recording blog#8: vocals
Being the ever-capable mooch that I am, I borrowed a Shure SM7 from Jeff Stuart Saltzman, who is also responsible for mastering this recording. It’s a very solid mic, and is clean and tidy in dealing with low frequencies. That’s important, because my voice tends to be a bit low. Also, my (ahem) studio isn’t *quite* the top notch space you might find commercially successful artists recording in. The room’s square walls create sound reflections that aren’t totally pleasing to the ears. Therefore, a highly sensitive condenser mic isn’t necessarily my best option. Sure, it’ll pick up the subtle nuances of the voice, but it also might catch the boxy sounding reflections bouncing off of the dry wall too—possibly even some metallic echo from my Empire Strikes Back lunch box. So the SM7, an affordable dynamic mic, is a nice option because it tends to pick up what is right in front of it (and not much else).
So basically, Condenser mic: can often be set to pickup sound all around it in varying patterns (front and back only or 360 degree circle, for instance) and usually in sensitive fashion. Dynamic mic: generally picks up sound right in front of it in “I-can’t-hear-unless-you-get-all-upons” fashion. Geeky.
All I can think of when I try to sum up recording vocals is that it’s awkward, frustrating, yet strangely satisfying. It’s rather like my first kiss in middle school: I thought I knew what I was doing, quickly discovered that I didn’t know what I was doing, managed to salvage the occasion by relaxing my mouth and enduring the moment, only to discover later that her, let’s just say, “spinning javelin” technique, was not universally accepted as proper form. Likewise, I rarely have a euphoric Mariah Carey-with-one-headphone-on-moment when recording vocals. More often than not, I’m singing, stopping, slumping to the right and hitting space bar, “apple/Z”, a mouse click to the correct part of the song, space bar again, then getting back to the mic for another pass. It’s a fickle smooch buddy but the mic is my pal. I try to remember that.
The keys to vocals for me are “do I mean it?”, “does it sound like I mean it?”, and “is it basically in the same key the song is in?”. Vocals: I love them, but damn am I glad they’re over…
next up: mixing