Recording a Rap Song: Booth Rules

Video Transcript

"All right, now we're going to talk about booth rules. And this is the recording booth, you know, where the microphone is. What you want to do is when you're a...doing...when you're recording your vocals, a booth rule that you always want to follow is never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, leave the booth. Always stay in the booth. Don't record a vocal, then go back out there, and come back in. Go back....don't do that. Why? I'm glad you asked. Because what happens is, you lose your focus and you lose what you're doing, and you're....uh...you won't have the same vocal pattern, and it sounds different. You'll hear a verse that you may do. You go out there, you fool around for a little bit, you come back in here, and it sounds totally different. It's like, man, did they record....is that the same person? What you want to do when you're in the booth, come in here, record everything. If you have....if you have a question about something that you did, listen to it on your headphones in the booth, but never, ever leave the booth because you'll get outta your zone. You'll come back in here, and things won't sound the same. So...once...what you do is when you come in here, when you're doing your rap vocal, do it all at one time. Every voice that you need to do, every rap that you need to do, come in here, do it. Don't leave until it's done. Listen to the playback through your headphones. Don't go out in the studio, don't go out in to the control room. Just stay in the booth until you're finished recording all your vocals. And make sure they're perfect. And if they ain't perfect, stay in here, don't leave. Once you got all the vocals the way you want 'em to....to sound, then you can leave the booth. But that's the booth rule, because sometimes you come back in here and it doesn't sound the same. Don't let another person come in here and do their verse, and then you come back and add more, because then it's going to mess with the levels, the levels be different, and then when you go back in and record, your first verse won't sound like the second verse, and if you got another rapper in the middle, the rapper in the middle may sound fine, your first verse may sound fine, but your third verse is going to sound totally different from your first verse. And you don't want that. You want to have a constant flow. So when you're doing your verses, a booth rule is to stay in the booth until they're all done. Ad libs and everything."