Vocal recording tips anyone?

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Hey I'm getting into recording vocals and am trying to escape the "recorded at home" sound despite the fact that I am, in fact, recording at home...yeah. Anyway, I have MXL 990 condenser mic (with a redneck pop-filter), m-audio fast track pro, and I'm currently running reaper. So! any tips or thoughts on good cheap (free?) tools that would assist in getting a better sound? Also, I do a lot of harmonizing with a friend and often find it hard to get that "tight" harmony in the recording - even though we harmonize well together live.

Thanks in advance for anything you've got!

Michael
 
I don't think that you'll get anything other than a "recorded at home" sound with your current setup. If you want to sound pro, you need a better mic, preamp, and probably room treatment. Do you have a sample on the net somewhere, so we can hear where you're at with things?
 
I've noticed that if the singing, the acoustic part, is really good that that's really the main part. After that the most important thing is the mic, then the preamp. All in that order.

So the first thing is to make the vocals the best you can, I'd really recommend Seth Riggs' YouTube videos and courses.

It's really important to breath right - it should look like you're 9 months pregnant when you breath in fully. Breath in through your navel! A friend told me it should feel like you're holding a basketball under water and I thought that that was a good one.

I'll bet if a great singer sang through just about any system the greatness would come through, kinda like taking a pic of the Grand Canyon with a cheap camera, although I personally put a lot of stock in great mics.

So what I'm saying is that if the vocals aren't that great in the first place, and the mic is so-so, trying to fix that with tools and Scotch tape afterwards isn't the way to go.

That being said, I've used Antares, the pitch fixing program to repair bad pitch and it can work well if used judiciously. It has a strong potential to sound awful too!

Also, try doubling some vocals, that sounds great on backups. Also, sing the vocal backups on a couple of tracks then push or pull a track left or right slightly so it makes a delay with the other tracks, that can sound cool too.
 
Room treatment. IMO, the single, most important thing you can do to eliminate the cheesy at-home sound from vocals. Even with your setup. Room reflections from a typical small room will reek of cheesy.

Thankfully, vocal frequencies don't require much low frequency absorption, so you can make do with heavy blankets. Lots of them.
 
Thanks for all the advise...I am aware that I am being held back by my low budget equipment - but I just want to make sure that I am getting the best quality possible before I spend anything on better stuff. Thanks again and keep the tips coming!

Michael
 
Seanmorse79 said:
Room treatment. IMO, the single, most important thing you can do to eliminate the cheesy at-home sound from vocals. Even with your setup. Room reflections from a typical small room will reek of cheesy.

Thankfully, vocal frequencies don't require much low frequency absorption, so you can make do with heavy blankets. Lots of them.
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How would you do this? Create a "room" of blankets surrounding the mic on three sides to deaden reflection? Or cover your entire space?

Sorry for a noobish question, but as an instrumental guitarist I spend approximately .05% of my time recording vocals, lol.
 
This worked for me when I was a kid:

Get one of those eggfoam mattress pads from Walmart/Target/Wherever. Shove it and your singer in a closet. Record your vocal tracks.

It's not a pro-tip by any means, but it beat the heck out of recording vocals in the middle of my reflective bedroom. Your singer will whine and complain about how hot it is and how dark it is, but tell them to shutup and it will be over soon. Haha.

I love thinking back to those days - so much fun trying to get a decent sound out of horrible equipment.
 
In addition to some of the tips given already, try using a hardware compressor after your pre with conservative setting (a couple db gain reduction). You can always add more compression in the mix so it's better to err on the side that less is more. The voice is very dynamic and a good compressor like a distressor will help it sit better in the mix.

If you have a great singer who has and understands great mic technique you don't have to worry about compression as much, but those singers are pretty rare these days.

I know there are a few here who frown upon vocal compression on the input stage but they'll have to argue with Geoff Emerick and a whole bunch of other great engineers that do this with great results everyday.

The single biggest mistake I hear in in-experienced vocal recording is the use of small rooms with hard surfaces which will create comb filtering and resonant frequency build up.

IME, as mentioned rooms with lots of absorption work best for vocal recording. That is unless of coarse your intentions are to capture the reflections as part of the vocal sound.

If you clap your hands in the space your recording vocals and hear a very fast flutter echo effect or pinging, the space could most likely benefit from absorption.
 
Waltz Mastering said:
I know there are a few here who frown upon vocal compression on the input stage but they'll have to argue with Geoff Emerick and a whole bunch of other great engineers that do this with great results everyday.
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I agree with you, Tom, but just by way of explanation:

It works for Geoff Emerick (and many others, including you and I) because Geoff both has the ears and knows what he's doing. Usually on this board it is recommended to record raw only to those who don't yet know their way around a compressor (which is probably about 60% of the people here). This allows them the luxury of trial and error in post until they get it right, without having to re-track a million times.

