Learn How to Record Vocals with a Grammy-Winning Engineer

1. Intro - What's In This Course?: Hello, I'm Dom Morley. I'm a Grammy winning, multi platinum, producer, engineer, mixer, all of these things. And I've been working in studios for nearly 30 years, and a subject that I've always been fairly obsessed with is recording vocals. From a technical point of view, from a psychological point of view, I've always been fascinated with it. And I've been very lucky to have worked with so many singers from, like, the smallest Indie band up to people like Adele and Amy Winehouse. And I've worked with producers Mark Ronson, Tony Visconti, Phil Spector, a huge range. And it's really given me an insight into a lot of different techniques of how to record vocals and how to get the best out of singers. And I've put that all into the course. So it starts off with preproduction, like tempo, what pitch should we be at? What should you say as a producer about lyrics, you know, where you should weigh in on that? And then a lot about the psychology of preparing singers and preparing yourself to give the best performance. I do a little bit on gear, like what mics are good, or what sort of mics you should be thinking about, what other gear you should be thinking about buying. Not too much on gear. I think people can get a bit bogged down in all of that, and it's not as important as the psychology of the day and of the process. So I then get into how to set your room up to get the best out of the singer and to make it as easy for yourself. B you producing or self producing and then into the editing stage and when you should loop and when you shouldn't loop, the best way of doing comping, tuning, all of that sort of stuff. So it's basically everything from the first time you're thinking about doing a vocal to a completed vocal ready to mix and everything you need to know about in between. It's everything I can think of, all the stuff I've learned over 30 years to do with recording vocals, and I hope you enjoy the course. 2. 1.1 Why Are We Doing Preproduction?: This is a whole course about recording vocals, and yet the first chapter that we're getting into has got nothing about recording vocals. So why is that so important this preparing the song? And the reason for it is, as well as the technical elements that we're going to get into, but really the most critical thing about recording a great vocal is capturing a great performance. I heard somebody say once that the famous Rolling Stone song Sympathy for the Devil it's an amazing vocal performance on that song, and Mick Jagger performed that thousands of times in his career. But there was one performance that made more difference than any other. One performance where it really counted, and that was the one they did in the studio that day when they recorded the song. So the reason why I want to get into this so deeply is because the performance that you capture is constrained by the arrangement of the song. So we're going to talk about what we can do with the arrangement. We're going to talk about pitch, and we're going to talk about tempo and some things on lyrics and what we're going to do with BVs and all of that helps to create the right framework for the right performance to happen. So you can do everything else. You can make everything else perfect. You're going to have the world's most expensive mic. But if the pitch isn't right for the singer, if it's in the wrong key, then it's not going to work, and it's going to sound bad. So that's why this is so important. And these things, they can be done later. You know, if you're in the wrong key and want to change the key of the song, you know, technically, it can be done, but it's difficult to do. It's time consuming, which often then means it's expensive. And ultimately, it sounds worse. There'll be some audio degradation that happens if you change the pitch or if you stretch something, you move the timing. So if you can get it right beforehand so that you know you've got the right key and the right tempo and all the other things, then you're going to get the best performance and you're going to get the best sound on your recording. It was once explained to me by an engineer who was actually talking about mixing. I used to assist in an engineer who trained as an architect before he went into sound engineering. And he always described a mix as being like a building in his head, the drums and bass were the foundations. And if you didn't get the drums and bass right in the mix, if they weren't really solid, then everything else that you built on top of it fell apart, and none of it would work properly. It wouldn't be at its best. I think with a song, it's the same thing. If you want to record a great vocal, if you want to record a great song, then you've got to get these little bits of key and tempo right before you start the recording, and then you'll have a strong basis for a great recording. 3. 1.2 Tempo: The first aspect I'm going to cover on pre production, so preparing of the song is tempo. And this starts when you just listen to the demo. Hopefully, you've got a demo that you can listen to before you start recording. If not, if you haven't got any demos, then you definitely need to be in some sort of rehearsal space with the band before you're recording cause you've got to do this process before you hit the studio. It's really important to get this covered off before that point. And if you're in the rehearsal space and that's all you got, it's the same process, but you just have to think faster. You don't get time to sort of live with songs and have time to come up with ideas. So same process, but it's just you got to be faster. So what are you listening for when you're listening to the demo? Well, the first thing really is, can the singer sing it at this tempo? It's surprising how often, you know, a band member will come up with a track at a certain tempo, it's working with the drums and the guitars and everything else, so the singer joins in, but it's not actually any good for the singer. And then that means it isn't good for the song, so it needs to change. Sometimes, as a producer, you might be the one who has to step in and suggest this. Can be a political thing within a band that makes it difficult. But it does need to be said if the singer is not comfortable with the tempo, if it's sounding like the lyrics are rushed and they're not being able to be properly enunciated, properly heard, then that needs to be addressed and different tempos need to be tried. And speaking of that, have they tried different tempos? That's always worth bringing up because sometimes they have. Sometimes the thing that you're about to suggest has also been tried previously and abandoned. So if that's the case, find out why. The reasoning for abandoning other tempos will help you understand what they're aiming for in the song a little bit more because you'll know why they didn't want to go faster. Or slower. So those are your first steps. Ideally, you're listening to the demo. You may be having conversation over the phone or over email, and this is just something that you're settling in with while you're at home and checking out the songs. So then the next step is listening to the lyrics. Now, what are the lyrics suggesting about the tempo? Should the song be rushed because the lyrics suggest they are, or are there lyrics suggesting something far more relaxed. There was something I was doing recently, and the song was about stillness. And the track was a kind of mid tempo sort of thing. It was all very comfortable and all working, but I really felt there was an opportunity to underline that stillness that was suggested in the lyric. Now, the verse was quite busy, lyrically. The chorus is quite empty. So I suggested going up by quite a few BPM in order to make the chorus feel rushed, just to give that sense of being on edge and not quite being able to fit it in so that when the choruse came in, that stillness and emptiness was even more exposed, which underlined the lyric of stillness. So there's things like that that you can have a look at, and then you can try and see if there's a way that you can work with the tempo to deliver the song better. Because remember, that's what we're always doing is we're just working to deliver the song. And are we reflecting what the lyric is in the song with our tempo or are we contrasting against it? Do we have the opportunity to do something like that? There's an example of another track that I worked on where tempo was critical, which it was a very wordy song. And it was a really good one. But I'd seen them do it live, and the singer was struggling to get out, but he liked the energy that it had about it. But the words were very important to him. I won't get into the details of it. It's not important, but the lyrics kind of needed to stay as they were. So what I suggested, I sent him a couple of songs that were far more down tempo that would allow him to fit the full lyric in. But they were they were more anthemic. And that still held the energy that I knew he wanted out of the song that he was trying to get by upping the tempo. So we were able to slow the tempo right down and create a big sort of stomping anthem instead of a rushing, kind of busy Indie song that didn't quite work because he was too rushed. And it worked out really well. In the end, it was a song that he wasn't sure he wanted on the record, and it ended up being an accidental first single because radio heard the album early on and then they just started playing this song because they loved it. So that was a song that really only worked because we got the tempo right because we were trying different things and then able to do quite a big jump in tempo and see where that led us. 4. 1.3 Pitch: So the next thing to talk about is the pitch of the song. That's the next thing to think about when preparing and doing your pre production, because just the same as changing the tempo after you've started recording is extremely difficult and can lead to degradation of your audio. It's the same for pitch. If you need to re pitch stuff, re pitch musical instruments unless you're working entirely in midi, if you're re pitching anything that's been recorded, after it's been recorded, you lose sound quality. There's degradation. And so it's just easier, makes everybody's life better if you decide before you hit record on any of your DAWs, what the pitch of the song needs to be. What key are we going to be in? So again, what you do is you listen to the demo. Listen to what's happening in terms of the singer's voice and the sound of the singer's voice at that pitch. Is it doable? Do they sound like they're straining? Does it sound comfortable? And so it's quite a simple one, and it's always worth talking to the singer as well and just saying, how do you feel about this? Is this the right key for you? Because they've normally got a pretty good idea whether it is or whether it isn't speak to the singer. Again, this can sometimes be a situation, like we said in tempo in that chapter, that you're talking to the band, and you as the producer are the one who's able to ask these questions and say these things because sometimes there can be a political problem within the band that means these conversations aren't being had. So this is something that you bring with you as the producer. You ask these questions about the pitch. Is it the right one? Because it might be something that's slightly more difficult for a musician to play. However, we really have to go with what's easier for the singer to do because that's the most important for the delivery of the song, which I'm going to say this so many times while we're doing this whole course. We're all in service to the song, and that's got to be the most important thing. So yeah, is it comfortable for the singer, can they do it at this pitch? Now, the interesting question at that point is, should it be comfortable? Should it sound like they can do it at this pitch? Should there be a problem? Should they be straining? Because again, going back to how we adjusted the tempo of a track, in order to deliver the right emotion, do we need to adjust the pitch to make it more difficult to sing in order to deliver the right emotion? So you're listening to the lyrics again, talking to the singer about that and about whether it's possible to change it in order for the emotion to be more highlighted, to be more underlined. And I got another example here. It's actually the other way around. I was mixing an album. It was a DVD of a live concert for a band. It was an Indie band. And they gave me the CD as a reference, like, of the album, because it was their first album, so the whole tour was basically just the first album. They just played it with a couple of B sides. So it was all off that CD. And what I noticed, which I mentioned to the manager when he swung by the studio, is that the whole album was a semitone higher than what they did live. The whole thing I was either a semitone or a tone. It was just the album was just a little bit higher than they were doing live, which I thought was interesting because quite often, you know, as you might find as singers get older, like someone who's been doing it for decades, their voice just doesn't go as high as it used to, so they end up dropping down a semitone or a tone to go on tour and tour those songs that they did 20 years ago that they wrote for what their voice could do then. And now, this is a first down with a young band, so that's not what happened. So I spoke to the manager about it and just mentioned this. And interesting, what the band had done is they'd got all their tracks rehearsed for making the record. They knew the pitches of every song, and then they pushed them up a semitone or a tone for every song so that he would be straining. They wanted the whole album to sound pushy and on edge. So they made it all a little bit too high for the singer. So he was just pushing himself a bit too much for every song that gave it an extra level of energy and edge. So that's something that you can use yourself if you think about is there a need to add some extra energy to this song? Do I need to sound like rushed in the tempo? And now in the pitch, do I need to sound like I'm straining? Is there supposed to be an element of that kind of stress that I can bring in by adjusting the pitch of the song? So think about your pitch in terms of that, as well as in terms of whether it's the right one or whether 5. 1.4 Lyrics: Onto our next stage of preparing the song. And for this one, we're talking about lyrics. Now, once you've got your timing and your key sorted out, this is the next one that you want to have nailed down before you hit record on anything because going back and changing it is a pain. Not as much as the key and the tempo. But it's still a pain, so it's best to get this all done before you start. Again, I'm going to be approaching this in terms of being a producer rather than a self producing artist. But all of this is also really important as a self producing artist to do yourself and to review yourself or even check your cs with other people. But we'll get into that. It'll be obvious which bits you need to do that with as we go along. So if you feel that some of the lyrics need to be changed, the first question you might ask is, how involved should you be in the lyrics? This is an area that I find some artists can be a little bit more sensitive about than others. So I'm always a little bit careful about making suggestions for changing lyrics. It won't be the first thing that I come out with. I will leave it, you know, until we've got a few other things that we've discussed that we've changed, that we've adapted, and they're working so that there's a level of confidence in the session that things are going well, and that people are happy with my suggestions and willing to try things. So when I know that we're in a good situation there, then I'll start to if I feel something needs to work differently in the lyrics, then I'll test the water with just one little change and see what the reaction is. This is obviously something that's important to do in the room with the singer, so you can see what their reaction to your lyric change is. Here, I'm assuming the singer is the lyricist, as it normally is. Obviously, if it isn't, this becomes easier because nobody's emotionally attached to the lyrics. But just working on that assumption, you test the water with a little one, little change, and see what happens then. So then the questions that you want to ask yourself in terms of when you're thinking about reviewing the lyrics and are they right? First thing is, does the rhythm flow well? Quite often lyrics can be written slightly removed from the music in that certain words want to be in there, certain lines want to be in there, and occasionally you get to this point where the singer really wants a certain lyric in the song, but it isn't fitting with the song and sort of it can sound a bit crowbd in sometimes like it's been forced in. Now, again, what we're doing here is we're not working in service to the song if we leave that lyric in because if the audience's attention is drawn to the fact that a vocal isn't flowing properly and is sounding uncomfortable and disjointed, then they're not listening to the song. They're listening to, you know, essentially a mistake. So in that situation, you know, I'd bring that up and ask if there's a better way of expressing that emotion with different words that work better with the rhythm. Sometimes this can be a situation where the artist knows that sort of deep down, the artist knew it wasn't working really well and was sort of optimistic that it did. So when you bring it up as a producer, and there's a realization that that sort of underlying doubt was right and then they go and change it. Personally, I don't think I'm a great lyricist, so I generally don't make suggestions in terms of what to change something too, but rather just that something might need a change, and then I let the lyricist look after what that change should be. So yeah, does it flow well? That's sort of the first thing to ask yourself. The next one is, does it make sense? Sometimes the word can be used out of context and it doesn't quite work. It's not quite right. And it's worth bringing it up if you as the producer don't feel like the lyrics are making sense. If they're not making sense to you, then maybe just ask about it, it might be that it's just you don't quite get it yet, and when it's explained to you, you do, or there might be, you know, some slang that you're not familiar with that's in the lyric. And therefore, once it's explained, then it does. A good example from way back in the 70s was the track Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed, a famous track, so famous example. And and he used slang. In fact, Louis did this in quite a lot of times. He used slang that he created because he didn't want it to date. He didn't want the lyrics that he used to date the track. So he would use his own slang that he would make up, and then it wasn't tied to a particular time. So that might be what somebody's doing. In which case, just check that if that's something you're unsure about. And then if that's the case, that's great. You know, just let them go on. Because the other question is, should they make sense? If there's things like that being thrown in to be, you know, deliberately artistic, interesting choice, then that's great. Or, you know, on the far end of the spectrum, you've got bands like cockta twins in the 80s or more recently Cigaros and they're bands that sang with sounds. They deliberately didn't use proper words, or if they were words, they weren't constructed to make sense as a lyric, as a sentence. It was just that they were the right sounds to put in those places. So if that's the case, then that's great. You know, that's allowed to flow so long as it flows rhythmic, and it's sounding good, then go with it and then not supposed to make sense. So that's fine. The last point, and this is rare, but sometimes, you know, I've occasionally worked with an artist for whom English is not their first language. And then you're helping out with translation as well, basically. That's part of your job is to just check that the translations into English are working. Like, there's an example where one, somebody used a certain slang word that they thought would work in English, but it actually had quite negative political connotations, which I wouldn't expect anybody outside of England to know. But as they were releasing those songs in England then and people for whom English is the first language would understand those implications, it was best to use a different lyric at that point. So for those things, you know, you're an important part of the process there, so just be aware of that and help guide them through that. And then, lastly, just as a point, remember to highlight the lyrics that you love. So when these things pop up, you know, and it happens to me a lot when I'm working with artists, you know, there'll be lines that absolutely kill me, and I make sure I let them know that, you know, that line, I absolutely love it because as well as, you know, showing people where they can be better, you also need to show them where they're doing really, really well and the things that you love because that just helps everybody feel a little bit better. It helps the session move along better. So with all these things where you're saying, Oh, maybe this could be different, maybe this could be different, you know, there's other things where, you know, I'll say, don't you dare change a word of that line that is amazing. So yeah, another thing to remember to keep coming back to the things that you love and keep reminding the singer, the lyricist of those bits, as well. 6. 1.5 Beginning the Psychological Journey: In this lecture, we're going to be talking about really is building the foundations of a really creative environment that you can do your recording in. And that's sort of the start of what I call the psychological journey. And that's probably sounding a bit too pretentious, but it's really about getting everyone in the right mindset and getting the singer in the right mindset, so we know we can get the best performance out of him or her, right? So I'll start at the pre production stage because I want everyone to feel like they're doing something where they can be as creative and expressive as possible so that when we get to actually hitting the record button, we're getting people stretching themselves creatively and trying different things and trying to be as good as they can and hopefully reaching somewhere they haven't reached before. So in order to do that, when we start out, you know, I'm a producer, so part of my job is to come up with some ideas. So I'll keep putting ideas into the mix and making suggestions. And what I make abundantly clear from the beginning is that I am very happy to be wrong. Like, I am almost impossible to offend. So if I throw in an idea and somebody doesn't like it, then let me know, you know, and it's gone, and I'll just come up with another idea. And even to the extent that if I feel nobody's saying my ideas are bad, then I'll say my ideas are bad. So I'll put in one that I'm not sure about, and then I'll throw it out just to make it clear that I can't be offended. You know, I can be wrong, and I'm very happy about that. And the point of the exercise, the point of what we're doing is we're just coming up with ideas and everybody's listening to them and we're weighing them up and we're trying them, and we're throwing out the ones that we don't like, and then eventually we'll come to ones that we do like and ones that are worth trying and that we'll work with. Right? So by constantly coming up with ideas and constantly throwing ones away, we're all getting more comfortable with the idea that that's something that we should all be doing and we all can be doing. And that ends up putting you in a much better creative environment. That's the idea. Now, if you can, I find this thing better to do face to face, because then we're really being honest with each other and it's easier to do over email. Now I'm saying this. You know, currently it's February. I'm in the UK, February 2021. We're in yet another one of these COVID 19 lockdowns. Everyone in the country needs a haircut and a hug. So kind of the face to face thing is minimal at the moment. But we have Zoom, you know, is not quite sitting in the pub with somebody, but it's better than nothing. And, you know, sort of those sort of face to face interactions are really, really important for setting up this level of trust that's required for everybody to feel like they can be really creative and reach into more creative areas with each other. 7. 