How to Record Vocals Like a PRO (From Your Home Studio) | The KEY to Professional Sounding Vocals

in this video i'm gonna be revealing the biggest secret in the music industry to getting a professional sounding vocal and i'll give you a hint it has nothing to do with fancy mixing techniques or expensive recording gear [Music] hey yo what's good fam it's your boy jay cruz from madras studios back at it again with some more juicy nuggets to help you get better professional music from your home studio if you're new here to my channel or maybe you've seen my face now a couple times but you're not yet subscribed do me a favor and hit that big red subscribe button and that little bell notification right next to it so that you can stay up to date and be the first to know when i drop some more knowledge for y'all alright so now let's get back to that secret that i was about to reveal the biggest and most important component to a professional sounding vocal lies within the recording phase of making a song that's right i said the recording phase the mixing phase should be incredibly easy if you've done all of your due diligence to get a proper sounding recording and get the best possible quality that you can now the tips that i'm going to be sharing with you today come directly out of an ebook that i wrote called five tips to getting a professional sounding vocal at your home studio so if you're interested in checking that out go ahead and check out the links in the description there'll be a link down there to download the ebook completely for free so definitely check that out alright now without further ado let's get right into these five tips tip number one room treatment and mic position now this is one of the biggest struggles that i find a lot of beginner artists and engineers dealing with is not necessarily knowing how to position or set up their microphone for a proper recording and how to set it up in a room that is going to get you the best sounding recordings let's first cover the room selection and treatment and then we'll get into the mic position so for room selection a lot of times people are going to be building their studios in their bedroom so if that's the only room you have to work with then try to find the best possible spot within that bedroom if you have a whole entire living room or a whole entire basement perhaps to set up you have a little bit more flexibility but the most important thing is finding a spot that you can set up and not have to tear everything down every single time you want to record it's super crucial to be able to just jump in when you're feeling creative and get right into the booth and start recording without setting up everything every single time you want to get going you really really don't need anything fancy when it comes to setting up a room honestly you can set up your microphone in the very middle of the room if you find that the room you have is full of a lot of things and it's not too reverberant or empty one of the most important thing to keep in mind in the room selection is just finding a place that isn't going to be super echoey or super reverberant a lot of time i find artists will set up their microphone in the corner of the room and this is a good idea if you have proper sound dampening but if you don't and you just have bare walls you're going to find you're getting a lot of unwanted reflections and echoey sounding basically reverb sounding vocals in your recordings that is not pleasant for getting a professional clean sounding recording what you want to do is try to dampen an area or find an area that you can control so sometimes like a closet or a little empty corner of the room that you can build up some sort of a makeshift booth with towels blankets a mattress that you can put up against the wall anything that you can really use to absorb sound you'll find that a lot of people use closets because their closets are already filled with a lot of clothes and it's a nice kind of enclosed space that is packed full of stuff already right the more stuff in the room the more it's going to dampen the sound and give you a more dead sounding vocal now by dead sounding vocals i just mean a nice clean controlled vocal that doesn't have a lot of echo or reverb sound coming from the room that you're recording it so the biggest important thing is finding a spot in your room that you can set up that can be your dedicated recording place with some sort of sound dampening and some sort of control you can see right here that in my recording booth i literally just turned my closet into a booth so i draped blankets around these are actually just moving blankets that i kind of squared off into a little box if you will and even created a little ceiling over my head so that i've created a makeshift booth that is completely controlled and gives me a much more dampened sound whenever i record in there i also went to ikea and just found these cool rope lights that add some nice color and vibe so that the artists when they're in the booth can find some inspiration and set the color to whatever they want so that they're grooving and really feel comfortable in there that's another thing i always like to keep in mind is something that will bring inspiration so a lot of times just lighting a candle or having some cool kind of vibe lights in the area that you're going to record really can bring out some creative inspiration to the artist all right so now that we've kind of covered some tips about the room and the treatment of the room that you want to record in now let's talk about the position of the mic i think a lot of beginner artists and recording engineers don't really fully understand how important the placement of the microphone that you're using really is now there's a number of different microphones out there some are going to be dynamic microphones other are going to be condensers some are going to be super expensive others are going to be very cheap but the important thing is knowing how to position these things to get the most out of them so if you have a nice condenser mic like the one that you see here the microphone i'm using right here is the akg 214 this is a really good kind of middle of the road microphone right around two to four hundred dollars and it really gives a very nice crisp vocal sound but you can tell with this microphone that literally just by me moving closer and talking right here how much different this sounds from me talking all the way back out here you can tell that i'm talking the exact same way but as