Good vs Bad - Vocal Recording

hey this is joe from home studio corner today we're going to talk about good and bad vocal recordings a couple weeks ago i did a video on good and bad acoustic guitar recordings that people seem to really like so we're going to keep that idea rolling and talk about vocals today but instead of going back and pulling out old vocal recordings of mine and comparing them to more recent ones i thought it would be more helpful to showcase some common vocal recording mistakes that people tend to make i've today was a weird day for me i sat in here and recorded a bunch of vocals badly to demonstrate each of these mistakes so we can listen to them listen to the differences and then talk about how the mistake was made and how we can avoid those mistakes in the future and at the end i've got a comparison between a good vocal and a bad vocal with a surprising twist of an ending so stick around for that all right so there are a lot of ways to mess up a vocal but in some ways you could say vocals aren't that hard as long as you don't make some of these big mistakes so the first mistake is should be the first thing first mistake that you avoid no matter what you're recording and that is simply don't clip now i've got an over-the-top example for you where i just clipped the crap out of my preamp which means i just turned the gain up on the preamp all the way and then sang hold your ears the world is not the way it's supposed to be okay so that example is a little exaggerated because there's a good chance you probably wouldn't go that far but that's what clipping sounds like and you might initially think that's a cool distorted sound and it kind of is but listen to this quieter part on the end it's this digital clipping right the converter's clipping the pre-amps clipping it's kind of this sparkly in a bad way sort of sound uh don't like that at all if you want to do this for like an effect or a special part of a song maybe but let's listen to a more realistic sound so here is more uh common case of clipping where the whole thing's not clipped the whole thing's not a rectangle if you look at the waveform but the louder notes are it's comes from people trying to turn the gain up as loud as they can without clipping and then inevitably the singer will sing louder than they did during sound check and you'll end up with clipping and so the louder parts will have some distortion and the quieter parts will sound okay the world is not the way it's supposed to be but change is coming i mean so how can you know if you're clipping well first of all the clip light will go off your interface probably has a red light that goes off your software should have red lights going off pay attention to those the solution is just turn it down it doesn't need to be loud going in to have a nice loud vocal later we have tools for that we'll talk about that in another video about mixing also if you look at the waveform like right here see how this waveform is completely rectangular the tops and bottoms are clipped off it's literally what happens the waveform got clipped it got a crew cut buzzed right off the top and you can even see on this quieter section right here see this waveform there when you zoom in you can't see it but when you zoom out you can see even this quieter note kind of got chopped off you can see it right there listen to it is coming had a little buzz to it that's what happens uh and this final phrase did not get clipped at all um [Music] but who cares cause the other all the other phrases had some form of clipping to them that's no bueno all right the next mistake is getting too close to the microphone if you get really close to the mic i'm talking like lips touching the great while you're singing probably too close couple of bad things happen when you get too close to the microphone now i'm not saying don't get kind of close just not right up on it uh first thing that will happen is there'll be boominess when you're that close to a mic it picks up a lot of boomy low end and you don't need that in a vocal warmth yes boominess no second thing that happens is this weird science thing where if you double the distance of a microphone to a source it cuts the volume in half so if my lips are right on the microphone and i understand these are headphones and not a microphone but i didn't want to do it on that one because that's the one you're listening to if i put my lips this close to the mic and then i move back for a little bit for one note guess what i just like quintupled the diff the distance from my mouth to the microphone which means the volume is going to cut in half a couple of times and you can kind of see that in this waveform here so i'm going to play this one for you listen to the boominess of the vocal and listen to the ups and downs of the volume because i moved around like a normal human would when singing and that made a huge difference in distance which made the volume jump up and down more unnecessarily than it had to and finally it was just really awkward to be that close to the mic the world is not the way it's supposed to be but change is coming [Music] didn't sound as terrible as i thought it would but there was even a little bit of what maybe sounded like clipping of the actual mic element itself if i'm right up on the mic versus maybe four or five inches away that's a big difference in volume that the mic is having to accept and i think a little bit on that that loud note there i think a little bit of that was clipping or some sort of mild distortion from just that element getting so much volume so close to it all right the next mistake that people tend to make is recording too far you might say i don't want to get too close i saw a picture of frank sinatra singing like this and the microphone was here i'm gonna try that well i'm all for trying things but there's a problem even if your room is fairly treated it's not gonna work here's what that sounds like the world is not the way it's supposed to be but change is coming now you can make the case for using something like that for you're trying to go for a lumineer sound and everybody's singing from across the room and going hey and that's something but typical lead vocal that's not going to work especially if you start adding like compression to the signal that extra room sound is going to be even more loud and obnoxious and just so you know i wasn't over there i was literally just an arm's length away like maybe that far away from the mic and it picked up so much more extra room sound now could i use a little more treatment in this room sure but as you'll see in the final good vocal uh this you can get a nice clean quiet vocal by just getting the right distance from the microphone which means not too close but certainly not too far all right the next mistake and this is one it seems obvious but if nobody told you there's no reason you should know and that is not using a pop filter you know what a pop filter is it's pantyhose stretched over a piece of metal or a hanger so you can make one yourself i mean if given you have pantyhose lying around but this is it and it goes in front of the mic and it's literally the name gives it away it's meant to stop the pops from my vocal gig into the mic listen to this recording overall the vocal recording sounds good but you can see where all the magic happens here and here and here there's just a burst of wind from my lungs that just jacks up the microphone this is especially true on condenser mics the world is not the way supposed to be but change is coming i get that in a live sound environment typically the singer is right up on the mic and you'll get some of those ploses when you have to deal with that we're in a studio we don't have to do that um so if