1.6 Backing Vocals Preproduction: So now I'm going to talk about the backing vocals. This is worth bringing up when you're into the pre production when you're at this stage. It's often something I find has not been thought about quite as deeply as perhaps some of the other parts. Normally, I assume that's because it's nobody's main part in a band. You know, there's quite often with bands or obviously, if it's a solo artist, as well, they've thought about the main vocal and the individual instrument parts, but they haven't thought too deeply about the way the backing vocals are going to be. Unless, of course, it's a song that's been toured heavily already, if it's been toured, there's probably been some level of backing vocal being worked out, although perhaps not as much as you would want for the full recording. You know, there's not as many as they're going to be for the recording. So there's a few questions that you need to ask at this stage that will help speed up and make for a good recording. And the first one is who's going to be doing the backing vocals? So who is the singer for these? Sometimes it's the singer. You know, whoever the lead vocalist is does the backing vocals, too. Sometimes there might be a dedicated band member who does them. You know, you just find that out because it's good for you to know so you can know how the sessions going to work and how things are going to fit together. It might also be something that they haven't discussed between them, and somebody's got some ideas about how they want to be add some backing vocals, which is great. So all of that's worth having a conversation about. The next one is where they're going to feature in the song. So this is obviously important as well, is whether they just in the chorus, or are they in other parts? Are there other things that want some underlining with a backing vocal? You know, is the middle Ache going to work as a backing vocal? Everything? Are there any plans in that? So that's worth bringing up as well. And then also how many parts are there going to be? Do you have an idea yet as an artist if there are going to be just some doubling up things to make things sound thicker or if you've got, like, a five part harmony going on in your head that you need to get out. So those things are worth knowing beforehand, so you can plan for your session and know who's going to sing those parts, how that's going to work because somebody might have some quite ambitious backing vocal plans, and they haven't yet tried them out. So then that does also raise the question. Do we need to hire a singer in in order to get these backing vocals done? They may be out of the register of anybody in the band, or, you know, it might be that you're a solo artist. You're working with a solo artist, and you want a different tone on your vocal tone on your record. Also, you know, it might be that it's an all girl band, and they want a male vocal or vice versa. So all those things need to be addressed beforehand or at least the questions need to be asked. Even though the answers may not quite be ready, but it's just stuff that needs to be thought about because really what we're doing at this point is we're planting seeds. You know, we're helping we're helping the artist or the band work out exactly what they want so that when they walk into the studio to start recording it, they're walking with a level of confidence that, you know, they know they want this. But also, when they leave the studio, when it's done, they don't then start to think about what they could have done, you know, so that when we're in the recording session for the vocals, we know what we're doing and we know what we want. So one of the things that we could be doing is we could just be tracking the lead. You know, there could be just additional vocals on top of the lead, which don't need a lot of working out, okay? If you're just doubling up what's happening with the lead, that's great. If that's all anybody wants, then that's a simple process. So there's not a lot of planning required there. However, if you're looking for harmonies, that's a little bit more complicated, and, you know, they do need working out so that you don't end up drifting into unison with the lead and are we doing, you know, a third and an octave or what exactly are we looking for in terms of harmonies and how many? So all those things are really worth having a little conversation about as I said earlier, even if they haven't got the answers, they start thinking about what the answers might be. So when we hit the studio to record, we're ready. It just allowing time for that planning time between the pre production and the recording so that those decisions are made. So the other question or another question to ask is, what does need underlining? I touched on this earlier, but where are we going to be singing, and what are we underlining if we're just layering, you know, if we're using that sort of tracking technique. Or laying with harmonies. You know, it's not tracking it. It's doing harmonies, but they're in time with the lead vocal. Or we're going to start using some complexity in the arrangement of the backing vocals to build the song. This is used loads of times. Loads of different examples, but I'll just give you some here just to quickly have a checkout. There's a track from I think it was the 90s Kiss by Rose by Seal, which, got really great middle eight, which starts quite simple, and then it builds up with a few different overlapping harmonies. And essentially the middle eight is built with that and a string section that just crescendos up to then land into the final chorus. And it's really, really great and clever use of backing vocals to do that. A more recent example that I think is quite interesting is Breeze blocks by Old J, where at the end of the track, they have, I think it's just the same lyric, and it's used in different parts and rhythmically in a different way, each version of it. So I think there's about three parts or something, and they're singing the same lyric, but over and across each other. And then at the very end of it, they all sing together in harmony. So those three different parts that have been overlapping and crossing then sing together in unison and harmony, I think, or it may only just be in unison. It might just be one melody that they're singing. But that sort of the chaos into the coherence is a really interesting step that really resolves the end of that section. And another one that I think is a great use of backing vocals is a track by the Tinting called I think it might be the ting ting. I've written Ting tings there, which is called That's Not My Name. And it's quite a long song, and the ending is really long, and it does a really good job of having loads of interesting layers of backing vocals, and they're doing things very different rhythmically. And there's a male and female vocal, and I think they're each doing a couple of things. And what they're using really well is singing in different registers, those two singers, singing in different registers and using different timings, so that there's a lot of complexity that's brought into the song just by what they're doing with the backing vocals. So that sort of brings us into the idea of non layered backing vocals. So when you're not sticking with what the lead is and bolstering that with a unison part or with harmonies, there's different things you can do. For example, you can be filling in the gaps, so it might be that you're just doing the gaps or you're singing longer. You know, you're putting some longer vocals into the gaps between the lines of the main lyric. But also, Adlibs obviously an important part of the backing vocals, particularly if you're into certain pop and R&B styles, Adlibs are, you know, as important, there's a lead at the end, you know, they're right up there with the lead vocal, and they're what bring the interest when the chorus is being repeated is the different Adlibs or what bring the interest into the song at those points. So that's another thing to think about is how much that's going to happen. Now, Adlibs obviously by the nature of their Adlibs. So you're not supposed to plan that too much, although I do know some artists that plan their Adlibs very, very carefully. So maybe that's just worth bringing up with your artists. So do you want to plan your AdlibsO do you prefer to do them just spur of the moment and see what comes out? Another thing is a call and response kind of vocal backing vocal, vocal and backing vocal. Great example being Royals by Lord or Lordy. I'm not quite sure how that's supposed to be pronounced. But, you know, the song I mean, that's an easy search. So their backing vocals in the chorus are just in the gaps, and it's a call and response situation. So that's another great one as well. The question to ask if you're really at an early stage of thinking about backing vocals, is what is it that you want from them? You know, What's the emotional response that you're looking to get from the backing vocals themselves. So are you trying to give an extra level of intimacy to the song? In which case, you may be looking for sort of whispered backing vocals that are quite dry and just quiet and really in the listener's ear, because you know, the backing vocals could bring that out of the song. Or maybe we're looking for a whole big sort of crowd situation where you're encouraging the listener to sing along. I always think if you can have a track that you've worked on played in a pub and everybody sings along in a pub or a bar somewhere, then you've done a really good job of bringing an audience with you. So maybe you want to get a whole bunch of sort of loose vocals with lots of different people singing, so you get all those different tones, so it sounds like a crowd. Maybe that's the way you want to go. A good example of this would be Hey, dude, with the nana nana nana bit at the end, which goes on forever. It's like seven minute Otro or something. And it's a crowd singing, and that just lifts you because you want to sing along because you can hear the crowd singing along. Which also brings me to the lyricless BBs, you know, there's the nana Na kind of thing that you get, or there's the oohs and the s, you know, all of those things are important, as well, and becoming part of the instrumentation, essentially. And that's building different sections and making parts of the track feel wider and deeper. So those are also things that it's just sort of worth mentioning and have you thought of anything like that yet, that the artist is a bit more prepared when they turn up. So on that score, the session planning, what is it that we're going to be doing on the day? In terms of your daily planning and what happens when, you want to be asking yourself, are we doing block vocals in that? I'll explain what I mean by block vocals with backing vocals. It's they're all together. They're all in a certain timing, and they're all timed to the beat, not to the lead vocal, okay? So if it's a block that doesn't matter what the lead vocals doing, and essentially the lead vocal is working around that, then that could actually be recorded before the lead vocal. So you don't need to do the lead vocal before the backing vocals. You could do the backing vocals first, and then the lead sings around that. Because whatever the backing vocals have done, it doesn't really matter to the lead, they're not supposed to be sang together. But if they are, you know, doubles or if they're supposed to be working with the lead vocal, then obviously, you need to record the lead vocal first. You need to get the comp of the lead vocal. We'll get into all of that comping and stuff in the final section of this course where we talk about comping and editing. So that would all need to be done so that the backing vocals can be recorded to the lead and the backing vocalists can hear what the lead vocals doing and work with that. All of those things to be looked at, or at least for those seeds to be planted before we get into the session so that when we start recording, we're not worried about it and we know what we're doing, and it's a very pleasant and easygoing session. 8. 1.7 Gear: The last thing I'm going to talk about in terms of preproduction and preparing the song is gear. Now, this isn't really part of the preproduction as such, but it's something that might rear its head. So it's just worth checking. And that is, is there a favorite piece of gear, a favorite microphone, a favorite mic pre, a favorite, you know, signal chain that the singer you're working with has and that they're going to want to use. You know, it's happened to me a few times where there's been a call beforehand with X singer who likes to use a blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, it's worth asking that question, particularly working with more experienced singers because they can often have some kind of preference. The other question being, of course, are we trying to match an existing sound? If you're not starting a new project, if you're coming into a project or there are other producers that are doing other tracks, and that's all going to be part of the same project, and it all needs to be sort of mixed together at the end and matched up. Then it might be worth finding out what the signal chain that they've been using already is. And if they're enjoying it, then maybe it would be wise to match that. And then, particularly, obviously, if you're mixing them all afterwards that makes your life easier, but it just makes the mixer's life easier, makes the whole project sound more coherent. So it's worth trying to do that, if at all possible. And therefore, perhaps you need to hire something in or if you're lucky borrow or something. But if you know what you're doing, you know what you need, then you can hire that before the session and everything's prepared and ready. And it's just generally more professional way of running the session. 9. 2.1 Chapter 2 Intro: Okay, welcome to Chapter two. Well done on completing the first chapter. Hope there was plenty in there for you to learn, and you got some stuff out of it. And now we are going to talk about preparing the studio. So we're not quite onto hitting the record button yet, because there's still a fair amount to talk about in order to set us up for getting the right performance. So there's a bit of technical in this chapter, and I will get into that. For people that like talking about gear, there's a chunk of that. But also, even if you're, you know, the biggest gearhead in the world, please take note of the psychological aspects as well and the things that you need to do because as I said earlier, all the best gear doesn't help you if you're not getting the right performance. So here we're thinking about what we're aiming for, which is really we're aiming for a really good sort of emotional expression from the artist. Now, in order to get that, there's a reasonable chance the artist might have to be um be somewhere that for them is vulnerable and they'll start to feel fragile. And if they're in that sort of frame of mind, they really need an environment that's very supportive because ultimately, when we're recording vocals, it's the most transparent instrument that we record because it actually features part of the human body that is the instrument. So so any sort of emotional conflicts, any of those sort of things, they're really going to be part of the recording. And that's something we can use to our advantage as well as disadvantage. You know, you know, we want those emotions, but we just have to be careful that they're the right ones, okay? So what we're going to try and do is build an environment that's comfortable, physically comfortable, as well as emotionally. It's supportive and is completely non judgmental, right? So So in that, in this chapter, we're going to talk about the technical things that you can do for that. And that's about creating the right atmosphere of confidence in the studio. So if everything is working technically, then the artist knows that there's no worries about that. They don't have to be think are things going to break, you know, am I going to be wasting my energy here 'cause nothing's going to be working? Is it going to get lost the performance somewhere in the ether? So all of that sort of technical stuff is worth covering. And also, you know, we're doing some engineering at the end of the day here as well. This is not just production. So we want things to sound good. Because that's really going to help us deliver the right emotion if they sound right. So there's that to cover, and then we've also got to talk about the atmosphere that we create in the studio, because the biggest enemy that we have when we're working with anyone performing is what's called performance anxiety. I do have a lecture about this. It universities. Maybe I should maybe I should put something on here. Anyway, there might be a course about that in a bit. Performance anxiety is generally related to past shame or trauma, which may have happened during a performance, and therefore they have anxiety about that, or it may not be related to a performance at all, and it may just simply be something somebody's carrying with them. So we just need to be sensitive that that might be what's happening. That might be something that you don't know about and you don't understand, but just give somebody the time and the space to work through those things that they may need to work through. So that's part of creating the environment that's going to get the best performance out of people. So yeah, basically, two things that we're looking at, one with technical competence, instills confidence in the people that we're working with that things are going to go well, and then that confidence they bring into their performance. And then also the creative environment that we're creating that I started out with in the last chapter and we're still building on in this chapter so that the performer gives us our role, gives us their best shot. 10. 2.2 Technical Preparations: So now we're into preparing the studio, and the first thing that we're going to do to prepare it is to prepare it technically. Now, for those of you who are self producing and may think, you know, I'll just throw up a mic it. I'll be fine. I don't need to do all this preparation. I don't have clients coming in. I really would stress it's as important for you guys to do this in order to separate the technical part of what you're doing. With the creative part. So you do the engineering bit, and that's a separate process, a separate day, even if possible, or at least you've separated the process between the engineering part of what you have to do and the performance part of what you have to do. Those two different sides of your brain, when you're jumping between them, they're both going to suffer. So get all this done exactly as if you were preparing for another person to come in and sing so that when you are coming in to sing and you are singing, that's all you're thinking about, and you're getting the best performance you possibly can. Obviously, all this goes without saying if you're just a producer working with another client like I do, so everything's prepped before they come. However, just thought I'd say that's really important for self producing artists, too. So, here we go. We're preparing. What are we doing? We are putting our microphones on stands. Obviously, that's very obviously not going to holding it unless, occasionally, very occasionally, you get an artist who desperately wants to use a handheld. I've worked with a beat boxer before. That was how he worked. He handheld the mic because he had a lot of different techniques that got different sounds, and he definitely needed to, you know, hold a Shure SM 58 or similar in order to do that. But even so the mic goes on a stand, you know, that's where it rests. That's where it sits. So get the mic on the stands. And then are we putting more than one up? Do you own more than one, obviously. Now, we're going to get into gear selection later on. I do have a whole, you know, lecture on, you know, what mics to have a go at and Mike pres and all the sort of gear talks. So this time, I'm just going to say, if you've got more than one, then that's great, because what it enables you to do is to try a few different mics out, and that allows you to hear the singer on different microphones, see how they react and see which one is best for them. So I put up normally about three or four different mics that are good for vocals and that might work on this singer. And then when I start with the singer, we'll go through and we'll check and we'll listen to those different mics. And I get the singer involved, as well. Some are more interested than others, but get them involved and pick the one that sounds the best for them. So we're getting a few different mics on the stands in preparation for the session. What's also important if you have the luxury of more than one microphone is that you've got spares there so that if something, you know, God forbid, something goes down mid session, and it's an unfixable breakage, then you've got another one ready so the session doesn't have to stop. You know, you just pull up the next best mic, put that in front of the singer, replug a few things, hit record, and, you know, you're going and you're running. The sessions still going. So get all your mics that you're going to be using or that you want to check out. Put them on stands, and then wiggle the leads because that's such a common source of failure in a signal path is just a lead that's maybe being stored wrong or, you know, there's a part of it being bent as it's been resting against a wall or something weird like that, and something's come undone. So in a stationary position, the leads can work, and, you know, there's a little bit of contact going on between the two bits of broken wire inside the lead. And then as soon as something moves, that contact is split. And you've lost your signal. So go through the leads that you're using in your signal path and just give them all a bit of a wiggle and make sure you don't lose any signal at any point while you're doing that. Because if you do, then you need to swap over to different leads, get some different leads. Signal path checked. So here obviously you've got the mic upp, you've plugged it into everything that you're going to be using. Obviously, you've got the McAp that's important. If you're just using the Mcap on the interface, then it's fairly simple. It's a lead from the microphone into the interface. Or whatever your signal path, have all of that plugged up, have a track armed on your DAW that you're going to record too, and then speak into the microphone and make sure the signal is working, because the last thing you want is for a singer to turn up and then not to work, and you're there re plugging leads looking like you don't know what you're doing. So have the signal path checked first off before the singers ready before they're in the building, ideally. And also the headphones. So the headphones need checking, too. So with all of that set up, what I do is I have my whole signal path set up and a headphone sends set up in my DAW, and then I go and put the headphones on and I listen to myself so that I know that when a singer steps up to the microphone, puts the headphones on, they can hear themselves. So the whole signal path, including the headphone section, is working. And that is in case you get one of those singers who walks in and wants to sing. You know, quite often, there'll be a little bit of a chat and a little bit of a climatization. Maybe there'll be some warming up of the singer, that sort of thing. But, you know, I've worked with singers before, and literally they walked through the door. They saw where the microphone was, and they said hello while they were walking to everybody in the control room, and they didn't stop walking until they were stood in front of the microphone, and they said, Okay, let's go. So they were expecting everything to be ready to hit record as they walked through the door, and that's the position you should be in. I even know of people that, um going to guess you, I think it's Bono, but I might be wrong on this, that he always wants a micron set up even when the tracks being mixed so that if he wants to walk in and redo a vocal, it can be done. So that's the level of professionalism you should be aiming for is that everything is set up. You're ready to hit record when the singer walks through the door so that if that's what they want to do, you're ready to do. So your check list, really. The things that you want to be kind of the golden rule here is to be thorough. So you're checking everything. You're making sure your leads are working. You're making sure everything works. You're putting yourself in the position of the singer. And, you know, this is including you. If you are the singer, if you're self produced, you imagine you're about to step into doing a vocal. You do everything that you would in that process, and you make sure that everything works in that way. And use your checklist. So I will be putting a checklist in. I'm recording this before I've made the checklist or even uploaded onto the site. So I don't know exactly where they'll be, but it'll be obvious. There'll be a checklist that you can download that has the whole process of how you set up your studio for recording a vocal so that you don't need to remember what's being said here. You'll just be able to have your checklist out and you can just tick off the boxes or whatever as you're going along as you're setting up your studio so there's nothing you forget. 11. 