i get closer to the microphone there's so much more low end presence that gets added so this is a very important thing to keep in mind when you're recording vocals you want to keep in mind what kind of a vocalist you are are you a rapper or a singer who sings very very loudly and very dynamically where sometimes you're super loud other times you're super quiet or on the other end of the spectrum are you an artist who's much more intimate and gets very very close to the microphone and does a bit more like a whispering someone like billy eilish or someone like tyga tend to get very close to the microphone and get those crisp nuances from their voice so experiment with your microphone and turn it on and just position it close to your mouth usually about six inches away i usually say about like a hand's distance away right so experiment with your microphone turn it on and kind of walk around the microphone see what it sounds like when you're facing directly at the mic versus slightly off from the microphone you can hear the sound difference that it gives you in those tiny little differences so a lot of times i find that if artists don't fully know the lyrics to their songs yet they'll have their phones out or a piece of paper out and they'll be reading off of the lyrics while they're rapping or singing but instead of looking directly into the microphone they're singing off to the side looking at their phone by doing this you're going to get a thinner sound from your voice because it's not fully capturing the sound of your voice by talking directly into the microphone so again just a one or two inch difference can make such a difference in the tone of your voice and a lot of times when you're doing mixing and you're trying to eq that perfect vocal a lot of that could be fixed by just positioning the microphone properly so i always say figure out what distance you need to be from your microphone and what position works best whether you like to be sitting or standing whether you like to be super far from the mic or super close figure out what sounds best for your type of vocal performance and really get used to being in the habit of trying to stay in that zone another very inexpensive piece of gear that you need to be using is a pop filter this thing that you see right here in front of the microphone this stops plosive little bursts of air from getting into the microphone when you say certain letters like b or p if you're like a lot of time those little short bursts of air can sound really really harsh and nasty if you don't have a proper pop filter set up so using a pop filter is crucial for getting a professional sounding vocal especially if you're using a high-end condenser microphone like this one here if you're using a dynamic microphone like a sure sm7b a lot of rappers use this microphone and you see it used a lot for podcasting and you see people getting right up on top of the microphone that's because that type of microphone is designed to not need a pop filter and it's designed to talk directly into it very close like that so you get that nice low end sound from your voice but with a condenser mic it's very important to utilize a pop filter and to keep your distance from the microphone to getting that perfect tone that you want out of your voice tip number two setting proper mic levels one thing i see a lot of beginner artists doing is recording way too loudly because they simply can't hear themselves over the beat and so they end up turning their input knob up so loud that they are distorting their vocals which gives you a very unprofessional and completely unusable sounding vocal now what you want to be doing is aiming for a nice healthy level that you can then turn up later and adjust with the beat perfectly so that you're not overpowering the microphone or overpowering your preamp so the levels i like to shoot for is between minus 18 and minus 6 db on your meter here you really want to make sure to keep your levels in this green area you don't want to be getting close to the orange and especially not to the red area where your vocals are peaking and clipping whenever you're recording this is something that cannot be fixed later on you can always turn vocals that are a little too quiet up but you cannot bring vocals that have been distorted and clipped back down once they are clipped you have completely ruined that vocal take and what you need to do is re-record in order to get a clean sounding vocal so when you're setting your levels again find the position on the microphone that you like you find that you get a good tone from your voice right about this level well then what you want to do is set the input of your microphone to where now your voice is coming in at that tone of voice at that distance from the microphone right in this kind of green level of your meters another thing to avoid though is recording too quietly if you have background noise in your apartment or house that you're recording in maybe like your computer fans or the ac unit running and then you record your vocals at a super low level once you go and bring those levels back up or start adding compression in the mixing phase you're going to find that you actually bring the sound of that background noise up along with your vocals and this can sound really really unprofessional as well so the key thing to keep in mind when setting your levels is having your vocal be loud enough that you can hear yourself clearly you're getting the tone out of your voice that you want you're sitting right around the green area between -18 and -6 db at the loudest point and you're not getting anywhere near that clipping zone this gives you plenty of room to get particularly loud at certain points but also have a good amount of signal that you're not going to pick up a lot of unwanted background noise from the room so once you've set your vocal level to something that you like and you're getting a nice tone from your voice then you should bring your music track in or the beat that you're recording to up slowly but surely until you find it's at a nice volume that you can still hear your microphone at a good level and you're not trying to yell over the sound of the music you don't want to be recording with your music track too loud so it doesn't hurt to bring that thing down to -10 give yourself a little bit of headroom whenever your vocals are going onto this thing this way you have plenty of room to bring everything back up later in the mixing phase tip number three nailing the perfect lead performance alright