Home Recording Tips

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Gary Vandy from garyvandy.com here at studio center. In this clip I'm going to give you some pointers on home recording. This time I'm going to show you how to record a vocal in your house. This is Moe, he's going to be our singer for this clip. This is an electric condenser microphone, which is what I always use to record vocals. If you're going to have a singer come in, first of all he's going to have to hear himself, so you want to setup a good queue mix which he's going to listen to over these headphones while he's singing, so he can hear the music he's singing to. The second thing you're going to want to do is get yourself a pop filter, wind is your enemy when you're recording a vocal because it makes noise. A pop filter is placed right in front of the microphone so that any air coming out of him, you don't get any air noise going into the microphone. There's many different types of pop filters, I would suggest this type of pop filter, it's made out of a webbing material, sorta like women's hose, which is what they used to use in the old days, they used to stretch it across a frame. Put it right in front of the mike, as close as you can get it. Then you want to position your singer. Generally the microphone should be placed at the singer's chin, not directly at his mouth because you want to catch some of the resonance off of the chest. Remember this whole body is what makes the sound, it doesn't just come out of the mouth, it's the resonation of the head, it's the resonation of the body, the chest, everything, this whole thing creates sound, this whole person creates the sound and the tone of this voice, his nose, everything. So you never put a microphone right into somebody's mouth. Second thing you want to do is make sure he's positioned at a proper distance from the microphone. My starting point is always one hand away from the pop filter. So if you do this, you have him move right up to his hand. So put your hand up, Moe, come right into your hand, okay. Generally, that's the starting point, depending on the type of vocals you're doing. The closer he gets the deeper it sound, and the further away he gets the thinner it will sound. So you go by the song, it's always by the song."