2.3 Build the Cocoon: In this lecture, we're going to talk about psychology, basically. This is the psychology of a recording session, and this is something that I get very kind of that I get very into because I think it's so, so important. And a lot of people don't get that involved in it. A lot of producers don't get that involved in it. And I think, you know, it's definitely an edge to be the one who's getting really involved in the psychology of the session and making sure the psychology for performance is as good as it can be and as positive as it can be. So this is what I call building the cocoon, which is really about creating an environment for the singer where they feel, you know, like they're not going to be judged and they're in a safe kind of environment, that's the word. A safe environment, not being judged and which means they can perform. You know, they can reach out to places that they wouldn't normally reach in performance, and they can try things, and that's how you're going to get their best performance, right? So that's why you build the cocoon to make them feel like that. Now, again, if this is you self producing, then this is also important, okay? You've also got to do it for yourself and build this for yourself so that you are singing in the right environment for you. So to start out with, you might be able to tell from all this little pretty lights here, it's lighting. Now, I'm going to quote Bruce Swadean who's a very famous engineer, and he was describing the recording of thriller by Michael Jackson. And he said, Another thing I learned from Michael is that he always sang in the dark. His feeling and Quincy always agreed, that's Quincy Jones, the famous producer, was that the light is very distracting. So lighting is really important. I'm not going to say that you have to record in the dark. I've worked with a couple of people that like to work like that, but I find it quite unusual that anyone wants to work in the complete dark. You know, more than anything, if you've got a lyric sheet to look at, that's not going to help you. But lighting is very important, and I think some sort of soft mood lighting makes a huge difference in the mood of your studio, and that makes a difference to how creative people are feeling. So I personally use a combination of the Phillips Hue bulbs. Now, those are the bulbs that have like 16 million colours in them or whatever, and you control them from your app. Other brands of bulb are available. So you don't just have to reach for that. That is quite expensive. I've only ever bought them in the sort of November Black Friday sales. But that's what I use in my studio, as well as fairy lights. So you can spend a lot of money on a bunch of Phillips Hue bulbs, or you can just buy those little fairy lights like you put on a Christmas tree, and they cost virtually nothing. And you can just light your studio with those, and that will really be the right mood. The other thing people use sometimes is candles. I'm always a little bit wary of that. Just open flame in a studio. Yeah, it's just always been something I've been nervous of, so I've never done it. But if that doesn't bother you, then that can be a really good vibe as well. A candle lit room is a great one for atmosphere. So lighting is incredibly important. Really think about what you're going to do with your studio and the lighting of it so that it's got the right mood for when somebody turns up to sing or for when you're singing for yourself. Now, doors doors. Now, this is an interesting one, but it's basically being able to keep the doors locked and shut at all times, because if you get somebody into the right psychological space, that they're really kind of going for it with their performance and the emotion, and then a complete stranger walks through the door. Then that whole cocoon that you've built to create that performance has been shattered because somebody if a singer is performing and they're worried that a stranger could walk through while they're doing something that they can't quite reach to, for example, then they're going to feel embarrassed and ashamed and then they're not going to want to do it. So if a singer is worried that some stranger could walk through the door at any point, they're not going to be reaching their full potential of what they can do as a singer, because they're always going to be a little bit guarded that they don't want to step too far into the unknown in case somebody sees them doing it that they're not comfortable with. Because you obviously, as a producer, you've got comfortable with them, and they're comfortable pushing boundaries with you. We cover that a little bit in the preproduction. So you've got them there, but if a stranger walks in, that blows it. So what I used to do actually, when I was an assistant engineer in a big studio, I would sit by the door. So during a recording session, once everything was set up and I knew I didn't have anything to do for a little bit, I just push my chair up to the door and then if cause our doors didn't have locks in the studios where I worked. So if somebody did try and come in, if the door opened even just a tiny bit, then I was there, and I jumped up and I walked outside and I spoke to the person outside the studio so that no one would ever be able to just walk into the room while the singer was singing. Even if somebody tried, I would be able to stop them from doing it because I would just have a chat with them outside, find out what it is they wanted. So perhaps you've got a lock on your door. Like, that's quite a good thing to install if it's an option or a red light so that your roommates, your flatmates, everybody knows that you're recording, so don't try the door at this point. Whatever it is that you need to install so that your studio is a completely safe, sort of cocooned environment, get on that and make it like. Hopefully, this is obvious, but phones off, okay? So we don't want to hear mobile phones ringing off while there's a recording session in process. And it's not just that they don't ring. It's that you're not distracted by your phone while somebody's performing, because if somebody's giving it, they're all, you know, they want to be pulling the audience in with them. And if you're the only audience members the engineer producer, and your phone is more interesting than that, they're going to feel like their all is not good enough, and then that's going to have a big effect on the psychology of the session because they're not going to feel like they've they've really got it. They've really been able to deliver when, in fact, it's just you have been careless with your attention and allowed your phone to take over. Now, we all have, you know, a relationship with our phones that's a battle because there are some very intelligent people out there whose job is attention engineer to grab our attention and make us go onto these things onto these apps. But just make sure your phone is out of the way. I can't distract you, and you can concentrate fully on the work that you're doing. Another little phone thing if you do have a landline. I know there's rarer these days, if you have a landline in the studio, make sure that's silenced or off or unplugged or whatever, so that phone can't ring in the middle of a take as well. Headphones open. So this is something we touched on a little bit in the technical prep about having your headphones open. So the reason why is it's because of this building the cocoon thing because it's to prevent a sense of isolation from creeping in particularly if you're working in a studio with a booth, but it counts as well. It's important as well when you're not. It can be quite an isolating feeling putting headphones on and then just being dead and they can't singer can't hear themselves talking through the microphone. It's particularly you know, it's worse in a booth because it feels quite isolating being like a dead sounding booth on your own, anyway. Then if you put on a pair of headphones, and it gets even deader, then that's worse. So it's just important that headphones the headphones are open and that, you know, before your singer steps up to the microphone, you're sure that the sound that's coming into that microphone is getting into their headphones so that they can hear themselves. And the other thing is about having the talkback open. Now, again, this is only in situations with booths, because if you're in the same room as a singer, then you don't need a talkback, and you're just chatting. So having the talkback open it enables them to feel like they're with you and they're not so isolated. You know, they can hear everything that's going on. There's also a certain level of, you know, potential level of paranoia, if a singer's not sure how good their performance is, and they can see through into the control room and see you talking without hearing what you're saying. And I have worked with singers that are struggling with this, and they've got quite upset about the fact that they didn't hear what was being said when the talkback button wasn't pressed. You know, they could see people talking after the performance, and they couldn't hear it. I know from experience of being, you know, assistant engineers in these rooms many, many times, if the talkback button isn't being pressed, it's because there's some boring technical thing that wants to be looked at and the producer doesn't want the artist to sort of think about that and have that in their mind. However, I do think that's still better that they know that you're doing that, and that's what the conversation is because they can just switch off from that. Then the singer thinks that you are saying something negative about the performance that you don't want them to hear. So for that reason, I would always have the talkback open whenever possible, so that the singer knows that we're not talking about anything that we don't want them to hear. Obviously, on that respect, it's worth everybody knowing just in case somebody wants to make a clever comment in the control room, and they don't realize that the talkback is always open. So I do sort of make it known at the beginning of the session that the talkback will be open at all times as much as possible, so to assume it is. So it's just another little psychological thing to make the singer feel more confident and more comfortable. Now onto more things that we can do with the studio itself, fresh air flow. I may seem like a small detail, but if you get, you know, a couple of people in a room, for any length of time, the oxygen starts to get a bit depleted and everybody starts to get a bit tired and just having a flow of fresh air, you know, if you've got one of those kind of specially designed fresh air flows, then brilliant, well done. If not, just throw a window open every now and again, just to get that through flow of fresh air that's going to keep everybody awake and alert and stop the sort of session grinding to a halt. And sort of related that a little bit is temperatures keeping a steady, good temperature in the room. If it gets too hot, people are starting to get a little bit drowsy. If it gets too cold, they start to freeze up a little bit. This counts less for vocals. It's more for, you know, if you're overdubbing guitars and everyone's a little bit chilly, then their fingers are a little bit slow. So it's still important, though, that you're keeping a comfortable temperature in the room so that nobody's thinking either too hot, too cold or feeling the effects of that. And it's all part of considering a luxury experience that you're delivering, so the singer feels like they're being looked after in every way. You know, they're being looked after technically because you were on top of it with your engineering skills. They're being looked after as a person because you are making sure that they've got the things that they need and that they're comfortable. The touch of luxury you can do whatever you want with this one. This is just a sort of me planting a seed. What is it in your studio that's quite nice and luxurious and I think people might mention afterwards? You know, I'm a slight coffee obsessive. I roast my own coffee and I have my own blends and stuff like that. So if you come to my studio work, the coffees going to be really, really good, as is the tea, because I only use Yorkshire tea bags, a little bit of plug for them there. It's the best tea. So, you know, your tea and coffee, when you come to my studio is going to be excellent. There's a touch of luxury that you get here that you don't get elsewhere. So there's just things like that. Whatever it is that works for you, your personality, what you're into, introduce that into your studio so that there's that feeling of something that's a little bit special that you only get here. And another one just tidy up. Make sure it's tidy. I know you might feel quite at home with, like, stuff lying around, and you know this thing's here, even though that's not technically away, and it's just all over the side. It does make a difference to how people feel when they're in your studio, if it feels tidy and looked after. It sort of there's a subconscious thing that if you're on top of your situation in terms of the studio mess, you know, if you're on top of that, then you're probably on top of other things, too. You know, if somebody walks into a studio where there's mess everywhere, they're going to start to assume maybe the leads aren't properly working and has the gear been cleaned and all that sort is a maintenance quite up to scratch. Those are the assumptions people make when they see a messy studio. They assume that you're not together with all the rest of the stuff that's required in keeping a studio, too. So that puts them on a sort of there's a psychological backfoot there that they're nervous, things are going to go wrong. So if you keep the place looking in as good a condition as possible, then that gives the people that come to visit your studio confidence in you, you know, as a person, as well as as an engineer. So just some final little touches that are worth thinking about is what can you do as part of your cocoon to make it feel more creative? What can you introduce to make your studio cocoon a more creative environment? I sort of think about what artwork am I putting on the walls? How does that relate to music and to performance and to creativity? Is there something there somebody's going to look at and feel quite inspired by? I also think about what sort of weird little instruments we can possibly have lying around, you know, like little climbers, the thumb piano or some odd percussion things or just whatever I can have lying around that people might pick up and play with. You know, I'm not assuming it's going to end up on a record, but it just it gets their creative sort of juices flowing and gets the thinking in that way, and that's just from stuff that you've got lying around in your studio. The other thing that this is something I adopted quite early on when I was, you know, I was an assistant engineer, you know, with ambitions of becoming an engineer, and I wanted people to want me to come back on the sessions. They wanted to remember why I was good and sort of thing that I did that, you know, there's a lot of things that I did, but one thing that I did in terms of just while we're talking about buying little bits of gear and stuff, Um, is I tried to have a bit of gear that was mine that I brought to a session that was relevant to each band member that meant I'd thought about their thing and I brought something to try and make their thing better. Like, I bought a really nice DI. It was an Avalon one, really posh DI and that was the bass players thing, you know, that would go through there. And I bought sort of a couple of interesting mics that were weird and that worked for getting an odd sound out of the drummer and making that really interesting. So there was, you know, a bunch of things that I sort of slowly accumulated where I had in mind, like, on a recording session with a band, I will bring this, and that will be set up for that musician, and then they'll know that I'm thinking more deeply about them and what I can do with them so that if they like the sound that I get, they'll have to think, Oh, well, that guy. He brought all that, each member of the band will he brought that thing that made me sound really good, and that's why this record sounds good. So let's get him again because he's got all that sort of interesting stuff. So that's just an angle. I worked for me, something just to sort of think along those lines with perhaps what you can do to make each individual person that you're working with feel particularly special and that you have thought about what's going to make their recording process better. 12. 2.4 The Witching Hour: This lecture is about the witching hour. Now, that might be hopefully, that's a phrase you're familiar with, but perhaps it isn't. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to explain what the witching hour is. It's that time of night. It's not actually specifically an hour. It's kind of deemed to be somewhere between midnight and two in the morning. Um, but basically, the point of it is it's that time of night where you feel sort of the furthest from dawn and the furthest from the day. And you can feel quite sort of, you know, psychologically removed from the outside world at that point, because everything's quiet. You know, you've not had any emails or any phone calls or anything else in a long time. And you can really sort of, you know, if you're awake at that sort of time and, you know, feeling awake, not just, you know, insomniac, but awake, you can really focus because there's nothing else going on to draw your focus away. And the reason why it's useful for us is we could plan our session to make use of that time. If you're working, particularly if you're working over a number of days, you could plan a session so that over a few days you sort of shift everybody's body clock until you get to a point where you are using the witching hour to do certain more focus aspects of recording. Now, I'm going to I put storytime there because I'm going to tell you a little story. It's another one of my examples of how that's how it's come into play in my career over the years. There was a session I was working on, and we went to a residential studio to record for a few days. And it was a four piece band, and there were a couple of songs that had to be recorded all four of them at once as kind of one take, no overdubs. I mean, we'd do a number of takes, but we just had to pick one, essentially, a favorite take with no overdubs. It couldn't be sort of built and layered as you might traditionally do where you do all the drums, and then you sit down and add some bass, and then you work on the guitars for a while. It just had to be all of them in a room. It's just the dynamic of the song and the way it moved and the timings meant that everybody had to just be playing it together and going for it. Now, in order to get the best version of that, that's quite an intense requirement because everybody's got to be really sort of on the ball for it. To get the best version of that, what we did was over the course of a few days, we slowly shifted our sort of body clock. So we would start recording at, say, 10:00 in the morning on day one. But by day four or five, that we shifted an hour each time. So we weren't starting recording till, you know, one or two in the afternoon, and we were going to bed at three in the morning. Now, what that meant was by, like, day five or four or five, can't quite remember, um we were sort of we were all wide awake at midnight two in the morning. To sort of times, we were wide awake. We were ready to go, but it was heavily witching out, you know, we just had a few. I think we actually you know, this is quite relevant considering what I said last time in the last lecture, we had a few candles up, and there was very little else in terms in terms of lighting. It was, you know, very, very dark, just a little tiny touches of mood lighting. Also worth remembering that because we're a few days into the session by this point, we've achieved quite a lot, and we're feeling pretty good about ourselves. So everybody's feeling confident about the process, and they know it's working, and we've got some really good stuff in the bag. So when we come to do these two songs, we're feeling confident, but we've got this advantage that it's like midnight, where we've got a few hours before people start getting tired, and we've got these two songs to just get a really special performance of. And we really did get very, very special performances. It was quite amazing. Remember turning round to the assistant behind me after one of them two assistants, actually, on that one. Two assistants behind me, and they're both just wide eyed, and I think one of them managed a wow, and that was about it. It was really spectacular performances. And that's due to, in part, making use of the witching hour. 13. 2.5 Which Mic?: This is the first of three lectures about gear. I know for some people, this is their favorite thing, so you're going to enjoy this. It's something I try not to talk about too much because when it comes to recording a great vocal, all that stuff about psychology that we've been doing is way more important than the gear. But, you know, I know we're all kind of gearheads if we're in this industry or most likely to some extent. So let's talk about that. And when I'm talking about gear here, I'm not giving these sort of blanket recommendations. I'm not a gear reviewer. I don't get sent 1 million mics to check, things like that. What I'm going to be talking about is stuff that I've experienced. Most of this will be stuff I've recorded, vocals through, I've done a session with, or it might be something that I've mixed something, and I know that was what was recorded. So I've got a good idea of how it sounds and how easy it is to mix with and things like that. So these are these recommendations that I'm going to be going through are very much restricted to stuff that I've got experience of. So it means it's an honest recommendation. However, I'm not giving you the whole picture of the microphone market, okay? So mic pre market and everything else. So this is just very much a personal list. So first of all, a little breakdown of the different styles of microphone that you can get because when you're building your studio and you're getting your gear together, variety of microphone is really a key part of it because you want a lot of different tones that you can access in terms of your microphone choices. That different singers can come by your studio, and you can have different options so that you get the right match of the right microphone to that voice. If you're a self producing person, then it sort of depends. It depends if you think you'll ever record anything else or anyone else in your studio, because if there's only ever going to be you and you're only ever going to be recording your voice, there's less of a need for variety, and it's more a case of finding that one that works particularly with your voice that you like. But for the sake of the people that are recording more than just a voice and also recording more than just themselves or one vocalist, we'll go through what some options are, what's worth trying. But really, the thing I want to the lesson I want to make really clear here is instead of just buying one golden mic that is the best vocal mic, what you want to do is get a small range together. And I would rather have three mid priced ones than one very expensive one because I know that's going to be more useful for doing sessions. You know, they're all going to sound decent. And now I'm going to be able to match one more closely with a vocalist, so that will get a really great vocal sound for that person than I necessarily would with one super expensive one that I'm hoping works for everybody, but likely won't. So yeah, that's just the point on variety. And there are different sort of there's different ways we categorize, and there's a bit of a crossover here because I'm talking about tubes, and that's not quite the same thing. But you get your condenser microphones. Those are your kind of more traditional vertical microphones. They've got you know, they've got the large diaphragm condenser LDCs, they sometimes get called. And it sort of looks like a big post mic like the one we can see on the picture here. So they're quite sensitive. They pick up a lot of sound around the microphone. I'm doing these voiceovers with a condenser microphone, a large diaphragm condenser. And you may notice sometimes you might hear me hitting a button on my keyboard as I'm doing this. So you can hear how they're sensitive and they pick up sounds all around, okay? So that's useful if you're in the right studio environment. So if you're in, you know, somewhere that's pretty shut off and it's well treated and you're not getting a lot of external sounds coming in, then this is a great sort of a condenser is a great mic to choose because they can pick up all the little details of somebody's voice, all the little aspects of their breathing and things, and it makes it a more detailed recording and more intimate. And if you are in a slightly noisier environment, then a dynamic mic is probably better to go for because they don't pick up so much around the microphone. They're a lot more directional. They just pick up, you know, the voice in front of it and not much else. The things that I'm doing, if you want to notice a slight difference in sound, I'm using the same signal path for all these voiceovers. But the ones that I do to camera where you see my face, I'm using a dynamic mic and all these other ones where you don't see my face, I'm using a condenser. So if you want to flick between these different lectures, you'll hear the difference in, you know, between one particular condenser and one particular dynamic mic. So it