Happy Singers, Happy Tracks

Sep 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Steve Skinner

           
 

ADVICE FOR MAKING YOUR VOCAL SESSIONS AS PRODUCTIVE AS POSSIBLE

In the studio, singers give their best performances when they're comfortable, confident and contented. As the producer, it's your job to make them feel that way. This article will delve into a number of key subjects related to vocal producing, and offer tips to help make your sessions go as smoothly as possible. I'll look at session preparation, choosing the right gear for your vocal chain, getting a great headphone mix, compressing on input, understanding when to press on with more takes and when not to, critiquing constructively, dealing with pitch problems and more.

First Things

The late Arif Mardin was an expert at making singers feel at ease and at recording great performances. When a singer arrived for a session, Mardin would go out in the hallway to greet this person at the elevator and show him/her back to the studio. He was always gracious, positive, relaxed and funny. He would make the artist feel like a star and a co-creator.

FIG 1: Vocal, comp and background vocal tracks set up in Digidesign Pro Tools before a session begins. Note the reverb sends are already in place and turned up.

When singers come to my suburban studio, I also greet them at the door. I make sure that the coffee is made or whatever tea they like is ready for them. I have water for them in the studio. I make sure the studio and bathrooms are clean. I try to make them feel welcome without fawning. I make lunch for them. Good sandwiches make good records.

It's important to set up as much as possible before the singer gets there. Create as many vocal tracks as you may need in your DAW, both leads and backups. Set up a good vocal reverb on an aux track and send a moderate amount of each vocal track to that reverb (see Fig. 1). Make sure the instruments are turned down lower than normal so that the vocal can be louder without overloading your master bus.

Singer-Friendly Gear

You can skimp in some areas gear-wise, but not when it comes to your vocal chain. Invest in at least one good mic and mic pre. Pick mics and pre's that barely color the sound. Added harmonics are technically distortion and cannot be removed later. The brightness of tubes can be exciting, but can also make a vocal sound small and pinched in a mix. I would recommend against using both a tube mic and a tube mic pre at the same time.

If you own more than one good vocal mic and you haven't worked with the singer before, set up all your mics and record the same song section on separate tracks with each mic. Listen to each track and — this may sound a little weird — let your heart, not your ears, decide which mic is better for that singer.

You can help keep levels under control by lightly compressing the signal on input. I wouldn't recommend more than a 3:1 ratio, with 3dB gain reduction at most (see Fig. 2). Keep your eye on the compressor as the session goes along; a singer can get louder as he/she warms up.

I also put a brickwall limiter in line that I've set to kick in just before digital distortion occurs in case I've failed to keep the level down otherwise.

Cue Me In

A good cue mix is critical. When I was a session player, I would sometimes get so distracted by a bad, distorted mix in the cans that I could barely play. As a producer, I always listen to the same mix the performers are hearing, and I try to put myself in their shoes in terms of what they need to hear. The vocal level, in particular, should be about 6 to 10 dB hotter than it would be in a final mix. I also use a good-quality, 100-watt amplifier just to drive the headphones. Most mixer or DAW headphone outputs don't have the power to drive even one set of headphones cleanly at recording levels.

Encourage the singer to move one ear of the headphones back off his/her ear. This helps everybody sing in tune. And once that's done, keep the vocals panned up the middle so your singer will hear everything.

There is a great temptation to turn up the mic pre to help the singer hear him/herself. Don't do this; it often results in distorted vocal tracks. Instead, lower all the instrumental tracks the same amount and turn up the headphone volume. (A good-quality amplifier will give you the headroom to do that.)

Use pro headphones: Consumer models can't handle the volume peaks of a vocal session. They also leak sound more than pro phones, causing bleed on your tracks.

Singers appreciate it when a producer is skilled at producing and arranging backup vocals. I keep a keyboard plugged in and turned on, routed through an aux channel, to help me find notes, and give reference notes to the singer, when necessary.