VOCAL
RECORDING
PLAYBOOK
Improve the quality of your vocals and
start producing better music at home
By Rob Mayzes
Room Choice
The room that you record your vocals in will have a
significant impact on the final quality. It’s important to spend
plenty of time on room treatment and preparation. It can
make the difference between professional and amateur
sounding vocals.
Choose a room that fits the following requirements:
• Low amount of reverb.
• Not too many hard reflective surfaces (avoid kitchens and
bathrooms, or rooms with large windows).
• Ideally, chose a room with lots of soft furnishings and
heavy drapes.
• Larger than 6 square feet.
• Smaller than 200 square feet.
To avoid direct reflections and problematic frequency
buildups, avoid the center of the room and the areas near the
walls.
Avoid the red areas in the following diagram:
Acoustic Treatment
Ideally, use acoustic panels to treat your room (like this).
If you don’t have the budget or time to build panels, you can
also use the following household items:
• Mattresses
• Thick Duvets
• Thick Drapes (especially over windows)
• Thick Rugs
• Pillows
The vocal booth method (surrounding the vocalist with
absorptive material) is the quickest and easiest way to treat
your room.
Acoustic Treatment
If that’s not possible (or is too inconvenient/temporary) you
should place treatment in these locations (and in this order):
• Behind the vocalists head
• Above the microphone
• Between the vocalist and any close reflective surfaces
• To the sides of the microphone
• Behind the microphone
Microphone Choice
Cardioid Condenser Microphones
This is the go-to microphone for most vocal recording
situations.
If you’re recording at home (or in a bad sounding room) it’s
best to use a microphone with a cardioid pattern. You can
point cardioid microphones away from the liveliest surface
in the room to reduce reflections (a window, for example)
or away from any noise sources (like a laptop or A/C unit).
Omnidirectional Condenser Microphones
Many people are scared of using omnidirectional
microphones at home, but this should not be the case.
Although they capture sounds from all around so are more
prone to capture unpleasant room sounds, this problem
can be easily fixed with some additional treatment and
recording technique.
There are many benefits to using omnidirectional
microphone, as they don’t suffer from the proximity effect.
Dynamic Microphones
Dynamic microphones work really well in bad rooms and
can give a warmer, closer sound.
They are also great for more aggressive vocal styles (like
Rock, Metal and Punk).
Dynamic microphones are designed to be used up close,
so the vocalist can often treat it more like a live
performance.
Mic Technique
Cardioid Condenser Microphones
With cardioid condenser microphones, you need to
remember the proximity effect. In most cases, you don’t
want to get closer than 5 inches.
Far away (12 inches) = open and airy.
Close (4 inches) = warm and intimate.
If you don’t have trained ears and aren’t 100% confident
with your decisions, it’s better to be further away than too
close. The proximity effect can quickly ruin a good
recording. 6 inches is a good starting point in 80% of
situations.
Omnidirectional Condenser Microphones
As omnidirectional microphones don’t exhibit the proximity
effect, you can get much closer without affecting the tone.
For quiet, intimate sections you can ask the vocalist to get
right up close to the microphone about 1 inch away (or
less). This is a great technique for whispery vocals.
Dynamic Microphones
These microphones are designed to be used up close. The
low end is artificially lowered to account for the proximity
effect.
For this reason, it’s a much simpler procedure. Simply ask
the vocalist to get right up close to the microphone. This
works particularly well for aggressive rock vocals (and
even screaming).
Thanks for reading!
This is just a taster of what I could teach you…
If you want a lot more like this, check out my latest book. It’s
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Stop Recording Amateur Vocals: The Simple Step-by-Step
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Record vocals that naturally sound great and don’t
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Click here to check out my latest book