might be worth a little check, if you fancy that. Ribbons are another design of microphone. They use a ribbon instead of the usual sort of diaphragm, and they're less used for vocals. I do get into that a little bit at the end. You're going to have a reasonable range of microphones before you start buying ribbons for vocals because there are more universal ones available. And tubes. Now, there's quite a lot of the sort of high end mics, particularly, they have tubes in them, that's part of their kind of part of the manufacture of them. The the only thing I'd say is, you know, although a lot of the top end microphones have tubes in them, because a microphone has a tube in it that does not make it top end. I have seen, you know, some bits of audio gear where they've really just crowbd in a tube because they know people think tube equals great, and it doesn't always. It's not necessary. So don't just buy something because it's got a tube in it and assume that automatic makes a better quality microphone. Okay? Just a little bit of a caveat on tubes there. So anyway, we'll get into it. Mike, I would recommend. So we're going to start on the budget level. I've done this in sort of three levels. They're very loose brackets, and I can't even remember the numbers I had in my head for the brackets. It might have been budget was up to 500 queered, mid range was up to 1,000 pounds, maybe something like that. It's vaguely in that bracket, okay? So your first want to look at, if you're on a low budget is the short SM 58. I prefer the beta version. You can get two different versions. Um and it's just a great mic. It's the classic industry standard handheld mic been used for years. It's you know, it's rock solid, which is why it gets used live a lot. You know, it's almost impossible to break. It's got a smaller sound and a more direct sound than something sort of bigger and posher. Um, but it does sometimes work. Sometimes it's the right one on a voice. I worked on one album once where we were at a Big Pos studio, and we had all the vintage Neumans and vintage AKGs and all that sort of stuff. We put a bunch of mics up for the singer, and the SM 58 was the one that worked for him the best. So that was the one that we recorded the album on. So you never know. So that's a great one to have. I think they're only about 80 pounds or something like that. So there's a good one to have in your micocker just anyway. And then the next one I'd recommend would be an Aston Origin. That's in the similar sort of budget. Well, that's about 200 pounds, I think. Um, so the Aston origin is a condenser microphone, and Aston is a relatively new company, and they're doing amazing things. They're winning a lot of awards. The mics really do punch above their weight. They sound a lot better than you would assume from the price that they charge for them. So there's a great ones to have around, really, really good budget condenser. Next one I'm going to recommend is the short SM seven B. So this is another dynamic mic. It's actually the one that I'm using for the camera stuff for this. So when you see my face, you'll see probably a Shure SM seven B in there. This one was made famous because it was the one Michael Jackson always used to record on. So I think there are about 250 queer somewhere in that range. And yet, you know, Michael Jackson, who could pick any mic in the world. He always used a short SM seven B. And I did actually work on a Michael Jackson vocal session once many years ago, while he was still alive. And obviously, while he was still alive, a stupid thing to say. Sorry. And so I worked on a session of his, and it is true that is the microphone that he uses, and he used it for that session. So that's a really good mic, if you're looking for a dynamic. You know, if you want that dynamic thing because your room isn't treated very well and you don't want to pick up too much extraneous noise, that really does the job. Another dynamic that sounds very good. This is actually border line on budget because I think these are more up like 500 quid. Electro voice RE 20, that's another very old design, but it's a classic one. Also gets used a lot on bass amps and kick drums and things like that. It's got a good bottom end on it. But that can be a really good dynamic mic to use, as well. So if you see in the budget mics, there's only one condenser and there's three dynamics, and that's because condensers are more expensive mics than dynamic mics. But with those, you've got your low budget, but you've got some good options and some stuff that sounds really good. Okay? So now, going to move on to mid range. So I think we're pretty much all condensers in the mid range. I don't think we've got any tubes in there. We'll see as we go through. So okay. The first one, yes, so I have one of these. I have two of these, in fact, Austrian Audio OC 18. So Austrian Audio is, again, a new company, a very new company, all come out of AKG who make the famous 414 sort of flat microphone as well as C 12 and a whole bunch of other very classic studio microphones. And I believe the story is that everybody or sort of 90% of the employees of Austrian Audio came out of AKG and they set it up because they made the mic that they always really wanted to make, you know, which is easier to do in a small company that is than a really big one. So they're fantastic microphones. They sound really good on acoustic instruments as well. But I have recorded vocals on them, and they've really worked for that. So that's a good option if you want to have a look at something that's a very new design. They do very, very clever things with the pattern selection, which I'll let you look at. That doesn't really matter in terms of this. But yeah, that's a good one to look at. Ontronics I believe that's a British company. Their Area mic. That's another one that really punches above its weight for the price they're charging. It sounds amazing, and it easily holds with vocal mics of a much greater price. It's designed for vocals. That was, you know, what they particularly set out to do was to make a vocal mic. So yeah, I've mixed some stuff that was recorded on that, and it sounded really fantastic. So that's another good one to look. Neumann is obviously classic Neumann. That's like the big German mic brand that have made, you know, some of the greatest mics for recording for decades. They're TLM one oh two. I've worked with that before. It sounded great. Now, again, you got to remember whenever I say something sounded great, it worked for that vocalist. It doesn't mean it's going to work for you or a vocalist you're working with, which is why a selection of these things is a really good way to go. But Neumann TLM one oh two is a really good one to look at. And then I'm just going to mention the Mojave and Road brands because they make really good mics. I've had some experience, but very limited with those, but I just thought I'd flag them up as ones that are worth looking at because they do do good stuff. There's also ADK, which they get mentioned a little bit later. And that's actually the one I'm using right now is an ADK, but it's one of their more expensive vowel versions. But they make very good mid range condenser mics, too. So some of those newer companies, particularly Mohave Road's been around for a while, but Mojave and ADK are relatively new companies, and they make very good boutique microphones. So now we're going into the top dollar stuff. Now, you possibly don't need me to tell you this, or, you know, this is a little bit pie in the sky. But if you've got the budget, these things are amazing. Now, they all come in some fairly traditional designs. Most of what you see a top dollar microphones like the U 47 are designs that have been around since the 50s or 60s, and they're just great and they're classic and ain't broke, so don't fix it. So what you see often in the market is a version of one of these. So if you can afford at today's prices, I think you're looking at about 10,000 pounds for a Neumann U 47 in good condition, then great. Go for that. Flee is a company that makes very good versions of the Neumann U 47 for considerably less, like about a third of that. Obviously, that's still a lot of money. Wagner is, I believe a German O, maybe it was Australian. Doesn't matter. He made about 50, I believe, excellent copies of a U 47. Obviously, they're very hard to get hold of. They're highly valued. But if you can get hold of one of those, you're golden because they sound amazing. And also Perlman. Now, Perlman is a new company. I've got one of his TM ones. He makes great microphones. Another one of those smaller Boutique companies, a bit like Flea, ADK Mahave newer companies that are doing really good things, and they're taking the idea of a 47 is what Pelmans done and just advanced it a little bit. So it sounds almost like maybe like a modern 47, but he has a couple of different versions that you can also choose if you want something a bit more traditional. So if you want a U 47, that kind of star mic, then there's a few places to go. 67 is another great vocal mic. I suppose traditionally the 47 was seen as sort of a male vocal mic, and the 67 as a female vocal mic. But obviously, you can merrily swap that, and people often did, and the 67 would sound better on a guy and on a girl, the 47 would sound better. So it's all different, you know, different vocalists. But 67 is now reissued by Neuman, so they are making it again. The original ones, I think, go for about 7.5 thousand, 8,000 now. The original ones are like 4.5 thousand, I think. So in the new versions, the reissues are about 4.5 thousand. Um, good versions of I mean, when I say about these sort of clones or close copies or the new versions, there's a lot of them out there. I'm just saying the ones that I've tried and I know are good. Polso do a very good version of the 67 and ADK do, and that's what I'm using right now. So I own one of the ADK 60 sevens. I think they sound fantastic, so good on, you know, vocals and acoustic guitars, all that sort of stuff. The C 12. So that's the first two U 67 and U 47 are original Neumans the C 12 is an AKG mic. So the AKG C 12, very, again, very hard to get hold of classic classic, lovely top end, nice bright mic. Wonder is another great company that are, you know, remaking classic microphones and sometimes with a slightly modern edge on them, they do, you know, a really good version of the C 12. So if you're looking for a C 12 and you don't want to pay whatever, ten grand, whatever it is, then look at the Wonder version of it. Um, and then the Telefunken 251, you know, that's arguably the other those are the big four. They're in the classic studio vocal mics. So I think they go for like 20 grand, if you've got an original one that works very well, which is just insanity for one microphone. But Telefunken do still make them, or I think it's rather they make them again. So it's a reissue idea. I think they're about 9:10 thousand pounds for one. Book audio, so there's another one in the same sort of Bock and ADK Wonder PolsoPerman. All these new companies flee sorry as well. These new companies making really great versions of these classic mics. I think Bock I think it's called David Bock, I think he was, like, the sort of pioneer of remaking these 25 ones and doing a really, really good job of them. So those are definitely worth looking at. And the ADK one, as well is very highly revered the ADK version of the 251. So are some that I would recommend if you're looking for that kind of really top end version of those mics. And then something slightly different is the Chandler Red. I don't really know much about the history of that if it's a reissue of an old design or what it is. Interesting that it has the McAmp or AMCAmp built into the microphone. So that's, you know, slightly different design choice. But I have heard it in action. It sounds amazing. So that's, you know, another one to consider. I think they're around 4.5 thousand pounds area as well. Sorry about all this if you're listening in a country where you're not quite sure where your exchange rate works with pounds. That's obviously, I'm in England, so that's what I know. So yeah, those are a whole bunch of the top dollar ones, and there equivalents, if you want something that's new, not sort of the vintage expense and the vintage upkeep. You know, the other thing about owning vintage gear, I own some vintage gear. I have owned other vintage gear in the past. It costs to keep it running, you know, when these things are older than I am, you know, they cost money to keep them up and running. Things go caps go, valves go, all that sort of stuff. Whereas, if you get a new one that sounds incredibly similar to the one of those old ones, then you know you can rely on it. So that's a great thing. So then I'm just going to name a couple of unusual ones. One is a ribbon mic, so it's a very old design. The RCA 77 DX I think there's a new company called AEA who makes something very, very similar. Actually own one of the RCA 77, the original. They're quite a dark sound. It's a very natural sound, being a rhythm. That's what rhythms excel at a natural sound, but it is quite dark, so it's unusual to find a voice that really matches with that, and that's the best one for them. Interestingly, Amy Winehouse, who I did work with, that was the vocal mic that we used for the whole of her back to Black album. It really worked for it. It was great. So it does occasionally work. And, you know, I'll normally put it up with a vocalist, but it very rarely wins. It sounds better. You know, I use it a lot more like on a piano or something like that, but it's worth putting it up. And then last one is the SOR 520 dx, which is known as a green bullet. And it's traditionally it's a harmonica mic. That's the idea of it. It's to be held cupped in your hand while you're holding a harmonica. And it's got a very, very small frequency range. I think there's like it's almost like a telephone. I think it's like there's nothing under 500 and there's nothing above five K. Something fairly mad like that, that it's got a really restricted frequency range. So this is an effect. You know, this sounds odd, but it can be quite a cool thing to have. If you want something that's quite odd sounding. Now, I know all of these odd sounding things, you know, if I say, use this and it will make it sound odd, they can all be done with plugins afterwards, absolutely. But if you want to, you know, have a really exciting, interesting recording session, then why not record like? Chord with these odd sounding things. So your performers are getting into the sound and into the odd sounding stuff, and that's inspiring them and giving them a more exciting session. So if you think that's what you want to do and you want that green bullet sound, then pull out the green bullet if you've got one, obviously. So yeah, there's a couple just little slightly unusual ones off the beaten path. There's Frankie. But when you're doing it, discuss the process with the singer, okay? So have a chat about what you're going to be doing and why you're trying the different mics. And, you know, I'll talk with them and get them to listen to the different takes and see which one they like, you know, if they have a preference of which mic is the best. That's cool if you can do that chat and process with them. But remember as well to test them on the same mic pre. Okay? So if you're testing on different mic pres, then you're not getting a proper sort of empirical view of which mic is the best. So just keep everything else in the signal chain the same and just move the mic around. Having different mics on the singer so that you can have a load of different recordings of the same sort of bit of the song through different mics. You do this at the very start of the very first session, you work with them on, and then you've got a good idea of which one is going to work for them. Just as a sort of safety feature, if you think there's one that's going to be the one, have that one set up first just in case they really can't be bothered to go through this process with you and they don't want to check different mics out. You know, I'll always have the one that I think is going to be number one as the one that's ready and working. So if I suggest it and they're really reluctant to do it, then I go, Okay, let's just use this one and let's go. Because you don't want to disrupt their kind of state of mind and their creative process if they're really not into the idea of experimenting with different sounds, okay? And just while we're here, and going to get into this a little bit later, but the sound of the room and does it need more treatment, that's something that you can also just be thinking about while you're hearing these different sounds, these different microphones, just might give you a head start of if you're hearing something like it's a bit too roomy and might just pull a screen in or put another bit of padding up somewhere. You could be able to hear it while you're doing this process. So that's a good time to jump on that and just be aware of it and just hear for any sort of slight issues you might have. 14. 2.6 Which Mic Pre?: So the last lecture was about microphones, and now we're going to get to mic preamp, so what you plug the microphone into because that's another big part of the sound. So worth the consideration. And I'm going to do the same thing as I did in the previous lecture. These will be things that I have some experience of. There's way more out there on the market, but these are just some things that, you know, I've had experience of. It's worth a try. Okay? So, um, same thing as the last one. Variety is key. So, you know, what options you've got, having two or three of these is a great thing in a studio just so you can, you know, get a different idea of what they sound like and then match them up with your vocalist. If you get time, it's lovely to be able to match a mic with the vocalist and then just check the different mic pres and see if there's a bonus to using those as well. Depends on whether you got time with a vocalist. Otherwise, you know, it's worth starting out with the one you think you're going to win on. Like I said, with the microphone, if you think won't quite have the capacity to keep trying and keep going on the different sound check, different ideas of signal path, start with the one you think you're going to win on. But if you think they're enjoying this process of finding the right sound for them, then definitely give it a try to different mires if you have them, okay? Tube caveat. I'm going to mention that again because it applies here just as it did with mics. There are some not very good ones that they just throw a tube in, and then people are convinced that they are fantastic. That's not how it works. A tube won't automatically make something better. So some of the great ones have tubes in, some of them don't existence of a tube does not automatically make a piece of gear better. Okay, so hopefully, that's something we now know. Right. So there's a few different types here, so I'm just going to get here into the standalone mic pres. Standalone Mc Pres which are um that's all they do. You know, they're just a Micre. There's no other things involved. So budget, mid range, and top dollar, we're going to go for again. So with the budget, you know, your best bet, in fact, is to use your interface because whatever interface you've got, if it's got an LR input on it, that will be a mic pre. That will be able to deliver enough gain to get a mic signal in. Ones that I'm not going to get too deep into interfaces because that's a whole another world and not specifically vocal, you know, specific. But Universal audio and focus, right, there are two great companies that do great interfaces, and, you know, you can plug into them. And when you're starting out and, you know, you're being sparing with the gear that you buy, there's a great starting point, okay. One of those microphone into the sound. Going on to the mid range, then, these are some more standalone ones. Focus Wright comes up again. They have this box called the ISA one, which is a beautiful mic pre, funky little box, as well, which is quite fun. But yeah, I used to use I'm very lucky. When I started out in the late 90s, I worked at two different studios that had focus right desks, two different focus right desks, in fact. Which is very rare. So there's not many people that worked on two, but I'll shut up because nobody cares. But yeah, two different focus right desks. They both sounded amazing. Great recording path, and the ISA one is kind of one of those. So really nice one. Universal Audio, they have the solo 610, which is their mice Pre stand alone, another great sounding great sounding pre, good for vocals. I've mentioned summit in there as well. I have a bit of summit gear. They make really good tube gear, and it's funny. It's one of those companies. They make great stuff, and they're not really that hyped. So not many people know, so you can find some amazing second hand bargains of that summit stuff. So yeah, they're a really good one to look at for mid range. And then we'll get into the top dollar standalone Mike Pres. Now, DW Fern, an incredible company. I'm currently talking through a DW fern Mike Pre, andEQ and a DW fern compressor. So yes, I like them. They sound great. So DW fern VT one is an incredible Mike Pre, a tube one. A Cube Tech, as the name suggests, that's also Tube. They're absolutely gorgeous Mie Pres. You know, load of presents to them, sound really good. And then I mentioned the Avalon five, as well. You'll actually see in the little picture there. That's a studio that I used to share with a Motor Mind. So some of that gear is mine. Some of it is. You can see an Avalon M five there. So we had that as one of our Mie Prix Next to the Avalon V five, which is a great DI. Really good, very clean sounding. Don't quite have the sort of the presence that the tube has the tubes of the fern and the tube deck, but a very clean sounding one and great in its own right. So that's another really good sort of top dollar mic pre to look at. Now, it's worth mentioning 500 series because this is the new sort of format I say Nu. It's actually, you know, it's a copy of something that's been going on for a very long time, but there's been a recent burst of activity in the 500 series market. Loads of different options. And it seems to be Mike Prize is something that's quite heavily kind of happening in 500 series. There's a lot of options there. So if you happen to have got a 500 series box, basically, the box chassis provides the power and the in and out plugs. And then you buy these sort of modules that can slide into them and you can get EQs, compressors, Mic Pres, effects, all sorts. I have one myself. I have a few compressors and EQs in. I don't actually have Mike Pres in there. Um, but yeah, they're really useful sort of format to buy gear in because you only buy one power supply, which means the individual parts are a little bit cheaper. So if we're looking at a budget sort of range on the 500 series, there's CAPI, which is a company I'm trying to remember what the CAPI stands for classic audio products of Illinois, I think they stand for. But they're also kind of clones of APIs. So you can read that how you like. But it's a DIY format mostly. I think they've just started to do non DIY where you can buy the finished article. But with all these things with 500 series in particular, if you're handy with a soldering iron, you can save yourself a bit of money because you can get these kits of really good bits of gear, and CAPI is one of the great companies for that. So they do great mic pres. They're just like the old API ones. They sound really, really good. So that's worth looking at. Also, SSL, they do their VHD, which is the modern mice Pre that you see on all the sort of big flagship desks like the duality. If memory serves correctly, that's the one that's got a little bit of a dry feature on it to give it a little bit of extra tone, which is really interesting. So that's a great one to throw in your 500 series. And also the Rupert Nev Portico. So that's the Rupert Neves new stuff, not the sort of old Neve stuff, which is now owned by a company called AMS Nev. The Rupert Neve stuff is his newer designs. They're a little bit cleaner sounding than the old AMS Nev stuff or the old AMS Nev design. But they still got a good sound to them. And, you know, anything that Rupert Nev touches was great. To be an interesting point that focus right stuff I was mentioning earlier, the focus Mike desks I'd worked on 20 odd years ago were designed by Rupert Neve as well when he worked there briefly. So yeah, an amazing designer for Mike Pree. So anything that's a Nev design is probably going to be great. Um, so now into the mid range on the 500 series, there's the actual Nev, the AMS Nev. So that's more Nev 1073 is the classic Nev. So that's why I say actual because it's sort of considered the classic Nev mice Pre that is world famous and many, many records that you know have been made with those. So there's an older design. They're making it again with this company AMS Nev, so you can get hold of that in a 500 series. Um, sort of package Grace designer, they make very, very clean stuff, so that can be quite interesting. They do a really nice range of Mike Prize. So the Grace design one for the 500 series, it's worth checking out if you want something clean. Wonder Audio, now, I have Wonder Audio Mike Prize. In fact, in that picture, you'll see in the bottom right hand corner, my Wonder Audio PA four, which is four Mike Prize not in the 500 series format, but their cobalt is the 500 series format of that. And that's very like the Nev 1073. To me, it sounds a bit bigger the Wonder Audio stuff, if you can believe it bigger than A Nev, 1073. But I love the sound of the Wonder Audio stuff. So that's definitely one worth looking at in the mid range 500 series. And then millennia, I mix some stuff that was recording on Millennia Mike Breeze. Another one that's quite clean, like the Grace design, a little bit more high end. I think the millennia ones and the Grace maybe but very clean, very posh, really good sounding Mike Pres. And then we go to top dollar. There's a few that are a bit more expensive. And more in the thousand pound area here. I think maybe just over 1,000 pounds. Chandler, do the TG 2500. That's the design of the old EMI desks that used to be in Abbey Road that the Beatles used and Pink Floyd and all those sort of recordings were done on these classic old Mike Pre desks. They were called EMI desks at the time, because they were designed by the EMI engineers. Everything was made in house in those days. And so they sound really good. Interestingly, I mentioned the Amy Winehouse thing earlier. That was the Mike Pre with the RCA, that was the signal chain for her vocal. Then you got API. So this is the CAPI is the clone of the older design APIs. And then here, if you're spending top dollar, you get the new API made by API. And there's the 512 C or the V version. I forget which one. One of them, I think the difference, I think is one of them has an output trim, if that's what you want. So output trims on Meris mean you can really drive the input, if you like a little bit of distortion or color on the input, turn the output trim down, and then you're getting a decent normal level out of your Mi pri, but you've driven it quite hard. A bit like, you know, driving something into an amp for a guitar or something like that. You obviously, you're normally not looking for that level of distortion, but it just gives you a little bit of an edge on it if that's what you're looking for. Crane's song siren is a tube one, and I think I'm pretty sure the guy that runs crane song is the same guy from Summit. I think he went from Summit, sold that company, and then started crane song, I believe. If you're really interested, Google it. I think it's a guy called Dave Dave Way, maybe. