How to Record Vocals in Your Home Studio [VIDEO]

Björgvin Benediktsson 0 Comments

There are five stages to recording a professional-sounding vocal.

It’s not all about the microphone or your gear. Or even your acoustic treatment.

It’s not even only about your singer.

Unfortunately, even a bad singer can be…*gulp*…” fixed.”

But there’s no autotune for a poor vocal melody or arrangement.

There’s no Auto-Make-My-Songwriting-Better plug-in.

Five-Stage Vocal Production Process

To get a professional vocal sound, you gotta put all stages of the vocal production together:

Pre-Production – Where you focus on making the melody, lyrics, rhythm, and arrangement the best it can be.
Pre-Recording – Where you focus on the room, the vibe, the signal flow, and the health of the singer. Discomfort during this phase will kill your session.
Recording – Where you focus on the headphone mix, the mic technique, and the overall performance for every single vocal part (leads and harmonies).
Editing – Where you…hey, where’d you go? Come back here. You can’t make pro vocals unless you spend time editing them. This means tweaking them for tightness and tuning and eliminating background noise.
Mixing – This is where you bring the vocal together with the rest of the tracks. Where you use EQ, compression and effects to make your lush vocal sound leap out of your speakers without sounding like it’s stuck on top of the rest of the mix.

Of these five phases of vocal production, which one do you have the hardest time with?

If you’re exhausted with recording vocals that sound thin and harsh, you’re going to like today’s free lesson on how to record vocals more effectively from your home studio.

I already talked about how you can coach your vocalist to give you a better performance in my article, How To Get a Great Vocal Performance, Even With an Insecure Singer.

Recording Vocals in Your Home Studio

In the following video, I will keep a few things to remember to get a clear and present vocal recording.

These are the same techniques I use while recording from home or at a studio. In addition, you’ll hear audio examples from both male and female vocalists in genres ranging from punk to jazzy folk to show you the results of following the techniques I demonstrate in the video.

In this video, you’ll also learn:

How to prepare your vocalist for a great recording session
How to make sure your vocalist is comfortable during the session
How to position the microphone in front of the vocalist
How to communicate effectively with the singer
How to find a good starting point for your vocal mic
Microphone placement ideas to get the best sound out of your vocalist
How to use acoustic treatment to get a better source sound
How to understand and reduce the acoustic reflections in your room from going into your vocal mic
How to use a pop filter to reduce the plosives while using it as a target for your singer
How to use the proximity effect to your advantage

Enjoy!

Recording Vocals in Your Home Recording Studio, Even If You Don’t Have Fancy Equipment

For more information on taking your vocal sound to the next level, check out this article:

Mix Better Vocals With This Simple EQ Exercise

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About Audio Issues and Björgvin Benediktsson

We help musicians transform their recordings into radio-ready and release-worthy records they’re proud to release.

We do this by offering simple and practical music production and success skills they can use immediately to level themselves up – while rejecting negativity and gear-shaming from the industry. A rising tide floats all boats and the ocean is big enough for all of us to surf the sound waves.

Björgvin’s step-by-step mixing process has helped thousands of musicians confidently mix their music from their home studios. If you’d like to join them, check out the best-selling book Step By Step Mixing: How To Create Great Mixes Using Only 5 Plug-ins right here.