MusicRadar

Getting your singer to stand at the correct distance from the mic is key to a good vocal take.

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While drum recording techniques are all about context and adaptation, vocal recording is almost always the opposite. There's a huge amount of creativity and personality brought to bear on drum takes, but the vast majority of the sonic expertise that goes into producing a great vocal track is applied after the fact (except for the performance itself, of course), and so the key, especially for the beginner, should be to get the absolutely cleanest, clearest and best vocal recordings you possibly can.

Environmental issues

Bright and live sounding rooms might be fabulous for evocative strings and stadium drums, but for vocals they're usually just a mix-muddying inconvenience. One of the first effects an engineer or producer is likely to place on a recorded vocal is a compressor, which will instantly increase the detrimental effect of any excessive room brightness. Next they will, most likely, apply reverb, which will further exacerbate the problem. It's hard to quantify exactly what the issue is, but it's largely to do with clarity. Because strings are quite resonant with extended envelopes anyway, natural reverberation adds to their character. At the opposite end of the spectrum, percussion has very fast attacks and short release times, so a little natural reverb simply smooths the transitions between transients. But with neither sharp transients nor extended release times, the human voice occupies a curious middle ground. It sounds unnatural and dead with no reverb, but too much and the minute sonic repetitions will blur the edges of the intricate sounds and formulations that our voices make. With this in mind, the wet-dry balance and the character of the reverb itself become critical with vocal recordings, so it's usually far safer to get the driest signal upfront and add effects later.

Perfect placement

In terms of mic placement, there are a number of different techniques that can be used, but in the end you need to base it on your singer. If they play live, they'll have a tendency to creep towards the mic, even if you staple their feet to the floor - but you actually want them about 20-60cm away, as this is the ideal distance to let the sound of a voice develop. If you find your singer's voice too boomy, move them further from the mic to smooth things over. If their voice is thin and lacking presence, stand them closer. Ideally, if your singer is old-school, they will have learned to move in close at quiet spots and pull away for louder sections. If not, you can balance differences with compression later, but nothing beats the effect of a vocalist who really knows their stuff.

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