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. They sound great. Sound really, really good. Friend of mine's got one, had a little bit of a listen, sounds really good. Anything that if it is the same guy as the summit guy, anything he touches, you can be sure it's great. But yeah, the crane song Siren a valve Mike Pre that works in the 500 series. So then the other option is a channel strip, so this is a mic Pre that you're buying, but it also has an EQ in it or a compressor. So some have a compressor, some have an EQ, some have both along with the mic Pre. So generally, you know, this channel strip, it's named like that because it's like a strip from a desk. That's the whole channel of the desk. It's not the whole channel because desks, you normally get ac sends and all those sort of functional things, pans and stuff that you don't need on this. But it's a mic pre and another bit of gear as well. So breaking it down to budget, mid range and top dollar again in the budget range, you're out of luck. I did look. I couldn't find anything. Certainly nothing that I've used and could recommend. I mean, I'm sure there might be some things out there, Berner probably does something, but there's nothing that I have used and would recommend, so sorry about that. And when we get into the mid range, SSL do their logic Alpha channel, which is great. So that's the same stuff as the modern desks. So it sounds really good. You know, you can't go wrong with SSL. Everything they make sounds great. It's a sound that's been working and making hit records since the 80s. So, yeah, that's really, really worth looking at. Not a lot of competition for it there in the mid range, or at least, I'll say again, not that I've used. And then if we get into the top dollar stuff, the expensive stuff, Hazelw Industries VTC one. Now, that is a new one. It's kind of niche. That's the one I'm actually using currently. I said it was a DW fern, but it's the same guys DW fern and Hazel Rig. And Hazel rig is sort of like they haven't got the big meters on, the panels cheaper. So they've managed to get a cheaper version of the really expensive equipment, but inside, it's still just as good. And what you get with that is an amazing mice Prix and DI, you know, whatever you want to use, and a really really nice EQ. So that's a great one. If you've got the budget for that, that's fantastic. For non tube, you've got the Nev 1073. You have the actual channel, which has the mic pre and the EQ, the full EQ on it. I don't think the 1073 on the maybe it does on the 500 series. I'm not sure maybe the 500 Series does have that does have the EQ as well as the Mike Pre worth checking out. But, you know, 1073 sound great. That's fantastic. Or the Wonder Audio version. As I've said earlier, I really like the Wonder Audio stuff. It's very similar to 1073, but I actually prefer it. I have a couple of their channel strips, which is the Mike Pre and the EQ, and it sounds amazing. Um, then Universal Audio, they do the 6176, which is the Mike Pre and a compressor in and a thinks and basic EQ. You know, Universal Audio Mike Pres are fantastic. The compressor is the classic 11 76 compressor that they have been making for decades and every record features in some way. So that's a really good one, as well. And then finally, the Avalon 737, which you will see in that gear photo, Avon 737, which is a really nice strip. It's got compressor, Scott EQ, Mike Pre DI, does the whole lot. It's a very clean sounding, really nice top end, clean sounding all in one box. Sounds really good. 15. 2.7a Other Gear: This last section on Gear is imaginatively titled Other Gear. So these are the bits that aren't a microphone and a mic pre that you might be using as part of a vocal recording session. We're going to start with EQ and compression. This is what a lot of people have asked me. Do I use EQ and compression when I'm recording? And should I, you know? Well, the answer to that is a little. So I do tend to use a little bit of EQ and compression, and but not too much. And the reason why it's sort of a couple of reasons. One, is I don't want to change the sound too much because I've probably selected a mic that I really like, you know, and I've got that into a nice mic pre. So there's no need to do anything too drastic, and I sort of worry about maybe it sounding too processed on the way in before I really done anything. So I'll just give it a little bit. The other reason why is I really want to concentrate on the performance of the artist. I engineer and produce, you know, at the same time. So I don't want to be thinking about the engineering too much while the singer is actually performing. I want to be thinking about their performance and how we can get it better and really have my producer hat on rather than my engineering hat on. The risk you can run, you see is by, you know, say, overcompressing something and then your focus will either be taken to that. So you're not focusing on your performance on the performance, sorry. It's not my performance. It's the singers. So you'll be drawn away because you'll be listening to the sound too much or because your focus is on the performance, you won't really hear it properly, so you won't notice that you've actually started to to have a sound that isn't optimal, to have something that isn't very good. So I tend to keep an eye on my compressor. The vocal compressor I use. When I'm recording quite often is the DW fern, which is right in front of me. It's where I sit at my DAW, so I can always see the meter moving. So I know whether how hard I'm hitting it, as well as listening. So I'm always sort of keeping an eye on it, but I'm never doing too much anyway, so that it might be taking off a DB or two DB at the most. That would be the most compression I'd be looking for in a recording process. And, you know, as far as the Q goes, I might add a little bit of top end to it. There'll be a couple of little things, but not much. And really, the key to it is if in down, don't record it flat, record a decent mic through a decent mic pre and leave it at that. And you can work on it afterwards. This is particularly if you're reasonably new to recording. You've not done a lot of sessions. The best thing to aim for is a clean recording because really, if it's sounding good with the mic and the mic pre, you know, just run with that. You can risk messing it up from you can make it a little bit better with a bit of nice EQ EQ and compression, but the bigger risk is that you might make a mess of it, and then, you know, the recording's done, the sessions over. It's a bit late to change it. So so yeah, if in doubt, don't do EQ and compression. If you're going to do it, just do a little bit, focus on the performance rather than the engineering. That's the position you want to be in. So what else, okay? EQ and compressor? Yeah, what else are we going to be using in our session? Well, there's a pop shield. You're going to need that because everybody makes plosives. Plosives, sounds like Ps and Bs, things like that. I have a pop shield up at the moment in front of me, which is why you can't hear those exploding. But what happens is there's a big burst of air. That's why they call plosives when you make those noises, and they can knock the diaphragm of your microphone to an extent that it makes a rumbling noise, and it's not very nice, okay? So your pop shield disperses that. There are two different kinds. You get the kind of nylon sort of fabric kind, and then you get metal kinds. I got to be honest, I've never used one of the metal ones. I actually have one kicking around somewhere it came free with something, but I've never used it. I really should, you know, just AB, but the nylons have always been very transparent as far as I'm concerned. So that's the ones I've always gone for Um, but they do have an effect on sound. So it is worth noting. I have heard it sort of in sort of YouTube babies, which I never trust fully, and I have heard there is a difference in sound. So if you are, for example, checking different mics out, make sure you're using the same pop shield each time because if you're using different pop shields, that will affect your judgment of how the mic sounds, right? Um and another thing to remember is if a pop shield isn't quite doing enough, if plosives are still coming through, because that's the style of the singer. They're very plosive. What you can do is you can sell a tape I tend to use masking tape or electrical tape as it's sometimes known because it's got low tack and it's not going to leave a sticky residue on your microphone. Use some of that electrical tape and just put a pencil up on the front of your microphone. And what that does is the pencil in front of the diaphragm just disperses too much of that air. You know, if there's too much air still getting through your pop shield, the pencil will disperse it around the diaphragm and you won't come into so many problems with plosives. It also can work with DSing. A couple of people asked me about what I do to DS while I'm recording vocals, and and it's partly in your choice of microphone, and also that pencil trick can work with helping you DS. Those are the only two things I know about how to do it in the recording process. The rest is using DSs afterwards. But if you've got the right signal path, that can certainly help. And then etaping a pencil to the front of your microphone so that it disperses air around it so it doesn't all hit the diaphragm at once, can also help you. So the next thing that I'm going to recommend is a reflection filter, which is the thing that sits around the back of the microphone like a mini screen. You'll have send them around, Google that phrase if you haven't, and then you'll know what I mean. There's a few different brands of them now I have an SEO. Ask them do a very good one. There are a few different ones that you can get hold of. And they kind of they sort of act as a screen around the back of the microphone. Now, the thing to remember is sound comes into the microphone mostly at the front. You generally record vocals in a cardioid pattern. So sound is coming into the front of the microphone, and the back of the microphone, because of the nature of a cardioid pattern is picking up far less. So it's not really as important as what you have behind the singer in terms of screens. But still, you might find it useful in your room. If you have a particular live room or if you wanting to shield from something, then that can work. I actually think it's kind of useful on a psychological level because a singer can sort of hide behind it. So I'm working in the room with the singer. We're both in the same room together, and it would be the same if you'd put them in a vocal booth and they were facing you. If you have a big pop big sorry reflection filter up, some sort of screen like that behind the mic, then if the singer's feeling particularly vulnerable or like they don't want to be watched while they're doing something, then they're standing up or sitting behind this reflection filter and they can't be seen if they don't want to be seen. And that can be a good thing for them. The next thing to consider in terms of gear for recording, is your room treatment, and what have you got around the bit where the singers going to be? If you've got a booth that's dead, that's great. So you've killed out all the sort of reflections in your vocal booth. I don't like booths because I like to be in the same room as the singer I put a lot of store by our between take conversations, and they're very natural when you're in the same room, you just pull your headphones off and start chatting rather than talking over a talkback mic. And so what I have, I have a couple of screens up that are behind the singer. So they're big screens. They're sort of six foot well, over six foot high. The singer stands in front of them. So with those screens behind them, then they got a reflection filter by the mic that really kind of does a reasonable job of deadening off the area around them. It's not perfect. It's got a little bit of liveness to it, particularly if they're singing back and singing quite loud. But I actually don't mind that there's a little bit of room sound that can go in where they start belting it. Um, but room treatment is something that you need to think about and it's good to have some options of. So remember I said earlier, when you're listening to your mic and you listen to the space around the vocal as well as the vocal and see what you think that sounds like. Is that sounding like it's adding? Is it dead, so it's not doing anything at all, or rather some sort of odd hollow tones that are coming out there because maybe that needs a bit more padding to kill that off. And then the final thing, of course, is the headphones. What headphones you have is important because headphones spill. It's another thing a lot of people asked about headphone spill. So, I should just mention, I have a mailing list, and when I started to design this course, I just message my mailing list and say, Is there anything you want to know about recording vocals, so I can make sure I could incorporate that in. So when I say people asked about it, it's like quite few of the emails that I got were about the subjects. So, you know, I had to make sure I covered them. For those people. So yeah, if you're not on the mailing list, by the way, go to the mixed consultancy.com, a little box will pop up, put your name in, and you get kind of discounts, occasional competition, and just you get to know about the stuff that's coming up before it does. So, yeah, you want some closed back headphones. Headphones come in two designs, open back and closed B. Now, open back sound really natural. They sound like you're sort of the sound is in the room with you, and they're good for listening for long periods. I mix on I got a couple of pairs of open back that I mix on. And that's great. But the problem is, there's a lot of spill comes out of them, so they're not really much use for recording, then all the sound of the tracks going to be spilling onto the mic. So you want some closed back headphones for the singer to be on. The classic is the Bodynamic Det one hundreds, which you'll see in every studio photo ever because it's those great big gray ones they're huge. They sit over your ears. Now, they actually sound pretty horrible. They're not nice. You know, mixes sound pretty grim through them. But they are really good at cutting down on spill. They do There are more modern versions like DT one 50s, you know, Beer Dynamic have upgraded that design. So there are better versions. But they're really good for spill. I tend to only really use them when I have to, or, like, you know, if it's a drummer and they've got a click going on really loud in their ears, you know, the last thing you want is that click spilling into the 12 mics you've got around the drum kit right in front of him. So I'll often put a drummer on one of those apologies to drummers. I'll put them on DT 100 because that's really my best bet for cutting down on spill. In my studio, I use Sony MDR 7506 is. It's headphones I've used for years. A lot of the studios I've worked at have them because they're closed back, and they're a really good balance between sounding great and cutting down on spill. So I think they're about 80 quid or somewhere in that territory, 75, 80 pounds. So that's a really good one if you want a sort of balance between spill reduction and good sound. Another thing you can do to help reduce the amount of headphone spill that's coming out is compress the recording less compression is squashing down the loud bits and bringing up the quiet bits. So those quiet bits between the vocal lines when the singers just listen to the music and there's some spill coming out, compression will be bringing that out even more. So maybe if you're suffering from that in your recording process from excess spill and you've got a compressor on kill the compressor. Let's just not compress while we're recording. Deal with that afterwards when we can, for example, do some rides on our vocal automation, volume automation, sorry, of the vocal before we hit a compressor, and then there's less going in. I'll tell you what I'm going to do a whole course on mixing vocals, as well. So we'll get into that and what you can do there. But yeah, reducing compression. And what a good sort of rule of thumb is to start your session with the headphones that sort of not too loud, so that the singer goes out, puts headphones on, and they're not too loud. So you know you're going to start with a good position for spill. And if they're happy with that volume, then you're in a good place because there's not too much coming out and they're hay the singers happy where it is. You might find that they want it louder. That's not unusual. In which case, you know, then you've got to turn it up, and then you might dealing with spill or being in the territory where that might happen. But there you go. If you start with it quieter, the headphone mix, then you might find yourself in a good place. Over and above that, you know, you're getting a good performance. That's the most important thing. A bit of headphone spill shouldn't get in the way of good performance, and it might just end up being something you have to do as an editing job after the recording process. 16. 2.7b Screens and Acoustics: So I was recently asked about acoustic screens and acoustic panels and how they should be arranged and what to do about them. So I realized I hadn't covered that very much in the course, so I've just added this little bit on. And really, I guess maybe the reason why I didn't add it is because there aren't initially, is there aren't any hard and fast rules as to this is what you have to do. So let's just talk about what they're for. The idea is if you just sing in a room, you get all the reflections of the room and everything bouncing back into the microphone, and quite often that isn't what you want. If you're in, like, a really post studio that's been acoustically designed, then you may actually want some of that. You might want a big live sound. And so you perhaps won't use many, if any, screens. But generally, you don't want that sort of reverb and early reflections of the room in your mic when you're recording a vocal because you want to work with a reasonably dry vocal. So your acoustic screens and your acoustic treatment is what you do to achieve that dryness around your vocal instead of a room sound. And there's a lot of ways you can do it, and there's a lot of different sort of budgets you can blow on it. I've done a recording in a cupboard with like a Duve blanket thing behind the singer, and it was a clothes cupboard, so it was full of clothes, so it was all really absorbent. Then a blanket behind to help kill it even more. And that really worked. It was a completely dead environment. And so she could sing as much as she wanted, as loud as she wanted, and there weren't any early reflections going on. There was nothing sounding sort of harsh or hard or weird going on in there. So that was great. If you're building a room, you probably want to set up a small area, like a booth for me, I've just got, like, a corner of my studio that I've just got a couple of screens up, and that's enough, and it's close around the vocal. And so how I've done it is I've got a screen directly behind the singer and then another one off to the side because it's by a brick wall. So the side one is sort of cutting out the reflections from the brick wall. And then with a reflection filter around the back and microphone, as well, for me, that tightens up the environment enough around the voice that could get a good dry, good sound from it. So for you, it might be different. You might need to do more or you might need to do less, depending on the size of your room. It's got a huge effect at the size of your room, and also the angles of the walls. There's all sorts of things that acousticians will be able to tell you. But what I would do is say, err on the side of caution, have more dampening than you think you'll need. And it might be me being almost superstitious about this, but when I set up the screens, and this is when I was in big studios and assisting and having to set up all the screens, I wouldn't use right angles just sort of the little that I do know about acoustics is right angles in rooms is bad for the acoustics and sound sort of flying around. And even though obviously it's absorbent material, so it shouldn't be reflecting anything. So that's why I think I'm maybe being a bit superstitious about it. But I would do at least one screen behind the singer, because if you think the microphone is pointing that way. So any sounds that are bouncing off the wall behind and coming back forward again, have got a chance of going into the microphone. So screen behind the singer, that stops those direct bounces back into the microphone. And then if you can, or if you need to, one or two up on the sides of the singer two, just to stop those things coming in from sidewalls and getting into the microphone. So that's really sort of principles that you're thinking of, and then how you address that and how you do that in your studio will be very individual to you. One thing I will say, YouTube has got a lot of good videos on how to make your own acoustic screens if you don't want to buy them. It's relatively simple job. It's a very cheap job. Um, and if you got the time, then you can do something really bespoke to your studio that absolutely fulfills your need and is the right size and goes up to the ceiling or whatever it is that you want to do. That's definitely worth looking at if you want to get into that. So, yeah, that's it. Just a little bit on acoustic screens. And hopefully, you know, you can use that for building out your own studio when you get the chance. 17. 