[TIL at AES 5/12] Here’s a great way to handle your vocalist when your mic is in a weird place

We’re up to the fifth part of the twelve part series of Things I Learned at AES.

Here’s an exceptionally short tip for helping singers stay in place when recordings vocals, courtesy of Mike Senior who was spilling some of the tips inside his new Recording Secrets book.

Use the Pop Filter as a Target

Microphone positioning is everything. Even an inch here and there will make a big difference.

So when the typical mic-in-front-of-face method isn’t working so well you’ll run into an interesting problem.

Singers will naturally gravitate towards singing into the mic. So if the mic isn’t right in front of them they’ll turn their heads. When that happens your mic positioning is basically shot.

When that happens your pop filter can really come in handy.

Say for some weird reason the microphone really sounds good when it’s 45° to the left of their face pointing at their chin.

Naturally that would feel weird for the vocalist to sing past the mic.

But by having a pop filter right in front of their face you can tell them to focus on singing into the pop filter.

Like Mike Senior said in one of his panels:

“Don’t mind that weird mic over there by your ear. Just focus on singing into the pop filter.”

I’m paraphrasing but that’s the gist of it.

Use the pop filter as target to get a comfortable performance from your vocalist next time you think your mic placement will throw your vocalist off.

Image by: taestell

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