73 - Recording Vocals. Again.

I have come up with a really good way to see if a vocal track is good enough, in terms of the audio quality. Solo the vocal, turn the volume up, and turn off any eq and effects. If it sounds good enough for the CD just the way it is, you've got something. If it sounds like it's coming through a bullhorn or a drive in theater speaker, you need to re-record it, because no amount of eq in the world is going to be able to save it.

Sadly, for me, this is the conclusion I reached when I tried fixing the vocals to my title track "Every Single Day" last night. It's time to admit defeat. It sounds terrible. So tonight I'll re-sing it.

It's the room, really, but I don't have much to work with. So I'm going to employ a trick that many home studio people don't, but a wise few do - I'm going to deaden the area directly around where I sing.

I was recently at a JPF showcase, where one of the members, Andrew Karpinski http://www.stonemarmot.com gave a demo on how he made his own device to deaden the sound behind the microphone. I'm going to build two of those today - a small one to go behind the microphone, and a large one to go behind me while I sing, at head level. It will no doubt be ugly but I bet it helps. A better vocal mic would help, too, but I can't currently afford what I want (AKG 414.)

As thrilling as this blog is this morning, I have to go eat breakfast.