Category Archives for "Vocals"

Out-of-tune vocals, guitars, bass or really any instrument are super common in amateur productions. It's a dead give away.

Find the sweet spot in no time!

It all starts at the source. So put your microphones in the right place quickly, easily and with confidence, using this mic placement quick start guide.

November 2021 - Q&A - Part 2!

Hiring amazing session musicians can take your productions to the next level or even save sessions that would otherwise lead to very poor results.  

 Also, as a self-recording musician you might be in a perfect position to offer playing on other people's records! If you're a great player AND a skilled recording engineer, maybe a session musician career might be a path you'd want to explore.

A great vocal recording is all about the performance. 

Emotion, energy and vibe are so much more important than microphones, plugins or recording techniques.

But how do you learn to sing with confidence? 

How do you write songs that fit your natural voice?

How do you know what you're even capable of, so that you can really give it your all in the recording session?

And what can you do to make sure your voice will last and you won't hurt yourself even after days of full-on recording or touring?

Well, there are a couple of great exercises, habits and things you can implement right away. Great starting points that are available to everyone who's willing to put in some effort.

And if you're serious about it and really want to take your vocal technique to a new level?

That's where a voice teacher comes in. Vocal lessons are so underrated and so many artist don't take advantage of this opportunity to drastically improve their songs and recordings.

For this episode we sat down with vocal coach Matt Ramsey of ramseyvoice.com to talk about all of this, give you plenty of actionable advice that you can implement right away and to get answers to our own burning questions on how to improve our vocal recordings.

Matt is a voice teacher and YouTuber with over 170,000 subscribers who's helped thousands of people find their natural singing voice and level up their vocal game.

Now he's here to help you and your band, too!

Let's go!

The vocal sells the song, right?

For whatever reason people overcook their vocals all the time, using huge vocal chains without really knowing why.

Or they don't do enough because they are afraid of messing things up and what they end up with is a flat, amateur sounding vocal.

We've been there. And over time we've built vocal chains that work for us and help us deal with all kinds of different vocalists and situations now.

Our chains are different from session to session, of course. But they are still consistent enough for us to talk about them and share them with you.

The why behind what we do is consistent and knowing the reasons why we use certain things in our chains over an over again is more valuable than the actual settings.

In this episode we talk about what we are using to record and mix vocals, why we use these specific plugins and pieces of gear and how we use it in different situations.

Let's dive in!

Daily Blog - July 20th 2021

The Self-Recording Band Community is awesome and our members ask great questions! We love that and want this platform to be as helpful as possible, so we try to answer them all. Sometimes on the podcast, sometimes directly in the Facebook group, sometimes via email and sometimes here on the blog. Let's do a little Q&A series over a couple of days. Today's question is about controlling the "pops" on an SM7B.

Daily Blog - July 19th 2021

The Self-Recording Band Community is awesome and our members ask great questions! We love that and want this platform to be as helpful as possible, so we try to answer them all. Sometimes on the podcast, sometimes directly in the Facebook group, sometimes via email and sometimes here on the blog. Let's do a little Q&A series over a couple of days. Today's question is about getting a lot of people to sing on your track.

Daily Blog - July 8th 2021

Who said you should use one microphone for the whole song, let alone the whole record? In fact, there's often a good reason to use different mics for different parts.

Daily Blog - July 2nd 2021

A lot of people are wondering how to build a vocal booth properly. The answer: You don't need to build one, at all! In fact, it might do more harm than good.