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Vocal Demo Help
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| JenniferRene |
I’m a vocalist and I am new to this. I’m looking for any advice/suggestions for recording vocals. I have put together some songs I’d like to record for a demo to be used solely for the use of vocals for trance/techno/dance music which is my passion. I will have a few acappella’s and also a few tracks that I want to record my voice to other DJ’s music which I wrote all the lyrics to myself. I like to take a song that was made without vocals and put vocals to it if it feels and hits me right. I don’t have any equipment but I do have a few options as far as knowing people with recording studios. So I was wandering if anyone had any experience with this as far as what to look for and what to stay away from in a studio. Also what’s a good price to pay for the studio time?
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks! |
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| IDarkISwordI |
Hey. Honestly, $200-$300 would put you in a pretty damn nice setup that would allow you to record stuff without paying studio time. Theres a few studios where I live and the rate is $60-100/hour. Its total bull when you can do some really good, clean sounding vocals on hardware that you can buy for a decent price.
As far as tips, one thing that you will have a problem with is finding songs to sing to. Generally, the way I handle a vocal track is I have a mental image on how I think the vocals will probably sound over it and will plan accordingly but unless I have planned vocals to be put in, it wouldnt be really easy to overlay them in a clean manner.
If you do plan to get your own hardware, I have a few more suggestiosn for making clean vocals. Generally, on your preamp, youll want your bass to be higher than your treble. A general rule of thumb is for a 10 marker rotary switch (or slider), youll want the bass to be 1-2 marks above the treble. The reason for this is that many microphones dont pick up well on bass and this will compensate (but more on that in a little bit). Depending on the sound that you want on your vocals, its best to have a right shifted hyperbola shape on a parametric EQ (see picture below). This is generally a good filter for my particular voice making it not too open and clear and makes it sound a little thinner as well as making it cut through a mix better. Youll also want to compress the vocals (with a soft-knee) and apply a D-esser filter so that you arent breaking ear drums. After that, you might look into appyling different effects to your voice. I prefer to apply thick chorusing to my vocals because it tends to make them stand out even more and they are given a good stereo image as well.
Lastly, dont get upset if someone doesnt like your voice in thier song. Composers tend to want a particular sound and not much more in thier songs and if your voice doesnt fit that profile, just move on. There will be plenty more opportunities elsewhere ;)
Cheers,
Zac |
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| JenniferRene |
| quote: | Originally posted by IDarkISwordI
Hey. Honestly, $200-$300 would put you in a pretty damn nice setup that would allow you to record stuff without paying studio time. Theres a few studios where I live and the rate is $60-100/hour. Its total bull when you can do some really good, clean sounding vocals on hardware that you can buy for a decent price.
As far as tips, one thing that you will have a problem with is finding songs to sing to. Generally, the way I handle a vocal track is I have a mental image on how I think the vocals will probably sound over it and will plan accordingly but unless I have planned vocals to be put in, it wouldnt be really easy to overlay them in a clean manner.
If you do plan to get your own hardware, I have a few more suggestiosn for making clean vocals. Generally, on your preamp, youll want your bass to be higher than your treble. A general rule of thumb is for a 10 marker rotary switch (or slider), youll want the bass to be 1-2 marks above the treble. The reason for this is that many microphones dont pick up well on bass and this will compensate (but more on that in a little bit). Depending on the sound that you want on your vocals, its best to have a right shifted hyperbola shape on a parametric EQ (see picture below). This is generally a good filter for my particular voice making it not too open and clear and makes it sound a little thinner as well as making it cut through a mix better. Youll also want to compress the vocals (with a soft-knee) and apply a D-esser filter so that you arent breaking ear drums. After that, you might look into appyling different effects to your voice. I prefer to apply thick chorusing to my vocals because it tends to make them stand out even more and they are given a good stereo image as well.
Lastly, dont get upset if someone doesnt like your voice in thier song. Composers tend to want a particular sound and not much more in thier songs and if your voice doesnt fit that profile, just move on. There will be plenty more opportunities elsewhere ;)
Cheers,
Zac |
wow great advice, i'll look into searching around for some equipment possibly. thanks for the help. |
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