3.1 Chapter 3 Intro: Now we're into Chapter three, and this is actually the recording process. So we've actually done quite a lot of the work already. In fact, I'd say the majority of it, we've done. And now we're getting through to the process of hitting record and capturing a take. What I want you to remember is we've done all of this prep. Don't just hit record without the other considerations that we need to make. So these are your final step towards getting a really, really great performance to take careful note of what we go through in this chapter, of the lectures that are coming up and just make sure you're putting all those things into practice as well. This is the crucial point for all the psychology that we've been learning about. This is where you get to deliver on all of that, and you get to put everything into practice that you've done. Also, it's worth bearing in mind that for this process, you do have your engineer and producer hat on. There's both the jobs that are going to be running while you're recording. You know, you're being the engineer, but you want to concentrate on being the producer. That's what all the preps for. The reason why we did all this preparation, and there's little bits that are mentioned in the next lecture, too. The reason why we do all this is so that the errors are minimized and your engineer hat is on for the least amount of time. You want you produce a hat on as much as possible during the process of recording. So all this prep is done, so hopefully nothing should go wrong. Murphy's law and all that, but hopefully nothing will go wrong. What we want to do really is to be able to concentrate on the performance as the producer. You're listening to the way the singer is singing, you're listening to the way they're mooting, and you're working at whether we're getting the best out of the singer and the best out of this performance, and you're not thinking, have I put the compressor on too strong? You know, are the levels hitting too hard? I keep the way of my studio out is I keep my MCAmps very close to where I can see when I'm recording. So if there's any overload lights, you know, I'll see them, so I know that they're happening. But generally, I've done a lot of setup beforehand, so I know that there's very little chance of us getting into that sort of area. That's what your preps for. But anyway, take a lot of notes. There's a lot to cover in this section with the psychology of how we go about getting the best performance on the day with the singer. So yeah, enjoy it, and I'll see you in Chapter four. 18. 3.2 Testing: Now we're into the recording process, and the first thing to do is kind of your set up, really. So we'll assume, you know, Mike's on stands and we've done all of that, but we've checked everything when we set up. And now, just before we actually you know, the singer steps up to record, what we're going to do is we're just going to test again. You can see a slight error this person has made in their setup in the microphone on the right doesn't have a lead plugged into it. So that would be an obvious one. Anyway, you're looking for anything that you've tested already that might have gone wrong in the rest period between you setting up and you doing it, because we've already tested everything. We know that. But as a law made famous by Captain Edward A Murphy, who said of his assistant, if you can find a way of doing it wrong, then he will, or also now it's sort of translated as anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Assume things will have gone wrong in the time that you left them so that you're going to check them again and make sure they haven't. And again, we're checking the whole root. So the best way to do this is to stand at the microphone with the headphones on, DAW channel open as if you were the singer, and just check the root. Make sure you can hear yourself, make sure the levels are good. You know, whatever you've set up, reverbs and stuff in the DAW, they're all working, and there's no crackles, there's no weird noises going on. Everything's fine. And then, again, do that wiggle of all the leads just in case, you know, there's an odd contact, something's gone wrong. Just wiggle all your leads. I mean, it's a few seconds work. Give them a bit of a wiggle, make sure that nothing cuts out. When you do that. Everything's still working, and then you're ready to go with confidence. 19. 3.3 The Physical Room Setup: In this lecture, we're going to be talking about the actual physical setup of the room, so the things that are in there and where we're putting them and what we need to remember to have setup in the room already. Screens or booth. I actually I'm not a huge fan of booths for recording vocals. I realize there's a technical advantage in that I can have the if I have a booth, then in the control room, I can have the music on nice and loud, and in the booth, that won't be bleeding into what they're doing on the mic. So there's good technical separation of the sound between the two different rooms. And the reason why I don't like it is I like to be in the room with the singer. For those moments when you're taking the headphones off and you're discussing the part and what they're doing, you know, as I'm sure you won't be surprised by now, for me, the psychological aspects of the performance are the most important. So I like to be in the same room as the singer to talk about those things. It feels more natural and I feel I can go a bit deeper with it by being in the same room. If you're not going to have a booth, though, it's good to get some screens up so that the singer is sort of closed down in terms of the acoustic. So you're not getting too much of the sound of the room around them and you're getting a good dry, clean vocal sound. So a few screens up around. You can see in that green picture, they've got, you know, those kind of diffuser absorber things, and they've also got a reflection filter. So there's a few things up to try and deaden the sound around the singer. So screens or booth, whichever suits your style as a producer or as an artist, what you would prefer. Onto the aircon phone off situation, obviously, we don't want noise going off in the middle of what we're doing. We don't want to take to be spoilt by a phone ringing or a sudden hum from an air unit. So if you can get those off start before you start the session or at least before you start recording, then that means you're not going to have a recording destroyed by something that could have been turned off and that problem didn't happen. Now, the position of the mictnd. This is more about where the singers standing, making sure that the mictnd is in a position that's comfortable for them in terms of the feet of the mic Stand, like, they're not going to start kicking it because the feet of the mic Stand are in a position where their feet are going to be. So I tend to, you know, if the singers in the booth, I'll follow them into the booth when they go in there, or, you know, if they're standing up in my studio behind me, you'll see that in a minute. And where they go. When they stand there, I just check where they're standing that it's comfortable and that they're not it doesn't look like they're trying to stand around the mics stand because the problem is you might end up getting it kicked and then that sends a big boom through the whole mictnd into the mic. Also, if for any reason, you've got more than y mic stand up, maybe you've got another stand that's holding the lyrics up. I'm going to get into that in a second, or there might be another stand that's holding the pop shield up or any other reason, don't overlap the legs because then it's just it means if the other stand that doesn't have the microphone gets hit, if those legs are touching, then that boom is going to travel through right into your mic. So if you do have more than one stand in close proximity to the stand with the microphone on, just make sure they're not touching in any way. And also, one little note, if you look into the bottom right corner of this picture, that with a singer holding the mictnd is going to put all sorts of horrible noises and booms and bangs into the mic. So that is a no. If a singer needs to hold a mictnd while they're performing, then give them another one to hold, not the one the microphones. And for that matter, actually, that sort of idea of a singer needing props to sing. That's not that unusual. I do know I've forgotten the band, but there was a singer, a very big rock band, and he also played guitar. So what he did when he did his vocals was he took a guitar that had no strings on, and he sort of fake strummed it because he needed to feel like he was doing that while he was performing his vocal, and that gave him a better vocal performance. So any of those things are fine. Just this particular one that this guy's doing is not fine because he's going to put some bangs and rumbles into the microphone while he's singing into it. So he needs another mic Stand to hold onto so he feels comfortable. Okay, so into the mic and pickup pattern of the microphone. So this is a great picture because it's like, zoned in on the pickup selector switch. So you can see, it's on cardioid. Cardioid which comes from word meaning heart, sort of heart shaped. I have heard other languages call it lung shape, which I think is actually more accurate than heart shape, but that doesn't matter. Cardioid is where basically picks up what's in front of it, what's in front of the microphone. Omni is another option. You can see also figure eight there as well. Figure eight picks up exactly in front and behind, and Omni picks all the way around the microphone. That's the pickup pattern. And it sort of depends what you're doing. Most people would use cardioid for doing vocals. That just kind of gets rid of the sound. You're only picking up what's coming out of the singer's mouth and gets rid of the sound around it. If you're in a particularly good room and you want a bit of that in there, then perhaps you might choose Omni. Or if you've got a singer who moves around side to side a lot, that will be less of a problem with a mic that's in an omni position. But to be honest, if they're moving front and back a lot, which tends to be more of the problem with the singer not staying in the same position, the omni isn't really going to help you there. In fact, if you're wanting to compress and ride the vocal up and down a bit more because of that position, the fact that Mike is in omni and pulling in more of the room might actually work against you. So one other aspect of well, difference to be aware of between omni and cardioid is the proximity effect, which is where the singer goes closer into the mic to get more of a sort of intimate bottom ending sound. Here you go, I'll do it. I'll get closer in on this one, and you get more of a sort of a thicker, more intimate sound on and that is that is less obvious on omni and more obvious on cardioid. So if you're wanting to do that, then you better be on cardioid to get that effect. So yeah, you're most likely to be using cardioid, but that's just some of the reasons you might want to nod towards omni instead. Other things to be aware of is to have the lyrics printed out. You might want one yourself if you're the producer and there's a different artist or obviously if you're self producing, you only need one set. But having the lyrics printed out and ready is good and a stand to put the lyrics on. If you don't have a music stand, another mic stand with the lyrics taped onto the end of it and just raise that up so the lyrics at the right height. That's a really useful way of holding the lyrics that's convenient for the singer. And also light. Obviously, we talked about cool lighting, but what I mean in earlier chapter. But what I mean here is that there's enough light to see the lyrics by. So if the singer is requiring lyrics to sing by, they probably need the light to see those, as well. So your mood lighting is obviously very important, but let's not lose the ability to read the lyrics. And then a little table nearby, obviously very useful for putting their water on the phone or whatever, just one of those little elements of luxury, little conveniences. And also, your pop shield should be up and ready. That should always be there. And also potentially your pencil or pen with a bit of electrical tape in case the pop shield isn't quite cutting it. You need a bit of extra help there or help with DSing. And then being armed and ready with that just makes it quicker if you do need to jump in and put that in there. So it's just useful to have handy. And here you can see, just quickly the sort of corner where I tend to do vocals. There's screens up all around vocal height. That's my ADK, which is very nice. You can see headphones hanging there. They've got their own volume control for that little stool that they can use as a table. There's music stand, which got some nice lights on. And yeah, that's generally the distance I'd start the pop shield at, then maybe change it if we need to. And yeah, 20. 3.4 Singer Setup: So our next step is setting up for the singer. Obviously, this is a bit more sort of close to the singer turning up than being here. There's a little bit that you do beforehand, but, you know, you kind of do this more on the day. Although you can do it the day before. No reason why not. So here you go. What we'll start with is headphones, and what you're doing, is you're preparing their headphone mix. So what they hear while they're singing, it's likely they're going to want their vocal a little bit louder than normal. We'll just get into that in a second. But the mix that they'll be hearing to sing to, there's a few considerations with this. First of all, mix with the singers headphones on. So you're hearing it through the same headphones they are. You know, if you've got different models of headphones kicking around your studio, you don't want to do something that sounds brilliant on a certain pair, and then you put on the ones that the singers got that's a different pair of headphones, and it doesn't sound quite as good. So your best bet is to grab the singers headphones and just do the mix with those headphones on, so you know it's going to sound good when they listen to it. Now, there's a possibility. Sometimes it doesn't come up very often, but sometimes, if a singer keeps on asking to have more themselves, it's quite normal for them to have, you know, a louder, you know, volume of themselves than you would have in a mix. But if they keep on asking for more themselves, try just flipping the phase on the channel as it comes back. You can normally get a plug in that's very, very simple, you know, no latency, and it has a phase button on it. So put that on their channel. Flip the phase on it because there might be a small phasing issue that means they are not hearing themselves properly. They're sort of canceling themselves out. So that can be a little trick that just enables them to hear themselves a little bit more clearly so that it's not getting too loud because you don't want too much spill. You don't want them to keep turning things up. And also, you want to be able to hear stuff as well. So yeah, that can sometimes work. The other thing is one ear off. Now, this is something that some singers naturally do. Some singers are aware that's a good idea. But if they don't worth bringing up, it really helps with tuning, so they can hear themselves a lot clearer if they have one ear off and one ear on on the headphones. Um, worth bearing in mind with that, obviously, anything that's panned in your headphone mix, if it's panned onto the side that they haven't got the ear on, then that's going to make a difference to what they're hearing. So just be aware of that and anything critical, just think, am I losing something, perhaps the critical stuff in the headphone mix is best in the middle. So you know that even if they pull the ear off, put it back on again, they're always going to have it in. So then speaking of where you're panning things and stuff, you need your session set up in your DAW, as well. There's a lovely picture of some DAW software that I haven't used. I'm sure it's great. So session markers. Session markers are obviously a really useful thing for moving around the track and making sure that you're talking about the same section. So when your singer says the bridge, the bridge is a good example because it's sort of like an Americanism to call the Middle eight the bridge. We call it Middle eight. They call it bridge. And then, equally, some English people will call the pre chorus the bridge. So those sort of confusions are best ironed out beforehand, otherwise, it can get frustrating and annoying while you're in the process of recording. So if you set your markers, just check that you're talking about the same sections with the same names with your singer, then you can move through fairly swiftly through the song. Now this is another one fretless instruments. Fretless instruments, glorious as they are, you know, you run the risk of them having slight tuning issues in them. That's sort of the nature of a fretless instrument. So obviously, fretless basses is one that will spring to mind because it's got the word fretless in it. But there's a lot of stringed instruments that are fretless. So just have a little think about what's going on in your session. Is there a fretless instrument in there that could have some sort of micro tuning issues that will throw your singer off and make it more difficult for them, if so mute that one. You know, see how much you can get away without using that instrument in your headphone mix so that it's an easier job for the singer. And also vocal reverb. You know, put some sort of reverb. I tend to just use a plate as a starting point, sometimes a haul, but it's just nice to have something on there, so they're not singing dry. And if you start out with that, then again, we're going through this process where we're making them feel comfortable because we've got the professional environment where everything's already done for them. So have it set up with a bit of reverb on that you can then adjust as you're going along. And then, lastly, just their physical position. Where are they in relation to the microphone? What I often use is the pop shield to give them a bit of a guide. So I'll place the pop shield somewhere. Generally, singers will be an inch or two away from the pop shield, so I'll place that where I want them to be. And then, obviously, you can use your relationship, your physical relationship to the microphone to your advantage. Because if you move really close to a microphone, when it's in a cardioid position, when it's set to a cardioid position, the proximity to the microphone gives a little bit more bottom end, and sort of we also can translate that I, Here's you getting closer. Here's the singer getting closer, and we translate that as something more intimate. So that can be used quite effectively. If you need to highlight some sort of lyric and you want something to be more intimate, then proximity to the microphone can work there, as well as also if they're going to be loud, getting them to go back a bit so things don't get overloaded, just getting them to lean back a little bit. And you can use your positioning as the pop shield as a bit of a guide to the singer to show them where a good starting point can be. 21. 3.5 Lead Vocal Recording - Communication: Now this lecture is all about communication and how we're communicating through the recording process. So beforehand, so this is before we actually record, but we're on the day of recording. The first thing I like to do is discuss timings for the day. So we're with, you know, a band or an artist, and we'll just go through the plan of the day, map it out. Why don't we do this and then this. And what that means is you have that discussion with everybody, you know, if it's more than one person with everybody, and you're getting the information from them as well about how that works for them because there's no point you having a great idea of how the days going to map out, but the guitarist has got to leave at 4:00, and you thought he was going to do his recording at five. So have that conversation, find out how the plan works for everybody. And then what that means is, once you've got a plan you know, that everybody knows, as it gets into the day, everybody knows when they're up next and when their bits next. And also, you can work around it and kind of the guitarist needs the piano one first before he does his bits. So you get that right and so on. So really good to discuss the timings and it allows people to want to let you know how their day needs to go and also let everybody know when they're going to be up. So there's no surprises and everybody's ready to go when it's their turn. The other thing to do is to allow a little bit of time for the vocalist to warm up. Not every singer likes to do a warm up, but I always ask because quite often they don't ask. They don't say, All can of do a warm up. I think some singers think that when you come into a studio, you just sort of step up to the mic and start singing and this glorious thing comes out. And really, there's not many singers in the world that work like that. Most need some sort of warming up. In order to get their voice, you know, their muscles in the right place so they can really use them as much as they can. So I'll always suggest a warm up, whether they want to or not is totally cool, but the option is open. And if you do have this as an option, a separate sort of room or area where somebody could go and do a vocal warm up that's quite private is a really good thing because I don't know if you've heard one before, but they do sound quite weird, hearing somebody making all the odd noises that's required to warm up their muscles in their throat and their lips and everything else. So people tend not to like to have an audience when they're doing their vocal warm ups. They can also be quite loud. So yeah, just worth bearing in mind, if you can get a little area that they can use privately to do their warm ups, then, you know, half an hour or so before you start recording, that's a really good idea. Then when they're actually sort of stepping up to the mic, I just talk about what we're going to be doing and generally how I sort of like to do the recording, the procedure of it. So it'll be a couple of takes at the beginning where they're just warming into the idea, listening to the headphone mix, and we're getting that right, so they can give me a lot of feedback on headphone mix. And while I'm kind of doing the engineering parts, I'm playing with a game, getting that right on the mic pre. And if I've got a compressor and EQ on the go, I'm getting those things right. So I just explained that there'll be a couple of takes where things will be changing level wise, but listen to the headphone mix, make sure you can hear everything you want to hear. And I do just say, as well, you know, just say stop anytime because you want something changed, and then we'll change it and make sure it's great. So and if you talk them through that and then say, you know, then we'll start doing some takes, and I like to get quite a lot of takes in, good for ammo for the comping, then your singer knows that if you're doing a few takes, then it's not because they're getting it wrong or they're not good enough. It's simply you're getting a load of ammo for comping. So at whatever point you do the comp, which is compiling the best aspects of the vocals, you've got some really good stuff there. So explaining that means that they're sort of mentally prepared for that to happen. And then also, I'll say, like, maybe we might focus on the verse first off or how does that work for your voice? Is it better if we do the chorus first? Because that's quite a belter? So you better doing that after we've done the verse, and you're even more warmed up, or you're better doing that first when you've got all your strength, and then we'll do the verses afterwards because they're a bit more chilled. So all those things are worth having the conversation about so that you're tracking it in the right way that's best for the singer and best for their voice. And the next bit is what I call storytime. Now, this isn't storytime like we've had earlier on in this course, where I've been telling you an example of something that I've done that sort of illustrates the point. What storytime is when I'm in with a singer is where we talk about the lyric. Now, I guess because of the nature of the music I tend to do, I tend to work with singers who have written the song themselves, at least written the lyric themselves. So the lyric can be something very, very personal. But even if that's not the case, it's a really good idea to discuss the lyric anyway so the singer can get it in their head. What I'm looking to do is essentially bring the singer back to the point where they were emotionally when they decided they had to write this song, and they needed to write these lyrics. Because what we want to do on the microphone is have a singer who is emotionally in the right place to really deliver the emotion that they're trying to deliver and deliver the song as it's supposed to be. So I talk them through. I ask them a lot of questions about, what does this line mean? What does this line mean? So that they're talking through the whole song and really telling me the story about it. What I also do is I ask what emotions I'm supposed to be feeling. So sometimes it can be not quite so clear. So I'll say something like, Is this line Are you angry at this point, or is this more sort of just sort of upset and a bit down about it? Are you know, what is the emotion that I'm supposed to feel as the listener? When I hear these lyrics. So then I know what to look for because once I've felt that, once I've heard them sing it like that and I felt that lyric, the emotion in that lyric that I'm supposed to, then I know we've got a good take and we can do the next part. So yeah, storytime is a really, really important part of doing the vocals because you really that's where you as a producer, learn how you're supposed to be feeling about this song. And that's where the artist gets a chance to get really into into the psychology of it and into the emotion of it so they can express properly. So now during the song, what are we doing while we are actually tracking? Well, what I do is while I'm asking for another take, so that it doesn't feel quite so blind, I'll explain what I'm looking for in the take. So when somebody's done, you know, a run through of the verse and go, Let's take it again and this time, can you? And then I'll make a suggestion that will hopefully bring us closer to where we want to be in terms of the delivery, and it might be the pitching or the timing or the tone of the voice or something like that, you know, I'll have an idea in my head where we want to be so that I'll just give them one or two. And don't overload. You know, it's enough to deal with singing anyway without having too many sort of notes of direction. So just one or two little things that they could think about that could bring us closer to where we are. And then once they've got those now, if I've got, four things I want them to bring in, you know, I'll suggest two and we'll maybe do a couple of takes until they've got that, and that's part of their performance then. And then I'll bring in the other ones and go, great. Can we now also try and then build on it like that? So I'm explaining what I'm looking for all the time and asking for the next take to be a little bit more X so that we know where we're going and how we're moving this forward. I think one of the most useful things as a producer you can have in this sort of scenario, it sounds quite ridiculous, but it's a big vocabulary because I often find it difficult to explain this, so I hope I get it right this time, because if I say to a singer, I want something to sound more reluctant, then why don't we try this in a more reluctant way? They might then express that in a certain way that isn't what I'm looking for, but that's how they translate reluctant in their head. So then I'll say, Okay, forget they're reluctant. How about making Why don't you sound a little bit more unsure? And then they try it in a way that to them means unsure. And that's what I actually want to hear. So I've called it reluctant, but they call it unsure, and that's the emotion that we're trying to draw out this song. So if I've got a whole bunch of adjectives and adverbs at, at my fingertips ready to go, and if I'm not saying the right ones to draw the right performance out, I can throw another one at them, and eventually I'll get to the one that they describe that emotion as. Okay, I hope that made sense. And then the other thing is the old criticism sandwich, as it's known. I was first described to me as Build break build. And where when you need to offer criticism to somebody, you start out by saying, you know, This bit was great. I really like this. And then this bit we could work on, and then you finally say, but this bit was brilliant. Now, I don't do that because I think that sounds disingenuous because I think people have heard that process so many times. That they no longer trust the positives on either side that we're used to deliver the negative and sweeten the blow. So what I will do is I will simply say the things that I like and the things that I think we need to work on. You know, if there's something I like in performance, I'll say it. That was great. Keep that. And if there's something that I think we need to work on, I'll say work on that, but I won't do that kind of formulaic, build, break, build criticism sandwich because I think it's just once you enter into that sort of territory of doing it as a formula, you certainly lose this sort of the honesty of it, and it starts to feel like, you know, you're making up some things that are positive, when honestly, you know, that's obviously not the case. There are going to be things you like about the performance and you want to keep in there. So you're saying it in order for that to happen. So just being aware of that, that Build Break Build is an old system that people see through these days, so try not to use it. 22. 