Good afternoon Steemians
I hope Vocal Recording Secrets #1 was useful for you, but as already mentioned before, I have many tips'n tricks to share, so here we GO!
Ok, so, you might be surprised whenever I would say that 80% of the artists on the radio aren't able to perform their songs LIVE! I suppose the most of you already know this, but of course, there will always be a larger number of people who don't.
Is it shocking??? Yes, and no... I mean, in 2018 it seems to be quite normal to be a recording artist instead of a real singer with an amazing voice, but the real artists, that are in most cases the producers.
What do I want to share with you today?
Today, I would like to share with you how to record your vocals in a perfect way, so that even whenever you're not a perfect singer, at least it would sound close to perfect.
You might think that this would be very difficult, but I will show you otherwise!
As mentioned in my earlier article, I am using Adobe Audition, but actually, it doesn't matter which software you're using to test this.
What I usually do, whenever it comes to recording a chorus (as I only sing on choruses myself) is to record every part 3 times IDENTICAL. So, you record your part on one track, then once again on another track, then once again on another track.
Once recorded, you choose the best track as your 'main voice' and the others as backing vocals.
For the backing vocals we need to make sure that on one track the PAN is set 100% to left, and one 100% to the right. So just to clarify, this means that one vocal track will only play via the left speaker, and the other only via the right one.
Now, we need to make sure that the backing vocals have a different volume level, as the volume levels are all the same at the moment, what doesn't sound very well. So, in this case, we need to level down the sound values for the backing vocals. I usually start with -6DB up till -10DB in some cases.
To know the exact level you're looking for, you'll need to play a bit with the volumes and hear how it sounds.
What?! What did we just do?
Well, when you record your vocals identical multiple times and change the volumes + PAN levels for the backing ones, we're actually removing minor or major 'mistakes'. So, if your tracks weren't recorded very clear, it will still sound like it's recorded very clear whenever we play all the 3 recordings AT THE SAME TIME.
This means that for example for a vocalist with a very beautiful powerful voice, the backing vocals will maybe set to -15DB (so you almost don't hear them), just to give a nice stereo sound. But, if for example, a not so great singer would record, and the backing vocals are set to -4DB/-6DB, the reached results can almost be the same as the vocalist with the very beautiful and powerful voice.
So, we use this technique just to give a nice stereo effect for someone with an amazing voice, or whenever someone is 'not so great at singing', simply to remove all mistakes so that it looks like s/he can really sing.
So yes, it can be used as manipulation of the recording, but as already mentioned it can also just be to fill the song and to give a nice stereo effect. Up to you for what you're using it!!
Please bear in mind that at this stage we did not mix the vocals yet (compression, reverb etc.), but this is something I will tell more about within Vocal Recording Secrets part 3.