guys so the lead vocal is the most important part of most songs most people are listening to a song to hear that lead vocal now there's obviously going to be dubs backgrounds other little kind of ear candy vocal parts that come in from time to time but the most important thing to focus on is this lead vocal so i can't stress enough how important it is to really really hone in and practice and get your performance perfected before you get into the recording phase make sure you know exactly the lyrics that you're going to use make sure you know the exact melodies you want to use unless you're someone who's very very good at freestyling and you plan to just ad-lib every single line in the booth the first time you hear the beat or something you want to make sure that you're well rehearsed and prepared to get into the recording phase this isn't your time to experiment and figure out timing of the song this is the time to figure out the exact cadence and performance that you want to capture because once it's captured on the song it's there forever like a tattoo sure you can always delete it and re-record it but the important thing is to get one that you're happy with that you can then move on to the mixing phase with confidence focus on things like timing tuning getting that perfect melody and cool little nuances in your voice that give it that unique character that makes your voice sound like you so if you listen to really professional sounding vocals a lot of times it's things like the way that they say the very end of the word or the way that they maybe spit a little bit whenever they say a certain vowel or this little grit that they add in their voice on a certain note right those are the characteristics that really make a lead vocal and really set somebody from an amateur vocalist to that professional sounding vocalist so really take your time figuring out the cadence and the sound of your voice that you want to come through on this record make sure that you're getting all of those nuances recorded and spend your time recording multiple passes of the lead vocal until you feel like you've gotten one that you're very very happy with a lot of times i'll record five six maybe 10 different versions of the same exact lead vocal part at that point i'll go back through and listen to all 10 different tracks and pick my favorite parts from each one kind of frankensteining together the perfect lead vocal this is what's known as vocal comping and it's a very important step for getting that perfect vocal take there's not a lot of times that people can nail it one time through so sometimes you find that the first half of the verse was really good on your first recording but you like the second half from the second recording so if you cut these two halves together now you can create the perfect sounding vocal with all of the characteristics that you want in that lead vocal once you've gotten the perfect lead vocal throughout your verses and your chorus and you're happy with the sound of it without any background vocals at all just that lead vocal by itself then you know you're ready to move on to this next step which is step number four vocal production and arrangement all right this is where stuff starts to get really fun and this is actually one of my most favorite parts of recording vocals is adding layers and extra background vocals to really enhance that lead vocal now every artist has their own style some artists like a very clean just single lead vocal all the way throughout the whole song with very very little background vocals at all artists like drake are known for just having a single lead vocal this seems to be all he really needs to get a very very professional sound out of his voice and to capture the listener's attention but other artists like to do more fancy production things like layering vocals layering different textures adding harmony parts adding ad-libs or different little melodic elements this is done to keep your attention throughout the whole entire song and to keep the listener engaged and never getting bored one of the most obvious places to use this trick is during the chorus of the song so most of the time you want the chorus of the song to sound huge and big and different than the verses right this is the part of the song that's really really catchy and getting people hooked to the song hence why it's called the hook so again this is very dependent on the song and the style of artist but a trick that i like to do a lot of time to give that chorus a bigger sound is doubling the vocal meaning recording another track just like that lead vocal with the double vocal you want to sound exactly or as close to the lead vocal as you can you want to try to mimic the timing and the melodies so that everything matches up and doesn't sound like it's two different vocals your goal is to create the sound of one harmonious vocal that just sounds extra big and thick so going through and doubling that vocal can really do that now another trick you can do is doubling the vocal twice and then panning one vocal off to the left one off to the right and having your lead vocal right up the middle this is a really cool trick to give the chorus a big wide sound where the vocals come out all the speakers left right and center but when it gets back to the verse the vocal seems to get a bit more intimate and right up down the middle in your face again so this is a really cool trick to build just more excitement and a bit more thickness to your vocals if you're wanting to enhance the chorus a bit you can also do this throughout the verses with different ad-libs or different melodic elements just like humming or certain little ditties that may be really really catchy you can add in the background and have these things panned or eq differently than your lead vocals so that they don't get in the way of the lead vocal but they just add extra little ear candy that gets the listener interested and keeps you really really hooked to the song so definitely experiment with vocal production and adding layers and different harmonies to your vocals don't skip out on this trick this is something that can really set your vocals apart from all of the competition if your competition's just recording a single track vocal going through and adding just certain punch in words where you're emphasizing just the rhyme words at the very end of each phrase that alone can add a lot of punch and extra grit to your vocals that you may find you really really like so definitely check this out so once you