3.6 Backing Vocal Recording: Now, as part of the recording process, we get into the backing vocals. Lead vocal we've covered pretty much. So now what are the BV options? They're called BV, sometimes backing vocals, sometimes background vocals. Background vocals tends to be more of an American thing and backing vocals, more of a British thing. It's all the same. Often we just use Bevis, and then it doesn't matter. So anyway, backing vocals. So the simplest sort of form of your backing vocal is the tracking, and it's the tracking of the lead vocal. Now, there's a couple of ways to approach this. Some people like to track the lead vocal from start to finish. They like the whole thing to be tracked, because that's the sound of their voice. That's what they want their voice to sound like. It has a thickening effect, and those singers like that thickening effect. So they will track the whole lead vocal. But in order to do this, in order to do any of this tracking with the lead, the important thing to state is it needs to be done on the final comp of the lead. It needs to be the final version of the lead vocal as it's going to be heard on the record. In Chapter four, we get into comping and editing, so I'll talk about that, but just needed to note here that once we're getting into the tracking of the BVs, that has to be done after you've got the final compat of the lead. I'm in a session where somebody's doing their own BVs and they're doing on the same day as the lead. I record the lead vocal, tell them take a little break for half an hour, an hour, and I comp the lead then, and then we do the backing vocals because they need a break for their voice anyway. And so then they sit at the back of the room on the sofa while I carry on the computer and I just comp get the best lead vocal, also gives me an opportunity to talk with the singer about the lead vocal. They get to hear it, see if there's any bits they don't like, they want to redo. They want to see if there's another version in the takes that we've got of certain lines. That's all fine. We can do that then. But the important thing is, before we start the BVs and before we start tracking the lead vocal, we've got the final lead vocal to track to. Otherwise, our timings, when we're tracking, are going to be off because they're going to be for a line that we're not using anymore. So when we're tracking the lead, what I'll normally do is I'll play a line to the singer and then they'll track to that line straight away. The idea being that they've got the phrasing right in their head, so it's easier to match the phrasing because that's what we're doing when we're tracking is we're matching the phrasing of the lead so that it all sounds as one, and you're providing a real thickening without any sort of different rhythms that might make it confusing. So doing that for the lead. Now, some people do, as I said, all the way through, most people will do it for the chorus, at least, so that in the chorus, the lead is double tracked, and that just gives an extra bit of thickness. And if it's quite a sparse arrangement, and there's not much going on, just that one thing, that one thickening vocal can be all that's needed for the course because the human brain will then go, we're in the choruse now. They'll know we've left our single lead vocal behind. We've now got two singing the same thing. We're in the choruse now. Just so you know the trade off, the reason why some people like to do it and some people don't in terms of tracking all the way through is you lose a little bit of intimacy to the sound of the vocal when you track it because like I said, the human brain knows it's not one voice. It knows it's two voices. So there's a little bit of intimacy lost by the decision to track everything. So there's the sort of balance that you need to make and decide what you want to go with. And next, it's the BV stacks. So we are doing Bevis, and we're tracking the lead vocal with harmonies this time rather than just doubling up the lead with the same thing. So this is not unison. This is harmony. And what we normally do in this situation, most people would normally do one or two of each harmony. So each harmony, they want to do normally like a couple. If you do a couple, you can pan them left and right, and then you get, like, a big nice stereo backing vocal thing. That can then be added to. You might do a triple track. So there's three of each one or it can go on and on. You know, some people will want to make more of a choir effect where there's not two voices doing a particular harmony, but there might be six, you know, and then it's really sort of thickened it up and you might want to get different singers involved. So different people are doing these parts and then those different tones really thicken it up. So it does depend what sort of effect you want out your backing vocals and then how many people you've got in there doing it. Um and then the decision really, we've been talking about tracking so far, where we're going along with the lead vocal and everything's matching the phrasing on the lead vocal, you might not want to do that. You might want to keep it on the beat, and the backing vocals be like big stacks that don't take any notice of what the lead vocal is doing, but just do it with the rhythm of the song. So, in that case, the BVs can be done before or after the lead. It doesn't actually matter because the timing of the lead isn't affecting our decisions on the BVs there. One thing to remember is if you do do that, the tuning needs to be right. I'm going to get to that at the end, though, just going to flag that up as this is when you need to worry about the tuning. Now, our DAW. So how we're setting up for a BV session, which is slightly different to how we set up for the lead vocal session. So because we're doing quite a few tracks, we're not just doing one track a lead. We're doing a few. I find it useful to pan the track that we're doing now, like the vocal track that we're singing now into a different position to the vocal track that we are copying. So it might be, if this is the first BV track, we just want to listen to the lead, the lead vocal. So that might be on maybe that's in the middle still, and then we'll pan our vocal that we're singing now, the singer is over on to the left. And now, to bear in mind here, I've mentioned this before when we were talking about headphones, if the singer's got one headphone off, one ear off, then you don't want to be panning into that side. So just make sure that if they're doing a one ear on one ear off thing, you're panning to the side where they can hear themselves. So I do just do that. I'll pan it over to one side. Looks to me like they've got their left ear on and their right ear off. I'll pan it onto the left, but I will say, Can you hear yourself? So they check it because it might be they've got the headphones the wrong way around. So what I've panned into the left ear of the headphones is actually the one on the right hand side of their head that they've taken off. So yeah, just double check that sort of thing, make sure they can hear themselves clearly, and that they can hear the vocal that they're tracking to, as well. And the other thing is when you're preparing for the backing vocal session, to have a lot of tracks ready to go. So your inputs are done, your outputs are done. You panning is right, your effects are right. You know, there's a reverb on every channel so that everything's ready to go, so you can just quickly rattle through. So if your singer is, you know, when they're in the mood, they're not having to wait for you to set up new tracks constantly. You know, you've got a whole load ready to go. It's better to have a dozen tracks ready to go and only need six than have two tracks ready to go, and then you need six, and you're constantly adding new tracks and the singers waiting. It's just a slightly more professional way of doing it, have more than you need, ready to go with everything set up so you can just quickly rattle through. And then finally going to talk about groups of singers. This happens a lot less, but sometimes you'll have some three different people want to do their BVs all at once. Normally, I found this happens in a band where they're used to doing this live, where they always do this live, and they just feel they're going to get a better performance if they're all stood around and M looking at each other and that's how they're going to deliver it the best. So if you're in that situation, have a mic. You have it on omni so that they can stand around it, and they're all getting picked up equally. Or if there's two, you can go figure eight and put them on either side of the diaphragm. But yeah, let's assume that you're doing more than two. They're on omni. And then what you have to do. It's a very old school way of balancing this is you have to identify each singer so that you know the sound of each person's voice. So like, you know, just get them to sing individually a line, just so you know, which ones which then as they're going through, you need to be aware of who's too loud, who's too quiet because you have to do the balance in the recording at this stage, because you don't have the option once you've recorded all these people on one mic. So you have to be able to ask people to step back or step forwards or sing quieter or louder, and that's how you're going to do the balance so that the takes that you record of a lot of people on one mic are nicely balanced, and that's because that's how you do it by physically moving people in the room. In the old days when they used to do recordings, you know, before they had multi track recording options, it really would be a case of moving the musicians around the room, and, you know, their proximity to the microphone had a difference on how loud they were on the final record. So that's really what you've got to do back to the old school for if you're doing groups of singers on one mic to record your BVs like that. A couple of other things to think about. There's someone I know he's a string arranger and a great one, and he swears by always having an odd number of parts. It's a bit like the idea where in a garden, you always plant your plants in an odd number. Like you always have five of something instead of four. And he swears it sounds better and more natural if you have an odd number of parts for each one you do. So if you're a particular harmony, you'll have one, three or five voices singing it, but not two or four. Up to you. I've tried it. I quite like it, if I'm honest. I think it sounds quite good. But then I also quite like it when it's in just two or four. So see if that works for you. That's just worth flagging up. And the thing that I mentioned earlier about if you do the BVs first. So if you're recording the BVs before you record the lead, then get those Bevis tuned if that's what you're going to do. I know some people won't be intending to tune their BVs, but if you are do the BV tuning before you get to recording the lead. Because if you remember back when we were talking about like fretless instruments and how those micro tuning things can throw off a lead vocal, well, if your singer is going to be listening to the backing vocals in their headphones while they're performing their lead vocal, you want to make sure those backing vocals are as tight as they can be. So you've got the best performances and they're tuned and they're in time and everything's really tight for the singer to sing their lead on top of. And the last thing is those kind of all those sounds, which when you get a bunch of them, if you've got like six backing vocals at once and the end of a word is different every time, and it sounds really messy. It's quite an editing job. And quite often, I'll just say to the singer, Don't sing the T on the end of these words because we've already got that, you know, 'cause if they sung it on a couple of times and we're just stacking up now, we don't need the T on the end of the words anymore. We don't need, like the beginning, necessarily, all those sounds that are getting a bit too can make it sound messy because their timings aren't precise and they're not going to be precise. Um, just say that we don't need those bits in the vocal, and then you're getting a nice neat stack from the word go. It can be edited. Going to get to that in the editing section, but it just makes for a better recording session if everything is as close as possible to what you want during the recording rather than fixing mixing. 23. 3.7 Looping: For the last lecture in the recording process chapter, we're going to talk about looping. So it's just a quick one, and it's just some things to consider when you're recording your choruses, and you wonder whether to record three different choruses, you know, or you record one chorus, and then you just cut and paste that, you know, loop it so that it's the same one each time. So there are a few things to consider whether that's a good decision or not, and generally, you know, you're a little bit genre dependent on that. So if you're working with stuff that's a bit more poppy and R&B and dance orientated, then they're probably going to be loops. You know, you're probably going to get one great chorus and use it again and again. That's what that genre tends to do. And if you're working something that's a bit more singer songwriter, a bit more, you know, Indie rock, something like that, then perhaps you won't, and you'll be using different performances each time because the singer wants to do that sort of journey. The question really is, do you want the chorus to evolve over the course of the song? You know, do you want to be a difference in performance of the course, as is the first time round and the second time around, third time around, and so on. Or do you want them to be the same? Do you want the big impact course to be the first time and the last time and always to be sort of all out? So if you're looking for that sort of thing, then you're probably going to work on one course and use that throughout. But if you're looking for the development through the song and for something like that, then you want to record a bunch of different ones. Couple of examples, you know, like one I was listening to the other day yesterday on my way home on the radio, there was helps common people. And there's, you know, an increasing amount of disdain in Jarvis' performance as he goes through the song. He's sort of vaguely intrigued about the whole idea at the beginning, and then he's just sick of it by the end. So the choruses are performed, you know, differently each time. And a classic sort of Rolling Stones track sympathy for the devil where Mick is getting increasingly annoyed and angry, you know, as the character he's playing as he goes through the song. So it's very important that it's different every time. So those are the reasons why I think, you know, you'd want to different ones you want that performance to evolve, and that's part of the storytelling of the song is the changing of the performance. Another thing to consider, you know, is if that's not that important to you, if there isn't definitely a journey to go on and you're not sure, is there one course that to you really stands out? You know, was there one that was just a mind blowing one? And then, in which case, do we just want to use that every time and make the most out of it rather than just use it once. So if the journey isn't important to you, but you know, you're not making something particularly dance music orientated or pop, then you just got to decide, you know, perhaps that might be what makes the decision for you that that would be the case. The end of the day, you got to think that the dynamics are king. If the dynamic requires a difference, then you should be going for those different takes. I know sometimes singers expect to be able to just do one course and that be it. But then I do talk them through if I think we need to do more and why we need to do more and why it's going to make their song better for that reason. Equally, sometimes I'll be working with someone, a singer songwriter and they're expecting to do you know, a number of choruses. And then I sort of talk about how actually, I think, you know, this particular track sort of has a nod to dance music, and it might be quite cool to loop up the choruses and have that sort of extra nod in that direction. And that might be quite a sort of cool angle on this one. So, you know, it works both ways, but it's just something that is worth thinking about and knowing how you're going to do it when you start and when you get into recording the vocal or bear in mind while you're recording the vocal to see where you think this track where this is going and where you think the best way to take it would be. 24. 4.1 Why is This Useful?: Aaron to Chapter four, so well done for getting this far. And it's all about editing. There's comping, tuning, and things to do with backing vocals, stuff like that. I've called this particular lecture, why is it useful? Because I want to make sure that the focus is in the right place, basically. And what I mean by that is the reason why editing is useful and the great thing about being able to together different vocals and different performances at the end, it's not so that we can be lazy or have our eye off the ball during the performance, and then we'll just sort it all out afterwards. What it is is it enables us to really concentrate during the recording process on getting the best performance and the performance and the emotional delivery being the most important thing. And the ability to chop together different tags and to tune things that might have slightly gone out of tune, the ability to do all that allows us to concentrate so much on just the emotional delivery and the performance. And I'll give you a little example. There was an album that was made at a studio where I worked with a group that were actually allowed to self produce their second record. They were on a big label, but they self produced the album, and their focus on the vocal became quite blinkered. They had decided that there was not to be any tuning on the album at all. They didn't want any tuning required by tuning, I mean, you know, using tuning software after the recording. And as well as that, all the vocals had to be perfectly in tune, which means, no matter how good you are a singer, which means going over it again and again and again in order to concentrate on getting that tuning perfect. Now, what that meant was at the end of the recording session, once the album's done, they have vocals that are perfectly in tune. That are lacking any sort of energy or drive or emotion because the focus was on the tuning and not on the performance, and they've done it so many times they were bored of it and they sounded bored of it. So that's why the ability to tune vocals and the ability to comp together different parts is so good and so important for a great sounding record. It allows us to really focus on the performance get the best performance the singer has done and put that together. And if there's any little tuning errors or little timing errors, we can fix them, and that's fine. But the important thing is, we focused on the performance from start to finish, and that's what delivers a really good sounding record. 25. 