the third chord of the chorus. Almost as if one is on wrong note.

Ed
 
The enviornment that you record vocals in is only one small step in the sound of your vocals. Some other things to consider are the microphone used, pre-amping, eq, and effects. Depending on the type of music you do it may not make any difference where you record your tracks. While recording some heavier music, I have had singers stand right in the control room with the monitors blasting and them just out with an SM58 in their hand. The end result was pretty surprising. I heard that Terry Date does that with Deftones, although I have never read that in black and white.

I do my vocal recording stuff in my control room with headphones on. I use an AKG SolidTube microphone and any extra noise that comes in between vocal parts I just cut out in Pro Tools. I do get some low volume noise from the computers but nothing that affects the songs. Of course if your room has excessive noise where it affects your song, then I would reconsider.

I am sorry I can't listen to your song now because I am at work, but a lot of time it is the mic and what you do with it afterward that makes the difference in the vocal sounds. From the previous posts here it sounds like you are doing things right.
 
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