Vocal recording - To harness or not to harness?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nadzilla
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Nadzilla

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Hey all,

I watched a video of Devin Townsend recording vocal parts for his Addicted album a while back, and he was just using an SM7b but hand-held, rather than on a stand / harnessed.

I'm not sure if he was just "tracking" ideas or whether those vocal parts were actually the ones he used for the final mix...

I know that the SM7b has some kind of special construction that reduces "impact" noise, so is it possible to use them hand-held and still get a good quality from them without having to worry about any noise coming through from shifting your hand on the casing or moving the mic around in general?

I ask because I sing / open up much better and get a way more emotive vocal performance out of myself if I am free to move around with the mic instead of having to stand in front of a stand and pop shield and limit my movement. I want to be abel to get across not just the vocals but also the "feel" of the lyrics, and I think it translates in recordings. Take Skid Row's "Inhuman Race" album, for example. I know they had a ton of production gear and compressors etc at their disposal, but they basically got the best results by giving Seb a hand-held (SM58 or similar) mic and just let him go at it like a loon in the vocal room, and I really think you can hear that. There's just a certain feel and quality that comes across and that's what I want to capture with the SM7b.
 
I would have no problem letting a singer use an re20/sm7b/similar hand held.

It's not ideal, but as long as they're sensible, there's no problem.

Personally, for my own little recordings (which don't matter), I never use a stand.

I even hold condenser and ribbons, carefully.
I wouldn't recommend that to all, but I sing better that way.
 
Cheers, yeah me too, I relax a lot more, physically, and it really shows in recordings if I can do that. I guess as long as I'm careful with not letting the mic get bumped against my body and don't thrash it around it should be okay.

Am I correct in thinking the SM7b has a kind of shock-mount build in to the body or did I make that up? I'm sure I read it somewhere, heh.

[Edit] Ah, just found this bit here: Internal "air suspension" shock isolation virtually eliminates mechanical noise transmission. So I guess it does have a kind of shock-mount type system in place to dampen things like accidental stand-bumping.
 
Interesting camera work. ;)

I'm assuming he didn't realize it was going to be a crotch shot when he stood up! :D
 
Hah! Yeah I believe he did mention the crotch-ness at some point in the comments. :D

Any other person in the world and I might take offence and find another video to watch, but Devin is my hero so I can forgive him his gratuitous crotch action this once. :)
 
While this may be the worst example of someone doing this, James Hetfield recorded some vocals while holding an SM7 (b?) by hand while making Some Kind of Monster. Not going to comment on the quality of the album, but you can't tell he was holding it, anyway.
 
Haha! Yeah that's not really giving the mic a good name, but thankfully Devin basically negates that point so it's all good. ^_^

In all seriousness, though, even considering that album was dire and reverse-produced, it was still a pro producer that gave him the mic to use, so that's a positive tick in that box, heh. He's made better stuff for sure. :)
 
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