How to Record Vocals in Your Bedroom
Recording vocals is all about capturing the performance. At the end of the day, the vocal is telling a story, and the more human emotion that story has, the better.
It doesn’t matter if there’s a little flutter echo from the room, a little too much 8kHz from the mic, or a little sibilance from the positioning, as long as there’s emotion. It’s our job as engineers to capture that emotion.
Prince cut all of his vocals at the console in his control room. Kanye recorded most of Watch The Throne in hotel rooms while on tour. Wasting Light by the Foo Fighters was recorded in Dave Grohl’s garage.
Some engineers spend thousands of dollars building analog vocal chains with vintage mics, tube preamps, and outboard compressors, yet vocals for The Killers’ Hot Fuss, Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors were all recorded using a Shure SM57.
This is all to say that when it comes to recording vocals, it’s not about the room or the gear, it’s about capturing the performance — something you can do well even within the four walls of your bedroom. There are, however, some best practices you can follow when setting off on this path, and that's exactly what we're going to examine at today.
This is an excerpt from How to Record Vocals in Your Bedroom, originally published by Reverb. Read the full version here.
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