start adding background vocals and extra layers to your lead vocal now we can move into the fifth and final step which is going to be vocal editing vocal editing is a step that i see most beginner engineers and beginner artists completely skipping over because they just aren't aware of how important it really is this editing phase should be done before you ever even step into the mixing phase you should dedicate a full chunk of time just to editing all of your vocal takes and making sure that you're cleaning up any unwanted background noises any clicks and pops any breaths that you don't want in there and making sure to time up all of your background vocals to that lead vocal performance this makes such a huge difference on the vocal mix i can't even begin to tell you as long as you have your vocals properly in time with each other and perfectly tuned you'll find that without any eq or compression at all your vocal takes sound very very professional and clean just by having the timing and tuning on point so spending that extra time going through and cutting out the silence in between vocal takes or making sure to fade the beginning and ends of audio tracks in and out these are little steps that a lot of beginners just overlook entirely but when you start to implement these little changes to your mix you'll find how much of a big difference this stuff adds up to this is one of those steps that can take quite a bit of time before you even get into the mixing but i promise you if you spend some time editing your vocals cleanly you will not regret it when you get into the mixing phase alright so for those of you who have stuck around this long i have one final bonus tip for you and this one is a huge time saver when you're getting into recording your songs and that is using a recording template or vocal presets now this step right here was a total game changer for me whenever i started doing this and it's something that i see every single engineer that i've ever worked with using having a template preset up with all the tracks that you know that you're going to need for your recording session along with maybe a few effects that you know that you use commonly can be a huge time saver and really get you going in the creative state much faster than trying to set this thing up every single time you go to record if you're starting your recording session by creating a new session every time and creating the exact same tracks every time you could be saving yourself a lot of time by having a lot of this stuff preset up in a template that you use that you reload every single time you want to record a new song this way you jump right in get into the creative phase without thinking about all the technical steps without having to route a bunch of tracks without having to set up a bunch of effects that you're going to use every time this step just saves you a bunch of time as well as makes your life much easier when it gets to the recording phase so when you have an idea in your head or you find a beat that you love and you just want to get in and start freestyling you can just simply click load up this template drag your b in and start recording right away with all the effects and plugins that you might use on a regular basis already there set up for you having a recording template and maybe even some vocal presets can be a really huge step when you're trying to find inspiration when you're recording songs too having some vocal presets that you can just click and flip through can give you a very quick sense of the vibe and the direction that you're going for and give you a much better opportunity to kind of experiment and find that sound that you want so sometimes when people are recording with just raw vocals it's hard to get an idea of what the end result is going to be and if you can flip to a nice vocal preset that has a nice chorus maybe sound with some nice reverb and some delays giving you that kind of ballpark that you're going for this can sometimes pull a better performance out of you by giving you that sound that confidence and that overall kind of finished picture that you're going to be going for whenever you're actually in the recording phase so definitely experiment with trying different vocal presets and recording templates whenever you're in the experimenting or producing phase of building your song this can be very very helpful for finding inspiration and new ideas that maybe you never even would have found originally so if you haven't set yourself up a nice recording template or you don't have a recording template that you're used to using check out the link below in the description i have a few recording templates that i've made ranging from very basic and simple setups all the way to fully advanced recording templates that let you fully mix and master your songs from beginning to end so i would definitely consider checking those out if you're not using a recording template already alright guys so i hope you have learned from this video that recording is one of the most important components to getting a professional sounding song and if you do all of these steps that i taught you in this video you should be able to mix the vocals very very easily because all of the hard work has been done in the capturing of the performance and getting the most highest quality out of your recording gear that you possibly can so if you learned anything from this video and you found some value be sure to hit that like button and leave a comment below with what your favorite tip was that you didn't really know about before also don't forget if you're interested in checking out some of my recording templates and or vocal presets that i've made go ahead and check out that link in the description down below and you can check out all of the products that i've made to help you get better recordings even faster alright guys we'll see you in the next video peace [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Mad Rez Studios

Views: 138,514

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Keywords: How to record vocals, Record vocals like a pro, how to record vocals at home, recording vocals in home studio, how to record in home studio, Recording vocals, Vocals, Best way to record vocals 2021, How do pros record vocals, Recording rap vocals, How to record rap vocals at home, Home studio, Record vocals from home, recording like a pro, pro vocals, recording vocals at home, how to record vocals from home

Id: _N6ZZd41UP4

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021