4.2 Comping: The first lecture in this whole chapter on editing is comping. So some of you may know the word comping, some of you may not know it and may have heard it. It's simply short for compiling, because the job of comping is to compile the best parts of any performance together into one single performance. In this case, we're obviously talking about vocals, but this can be apply to anything that you do a number of takes on with the intention of finding the best parts and sticking them together at a later point. So that's just if you hear the word comping, that's what it means. Or AComp is a compiled take. So AComp will be the final take after the comping process has taken place. The first question you need to ask yourself when you are starting a comp is, what is your aim? So when you are listening through to all the different takes that are there, what is it that you're actually wanting to hear? What is it that you're looking for. For me, everybody has a different goal in this, and that's sort of relevant to their production style and obviously relevant to your own style if you're an artist who's producing yourself. But for me, what I look for is character. So I look for a performance that I feel really sort of stands out and is interesting. And I'm also sort of referring to the lyric and hoping to find something in the performances that really expresses the lyric in a really powerful way. For other people, there are other things that they look at. I've worked with different producers over the years, a lot of them, especially as an assistant engineer and as an engineer. And some producers were looking for tone of voice, and that was what was important to them. And in their productions, that's delivered what they delivered as a producer. So it was really about tone of voice. Some people were looking for something very technical. So it sort of often depends on the type of music that you're doing, that sort of stuff, whether you're looking for a more technical polished performance or something more soulful and heartfelt or something, you know, there's a load of different ways that the vocal could go, and the sort of goal of the comp depends on the goal of the producer and the style that they produce in and what they end up delivering. At the end of the day, you're just looking for the best parts of every take that does that thing that you are looking for. Now, the question in terms of how it's done is whether you do it during the performance or afterwards. Now, what I mean by that is there are some people who some producers who sit down during a vocal performance with a big sheet of paper, and they'll have the lyric, and they will make notes on that lyric sheet as to which performance they preferred at the time, right? So that's how they like to do it. They're essentially drawing up the comp while it's happening in real time, and then afterwards, they know that, you know, for this line, it's take two, this line, it's take nine. You know, they've already got the comp drawn up and they've just got to put it together. Other people, and this latter one just happens to be the way I like working. I like to have an idea of what's going on while I'm recording, but I'm not making any decisions at that point. I'm just asking for different things and different aspects of the performance. And then what I like to do is go back afterwards with slightly fresh ears and hear the whole thing, and then make my comp at that point with fresh ears and a new perspective when I can actually properly play each track one against each other to decide. So for me, I prefer to be able to, for example, play T two and take nine together one after the other and decide which I prefer. That's the sort of level of detail I tend to go to, and that's how I get to that level of detail. So it really depends on your style of producer. There's no right or wrong way. I've seen brilliant results from both methods. So yeah, just if you haven't established a method for yourself yet, maybe try both, see what works for you and see what gets the best result for you. I'm now just going to talk a little bit about process. And really, it's just to sort of get into the detail of what you're doing. My process, the way I work it is I will listen to a line at a time. You know, I will go through every take on, say, you know, the first line. I'll go through every take, and I will have in my head, Oh, take nine was good, T seven was good, T four was good. Then I go back and I compare those three again, and then I pick the one that I think is best. Now, sometimes not a whole line. Sometimes you might go, Well, the start of four was really good. But then the last word was great on nine, so I'm going to cut those together. So sometimes the single words are stopped out. I have done somewhere where syllables have been swapped. And I used to do that back when we used tape as well, and comping was considerably more difficult on tape. I'm going to assume that no one here is doing it on tape. Everyone's doing it at DAW, in which case, it's just a case of cutting and pasting regions. So it's fairly simplistic. Doing it on tape is a whole different process. If you're doing it on taping, you don't know, drop me an email. I'll explain how we used to do it. Yeah, yeah, let's just leave it at that. We don't need everybody to listen through the long complicated process of how to do comping on tape. So anyway, you've cut together the best bits and then obviously check it through and make sure it flows, and it sounds like it was sung as one single performance, the worst thing is if they start to sound a bit choppy, like you've grabbed different words from different places. So I'll normally have an idea of what my favorite bits are. For a line. And then once I've comped that together, I'll listen to it, make sure it sounds like it flows. And if it doesn't, then I'll also have an idea of what my second favorite bit is or what came close. And then I'll start working with that comping and swapping out different parts so that the whole sounds better. You know, the whole line is as good as we can get a whole line. That's the best thing. It's a case of having in your head the idea of a couple of things that are working, a few things that you think that are worth being in the final comp and then just playing with them until you get that last sort of This sounds like a complete performance, and it's the best way that we can get to the best version of what we've got. But all in mind, all in your mind all the time, is the idea of what the song dynamic is because for example, there might be a really great sort of belting out loud first verse, and it's a great performance. But you want the song to start. Gently. And it was perhaps something you developed while you were doing the vocal takes. So at the beginning, it was really belted out. But actually, that sort of takes away from the dynamic of the song. So great as those are, they're not the best for the song. And, you know, I've mentioned it several times already. We always have to be in service of the song here. So that's sort of one thing that can sometimes mean that it's not, you know, what you might first reaction might be. Wow, that's the kill or take. But remember the song dynamic while you're doing it and make sure that the song dynamic is going to win out at the end of the day. Another quick point is about diction. So this is an interesting one, and it's if you can hear the words being said or not, when somebody's singing this lyric, you know, with this line, is it clear what the vocal is, what the lyrics are? And does it matter? And that's the more important point. Does it matter? For you know, for some songs and some genres, you know, it's important to hear the lyrics. And, you know, some artists, the lyrics are very, very important to them, and they're as important as the music. And so you want to make sure that lyric is really being delivered clearly and the audience can hear it and sort of then get wrapped up in the story if that's the way they relate to music. And other times, you know, it isn't important. And I think I've mentioned earlier on in this course about bands like Siguros and the cocktau twins for whom they didn't you know, the lyrics weren't important at all and they didn't really use proper words. Another great example of that and a very deliberate example was I heard an interview I think it was an interview with or it was a discussion about Mick Jagger from The Rolling Stones. And in the very early Rolling Stones records, Mick deliberately sang so that it was kind of difficult to tell what the lyrics were. He wanted it to be slightly unclear because basically, he wanted people to want to listen to it again. Just to tell those few words they hadn't worked out. So it was a sort of way of bringing people into the song. And back in those days, because this is the 60s, if they wanted to hear it again, they either had to call the radio and request the radio play again by which, you know, with the radio playing, again, the Rolling Stones got paid again, or they had to go and buy the record even better. If they had to buy the record, to hear it a number of times and work out the lyrics because they were really into it. Then that really helped the band sort of move forward. Obviously, you know, that may help you gain more spotify plays if that's the sort of thing you're aiming for or maybe get a band camp purchase or something like that. If somebody really wants to hear the lyric, and it's slightly obtuse, slightly obscure. Perhaps that might work for you, or perhaps you hate the idea of that, and you'd rather just people can hear the words that you're singing the story is important. So just something to bear in mind, if you're not comping for yourself, if you're comping for a band, just be aware of what sort of artists they are and whether the diction is going to be the important thing or whether it is and a final little point is just once you have got your final takes, sometimes it's a good idea to have written down or have a note of or even put a second comp together of what the second best parts were, what the parts that nearly made it that didn't because we talked about this earlier, having, like, a double track. If you haven't got a double track, then you might be able to put one together fairly quickly with your kind of second best options from your main lead vocal comp. 26. 4.3 Tuning: This next lecture in this chapter on editing is about tuning. Now, tuning is a subject which is often controversial, and it's also often seen as something that's relatively new, like in the last 20 years or so, the advent of Autotune by antars when that first came in as a plug in option, it was sort of seen by people who aren't fans of tuning as a disastrous new development in recording. Now, the thing is it wasn't new. That's the problem with that opinion because it's been going on for many, many decades. The first bit of equipment that was used in a studio as a tuner was the Eventd H 910, I think it is. It came out in 1974, was developed in 1974. So it's even older than I am, and it was used to tune things. It was used for a number of things, but it was also used to tune vocals. So if you had a word on tape that you'd recorded that you needed tuning, you would feed that line through the harmonizer, you would tweak it until that word was in tune, and then you would print that word back onto another track of tape in its tuned version. And then you would compile, again, do your comp from there. So the idea that tuning started with Autotune is simply wrong. And hopefully, the fact that we've been tuning our vocals since the mid 70s and all recorded music since then has had the option to tune things when they wanted, and often they took and hopefully that would mean people are less hung up on the idea that tuning is a bad thing. Okay. So it's always, as I stated before, it's always about getting the best performance and keeping and using that best performance. And people therefore have wanted to tune vocals for some time in order to be able to do that. So moving on from the fact that tuning has been around since before computers in studios, the style of music we're making will have a bearing on how much you want to use a tuner on your vocals to use tuning software. If you're doing something that's a bit sort of sort of folky Indie singer songwriter, you're probably going to use it sparingly. But if you're using if you're making pop music, R&B music, certain genres like that, then you're probably going to be using it more. And you may even be using it as an effect where you sort of overuse it, as it were, you sort of drive it. As a good example, I once worked with a singer called Acon I recorded his vocal, and anyone that knows him knows that his vocal sound is very, very, you know, based on Autotune. It's sort of autotune turned up to 11, as it were. And and he actually recorded with it on. You know, it was on the channel as we were recording so he could monitor it while he was singing and he could control it in that way because it was, you know, important to him to hear that as the final sound. So there's an example where, you know, tuning is used heavily in that style of music. So how much your tuning will probably, you know, be determined by the sort of music that you are making that you are producing. One thing I would say is regardless of what you're doing, actually, I say, regardless, I'll caveat that. If you're doing something like the acon style where it's an effect, you probably just want to turn the auto on and turn it up, just so it really does kick in and do extreme things. If you're not, and if you're simply using it as pitch correction, do it manually. And the reason why is the auto process is slightly unreliable and some notes can be sent to the wrong direction. You know, the software doesn't really know what you're trying to achieve as a producer as an artist. So take the time to get in there, learn how to do it manually with the software that you've got and manually adjust the tuning so that it is correct and what you want it to be. It's boring and it's, you know, it can be tricky at times, but it's definitely worth the effort that you put in. It's the difference between good and great, you know, the fact that you're going in, you're manually doing it, and you're getting the best possible version of the tuned vocal. And now, although, you know, there are large parts of this course, which are obviously my subjective angle on how to make records and, you know, record great vocals, I will just put my version of tuning on here just in case it's useful if anyone has sort of seen my CV and the stuff that I do or have done, what I'm looking for, if you've done this in order, then you've just done the comping chapter. So I said there, what I'm looking for with my style of production is I'm looking for character full performances. So when I'm tuning, I want to maintain as much of that character as possible. And I will only tune a line, a word or whatever it is, if my attention has been grabbed by it. So I'll be listening through to the comp once it's done and thinking about tuning. And if my attention is grabbed by something in that I instead of hearing the performance, I hear the tuning of it, then I'll probably go and tune that word or that line because I don't want my attention to be pulled by tuning, I want it to be pulled by performance. So that's the only times when I would tune, which means, you know, I'll do it a couple of times in a song, maybe depends on the performance. So I'll do it a few times, but I'm not the sort of person that will be tuning from start to finish because that's not the sort of production that I do. I don't I don't enjoy that sort of sound. So that's not me. But, you know, whatever's right for you in the production that you're doing, Um, one thing I would suggest you do, though, and this is a good technical process to go through is tune a vocal, a lead vocal once you've got the comp, tune that lead vocal from start to finish, and then have it up against the untuned version and listen to the song jumping between the two versions. The reason for that is it's really important to realize what the trade off is when you tune a vocal, because we all probably know the good bits about it in that it's more in tune, so that's good. We like things that are right. It's also a bit easier to mix a tuned vocal. It sits in the mix a lot better. So those are the benefits of having it tuned. But you'll also hear the negative aspects as well, because if you're listening for your performance, and then you listen to the two, you'll notice the loss of humanity that happens when a vocal is tuned. It's that sort of, you know, it's not robotic, but there's a level of robotic kind of sound, even if it's tuned really, really well that is introduced with tuning software. So so listen for that and listen for the difference, and then just be aware that that's the decision that you're making when you're choosing a tuned vocal is, yes, you might make the mix easier, and yes, sometimes the tune sounds nicer, but sometimes it doesn't sound nicer because you've lost something that performance that you worked so hard for and everything that we've been talking about in terms of psychology and building the cocoon and the whole of this course up until this point has been about getting this great vocal and getting this great vocal sound and getting this great vocal performance more than anything. And then you do lose that a bit when you tune it. So just be aware that's the trade off that you're making and make sure that's the decision you want to make for this particular word, line, verse, course, whatever it is you're doing. Final thing I'll touch on is a question which gets asked a lot, which is which plug in is the best for vocal tuning. And you may have guessed from things I've said about this before, the answer is all of them. They're all good. They all do the job. They all do it very, very well. They all do it much easier than the eventd H 910 1974, which still did a good job. So what I would always recommend in this scenario is that you download the different versions as a trial. You give them all a go and see which one works best for you. There'll be one of them will have a user interface, which for you, makes more sense than the others, and you'll just flow with it and you'll click with it, much easier and much better. And that's the right software for you. They'll all do the same job. The result will always be the same, but you just want the one that is the easiest to use for you causes the least friction when you pull it up and you want to tune something so that your workflow is improved and is smoother. 27. 4.4 Backing Vocal Editing: In this final lecture on editing your recording, I'm going to talk about backing vocals. And obviously, the tuning and comping stuff all applies to backing vocals. So all of that's still relevant, but there's just a couple of extra things that might be relevant to the backing vocal as opposed to the lead. So what we're going to start with is just what your editing goals are. Now, if we're talking about things like Adlibs at the end of a song, then Adlibs obviously is probably going to be a compiling job. You may well have recorded a lot, and you just need to work out which ones best support the lead vocal. And where they should be and how the dynamic of the songs going and everything that we talked about in compiling in the comping chapter is all relevant in terms of this. The bits where backing vocals stray a little bit from what you're used to in the lead is when you're building your sort of stacks of vocals, if you've got, like, a whole bunch of harmonies stacked up and what your goals are for that. Do you want them really super tight or are they supposed to be kind of loose and is it supposed to sound like a bit like a crowd crowd sort of singing along, which case, they want to be a bit loose because you want to hear that crowd sound. Or is it that sort of R&B stack that's really, really kind of solid and tight? In which case, you may need to get into sliding the vocals around a little bit, moving them a bit, bit of stretching maybe. There's a bit of software called vocal align. The vocal aligned software will sort of automatically do that for you. Originally developed, I think, for ADR making films, you know, where somebody would redo a line in a studio that has to match up what their mouth is moving on set sort of thing. And but, yeah, that's an aside. In terms of what we're doing, you might need to do a little bit of that stretching and moving things around in order to get the backing vocals to be a really tight stack. It depends obviously on the performances that you've got that you've recorded. So that's just a little touching on the editing goals that you have and therefore, how deep you need to go into the comping, tuning, moving around sort of thing. The other thing to remember is the S Ts and Ks, those things I did mention that when we talked about recording. And sometimes I'll say to a singer, you know, you don't need to do the essays on this, you don't need to do the T on the end of the words. If if you think that was too much of a challenge, and so you didn't bring that up with the singer at the point of recording, then now's the time you've got to go in and fix that. Because if those T's and Ks and things, if they're not exactly on on top of each other, then you're going to hear, like, a sort of run of teas coming at the end of a word. And that just sounds messy and clumsy. So in that situation, I'll get rid of most of them. I'll leave one, maybe two still there so that you can hear that the backing vocal is doing that word. But I won't leave any more than that because I won't want it to be like a big kind of rattling sort of load of them at the end of each word. So just leave as many as you need to to make it clear the word has been clearly said and then get rid of all the others are around that in timing and making it messy. And then if you are tuning your backing vocals, there's an interesting point here whereby sort of quite often the predisposition is to really tune them quite tight. Is like allow the lead vocal a bit more room, keep the backing vocals really tight in terms of their tuning. And I can understand that sort of theory. But in practice, what happens is, if you go really tight on tuning and you use your tuning software to go really hard on the backing vocals, they start to sound a bit weird when they're all exactly the same. You know, that's not how humans work and the tuning shouldn't be exactly identical for each backing vocal. So most tuners have got some sort of percentage whereby, you know, you can move anywhere between naught and 100% into perfect tuning. So maybe pick around 80% or something and move most of them into that ballpark. So they're closer to the perfect tuning, but they're not exactly on so that they don't sound almost like a synth when you've got a whole load of vocals that have been tuned 100%. Just leave a little bit of room for humanity, and then that's a little bit of thickening. It's the same principle as using a bunch of violin players in an orchestra. So the way violins work, obviously, they don't have frets on their violins. So wherever they put their finger is where the tuning of that note is. What that means is, although each violinist is obviously trying to be as perfectly in tune as humanly possible, they're all ever so slightly off. Ever so slightly off the main note that they're aiming for. And because you have a bunch of them that ever so slightly off, that's how that sounds really thick and large. Now, you've got to use that principle when you're doing the backing vocals. Just that ever so slightly off perfect gives us a kind of a thickening and a choral effect. And that's why we've got a load of backing vocals is because we want the choral effect. We want it to sound bigger, and it will sound bigger if you allow the tuning to breathe a little bit. If you don't, if you go too tight, it will sound smaller. So I mean, this is a process you can try yourself. You know, give it a go, do a bunch of them on 100% and then come off back to about 80 and see the difference between all of them and how they sound. It's definitely worth giving a try. So, yeah, that's it. Just a little bit of a bit of realism in the tuning, and that'll lead to a much better sounding backing vocal. 28. Conclusion & Key Takeaways: I just wanted to do a little video at the end here just to say, Well done for doing the course. Thanks for getting involved in it, and I'm glad that you're taking this amount of interest and care about recording your vocals because I think it's crucial. I think it makes or breaks a record, getting the right vocal performance on it. So there's just three things I wanted to make sure that you took away from the course. There's three kind of themes that regardless of whether you remember much of the technical stuff, hopefully, this is what you've taken out of it as an approach to vocal sessions. One, number one, is to prepare. The more preparation you do, the better the session is. So as much as you can get done in terms of preparing, getting the song right, and getting the lyrics right, as well as getting the microphone leads checked and everything else, that's really important. Number two, is be thorough, which is sort of tied in with being prepared. But on top of that, it's just making sure that every step of the way, you're thinking about what could go wrong with your engineer's hat on, with your producer's hat on. You're thinking about how you can make things better for the artist and get them into a more comfortable situation. All of those things you're thinking about all the time because you're being thorough about every step of the way. And you've got your checklist for setting up the studio, all those things, you go over that, make sure everything's done, and there's nothing that you've forgotten or that you've missed out. And the last one is to be empathetic. Now, that sounds like I'm just talking about when you're working with other artists. And obviously, that's crucial because you really need to be able to see things from their point of view and understand the creative process from their point of view. But it's also about being This sounds a bit better, being empathetic with yourself, but understanding that in order for you to do your best performance, you need to give yourself time the emotional journey that you need to go on and the performance that you're going to be doing, it's not just a stand up, throw a vocal down and walk away again. Hopefully, you've sort of realized that now and that you can do your best performance if you put more into your emotional state and the delivery that that's going to get you. So that's I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you come back and keep going over stuff as you sort of progress with your learning. And come and see me at the mixconsultancy.com because I've got a blog on there that you can read through, all sorts of stuff about recording, mixing, being an engineer, being a freelance producer, all sorts of stuff like that. And there's also the golden Platinum service that I do, which is why it's called the Mix Consultancy, which is where you can upload your tracks that you're working on. When you're working on the mix and you kind of got to a certain level, you can't get it any further, then you send it to me, and then I listen to it here in my studio, and we talk through all the different ways that you can get it better. You know, things I'm hearing that you could improve and how to improve it. So I cover mixing engineering side of it, production side of it, you know, the work. So yeah, have a go on that if you feel you want to progress, you're mixing, as well. And do send me feedback on the course because positive or negative, it's all super useful. So yeah, thanks very much. Hopefully, I'll see you in another one of these.