-----

@ the subject of room acoustics. If you don't want to enclose the room in blankets as such, enclose the mic instead. There are some good plans out there for a DIY mic isolation box. Think a sound-absorbant box with one side open facing the singer and the microphone inside.

G.
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
How would you do this? Create a "room" of blankets surrounding the mic on three sides to deaden reflection? Or cover your entire space?

Sorry for a noobish question, but as an instrumental guitarist I spend approximately .05% of my time recording vocals, lol.
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Sorry for the late reply. The idea is to deaden the reflective surfaces in the room (i.e. walls). You could make a makeshift vocal booth around the singer & mic, or just cover the walls.

IMO, surrounding just the mic would help, but it'd be less effective - sound would still be bouncing off the walls and the mic will still pick it up, even if only from a single direction.
 
Seanmorse79 said:
IMO, surrounding just the mic would help, but it'd be less effective - sound would still be bouncing off the walls and the mic will still pick it up, even if only from a single direction.
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Not if you're standing in front of an absorber, such as an open closet filled with clothes ;). It won't quite be a dead vocal booth, but it's a lot cheaper and easier - besides, a dead vocal booth can sound pretty awful if not done right.

The best bet is to get a good room, without question. But if that's just not possible, or the idea of hanging blankets all over your dorm room just doesn't work for you (and it often won't), isolating the mic from the room can go a long way to controlling the vocal sound.

G.
 
Waltz Mastering said:
...I know there are a few here who frown upon vocal compression on the input stage...
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I always, without exception, use a compressor in between the mic pre and computer when recording. It's hardwired in there and it's part of the sound I like. Recording without a compressor: you might get a great performance and have to throw it away because there's a couple of "overs".

I use a pretty good compressor, a Summit tube unit, but before that I used a Boss $150 one and that worked pretty good. You don't have to set it so you're over the threshold very often, just on the peaks, so 99% of the time the compressor isn't even coming into action, but if you go over, you don't lose the track.

Plus, it allows you to record the track hotter in the first place. Sure, like reverb and eq, you can't destroy music with a compressor but it's part of learning about this stuff.
 
First thing...rent a mic and preamp...best you can afford...and find an ideal room...liberaries have sound proof rooms nowdays and they dont charge...just set up an appointment.
 
dintymoore said:
Recording without a compressor: you might get a great performance and have to throw it away because there's a couple of "overs".
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Turn your preamp gain down?

Seriously, with 24-bit converters you can afford to leave plenty of headroom...
 
dintymoore said:
Recording without a compressor: you might get a great performance and have to throw it away because there's a couple of "overs".
Plus, it allows you to record the track hotter in the first place.
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mattr said:
Turn your preamp gain down?

Seriously, with 24-bit converters you can afford to leave plenty of headroom...
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That's what I'm thinking. I don't see why you have to track hot in the first place. Overs are never an issue when I record without a compressor only because my loudest peak is still nowhere near "over".
 
RAMI said:
That's what I'm thinking. I don't see why you have to track hot in the first place. Overs are never an issue when I record without a compressor only because my loudest peak is still nowhere near "over".
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You're right - if you never get even near zero there's no problem, and an advantage because you might do some damage the other way.

I do that mainly because there's been a few times where you test for one volume, but the performance is way louder and it's more insurance than anything. It also might sound a little different how loud you record digital... not sure about that.
I go through tube compressors too so that's part of the reason I hardwired mine in the path, because they tweak the sound even if they don't compress.

You gotta do what works for you.
 
RAMI said:
That's what I'm thinking. I don't see why you have to track hot in the first place. Overs are never an issue when I record without a compressor only because my loudest peak is still nowhere near "over".
Click to expand...
Running the preamp hot can deliver a different sound with some preamps, especially some "real" tube models. Listen to some of that overdriven Little Richard-like sound and you'll hear a lot of purposeful preamp distortion in there (possibly along with a vintage bullet or car grill-style mic.)

But that's probably not going to be the case with most of the cheap prosumer preamps used by most folks here, or if there is such distortion, it may or may not have "that sound" that some desire. The typical preamp type often used in HR combined with a typical lack of experience with real-time compression and gain staging is why the default newb answer typically is to keep the preamp levels reasonable and save the compression for when it's non-destructive. Conversely, the more expensive gear along with experience in compressing vocals in real-time and in gaming the gain structure (not to mention having talent in front of the glass that often knows better how to "work" the mic) is why the Big Boys will use compression in the recording chain more often.

G.
 
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