if you get even at this distance away like a good you know five to eight inches away if you're singing directly towards the microphone this is gonna help you're gonna get those plosives and you can't deal with them later you can try with all your might to edit them out to eq them out they're going to be there and i'm going to hear them in the mix i'm going to be angry because you didn't record with a pop filter like i told you to but i will say sometimes i record vocals like this i'm talking to you right now and if i go it doesn't hit the microphone because it's a little off to the side pointed at my mouth so i will sing vocals that way so if you don't have a pop filter and you don't have pantyhose lying around just don't point your mouth directly at the microphone point it off axis a little bit it'll still pick you up you can still get nice and close but you won't pop the mic that way next mistake is too much processing maybe you have an external channel strip that has eq and compression or you got a mixer like my studiolive here that lets you add eq and compression on the way and be careful you can always add plugins later you can't remove that junk if you put it on there on the way in and you messed it up here's what it sounds like it's not the worst sound in the world but you can hear it's been over processed the world is the way it's supposed to be and you can tell that just by looking at this waveform you can tell somebody got happy with a compressor and you can see the compressor is acting right here right there well it's not acting there it's acting right after so that big peak right there is right before the compressor clamped down and if you don't like that exact amount of sound you can't take it out later and more compression just will make it worse so if you don't want this in your recordings man that is just the loudest thing ever you could maybe try to edit this out but why why give why put yourself through all of that just ease up on the compressor or maybe just don't use compression for a season until you're really comfortable with how to use it in such a way that the recording still sounds good and it isn't obvious that you compressed it all right now for the main event i recorded two vocals for you here one is good and one is bad or at least that's what i thought was gonna happen so i recorded the first one using all the tips we've talked about right here with this microphone by the way this is a roswell mini k47 300 mic through the stock preamps on my board nothing crazy nothing expensive here so i got the pop filter out i positioned it and i was literally about right here or so about five to eight inches away and i sang the green track that you see in front of you labeled good then i moved the microphone to the next room over which we're using is like a kids playroom it has no carpet nothing on the walls it is just a bare room with a lot of room sound and i recorded right in the middle of the room with the same microphone plugged into the same channel pop filter the whole deal i expected the room mic to be just awful just terrible turns out it wasn't as terrible as i expected and a part of me said i can't use this in the video they'll laugh at me but the other part of me said no this is actually good information it's kind of like mythbusters here was my hypothesis that hypothesis wasn't exactly true let's listen so i can show you what i'm talking about so here's the raw vocal the good vocal first the world is not the way it's to be but change is coming i mean and here is the bad vocal with too much room the world is not the way it's supposed to be but change is coming so unless you're listening on headphones and even then the room was surprisingly hard to hear why is that well i was only about five inches away from the mic so the sound of my voice to the microphone was way louder than any sound in the room that's kind of cool but what happens if we mix this that's where the room sound can sometimes come out let's add some compression so i added this uh tube compressor here added the same settings to both vocal tracks normalize them at the same volume and then let's hear what that sounds like the world is not the way [Applause] it's supposed to but be is coming i mean now the bad the world is supposed to be but change is coming i mean did you hear it the way the compressor was interacting with the vocal it actually created what sounds like a slap back delay on the vocal especially on the louder parts listen to it again when the compressor kind of starts to let go you hear the room sound come up just like a slap back the world is not the way you hear that between after the word not and the word way the world is not the way very interesting so i was sitting here getting ready to be all arrogant and egocentric and so you have to sing in a treated room turns out on this particular song where i was singing pretty loudly being relatively close to the mic not too close but relatively close to the microphone was good enough now i would still prefer this other one because maybe i don't want that sort of roomy slapback delay and maybe on different songs it wouldn't work as well but i was pleasantly surprised with that that was not the worst of the recordings we heard today arguably best or second best now what would i do with this vocal moving forward well the thing is it just needs to sound like the voice am i super happy with that performance no it's a little nasal i don't love the way i sang it probably because i sang it 18 times today trying to record this um but once the compression comes in and the eq comes in it starts to sound like a finished mix in a finished song it doesn't have those big issues if anything it's a little jumpy here in volume compression handles that there's a little mid-range when i sing louder i usually always do kind of a narrow eq to eq that out but the raw material is there those things i can fix in the mix but the other things we talked about clipping being too close being too far having no pop filter and too much processing we really can't fix those some are a little more fixable than others heavy clipping no chance pop filter not really going to fix it too far probably not going to fix that one too close you could maybe get away with too much processing it's baked in there's just nothing you can do about it but just pray that it works in the mix and you won't know until everything else is done all right that's it for good and bad vocal recording for today uh that song by the way if you want to just hear the whole song so it's not stuck in your head with just that one line it's a song called amen as in amen uh by me joe gilder go check it out on spotify itunes whatever and i might make like a third of a cent or something so can't put a price on that thanks for watching if you want to learn more about mixing i've got a free guide if you haven't checked it out yet you definitely need to just go to what is it fivestepmix.com uh it's a free pdf guide quick read you could read it in one sitting and it'll give you a framework in which to apply some of these techniques that i show you here on youtube it's great to know these things but once it's time to mix what comes first do i do drums first or vocals first or do i add plugins now or do i wait and when do i know when i'm finished that will help explain all of that to you so check it out at fivestepmix.com thanks for watching leave a comment let me know what you thought i'll see you next week

Channel: Joe Gilder • Home Studio Corner

Views: 320,990

Keywords: mixing, gear, home recording, equipment, joe gilder, presonus, studio one, home studio, vocals, vox, recording, clip, close, far, treatment, compression

Id: 5Fc26N8SOMw

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2021