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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
For many people using a dynamic vocal mic can actually be a great idea! Especially in heavier genres and in a DIY recording setup at home.
At the end of the day, you'll have to try and find out what works best with your voice, your style of music and in your room. Just don't think you have to use a condenser, even if that's what you see in most studio pictures. Google "records made with an sm7" and I bet you'll feel more comfortable about using a dynamic mic. 😉
-Benedikt
PS: I often post videos to these daily blog posts in my Instagram Stories: @benedikthain
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I received this amazing sticker from Scott Evans (antisleep.com) and it's right in front of me everyday. My daily reminder to have fun with the audio I'm working on and to constantly try and find ways to destroy sounds in a musical way.
A little bit of harmonic distortion, a little drive, a subtle push, some extra density and overtones. It rarely hurts. It usually makes things better. It means you need less compression. And it makes things interesting, exciting and unique.
You gotta be very careful (and tasteful), especially during recording. But you can literally distort everything if you try hard enough and find pleasing ways to do so.
And of course, you can always completely mess things up and create the most obnoxious, nasty tones ever if that's what you like (I often do!). No rules.
Have fun. Distort everything. I live by it. Thanks Scott.
-Benedikt
PS: I often post videos to these daily blog posts in my Instagram Stories: @benedikthain
Get the free Ultimate 10-Step guide To Successful DIY-Recording
Aaah, nothing like nice, silky, airy backing vocals. Shiny harmonies to add some extra sparkle in the chorus. Until it happenssss.... 😫
Fair enough, I like raw and "real" sounding productions, as well and nobody should ever tell you what you should like when it comes to art.
But all that aside, there are some things that are non-negotiable if you want to make a record that doesn't sound amateur or annoying . There are some problems that are exactly that - problems. With ZERO benefit for the listener.
It may not be obvious or annoying right away, but as soon as you brighten them up, compress them a bit, pan them apart for extra width, the "s-es" and "t-s" quickly become unbearable. Especially on headphones (which are what the majority of people listen to music on these days).
There's absolutely NO reason to have out-of-sync "s-es" coming from left and right, distracting the listener from the song, making the lyrics less intelligible and sounding simply annoying.
Here's what to do about it:
-Benedikt
PS: I often post videos to these daily blog posts in my Instagram Stories: @benedikthain
Get the free Ultimate 10-Step guide To Successful DIY-Recording
