Canadian Musician September / October 2019 | Page 50

Pre-Production: Establishing Your Sound
Perhaps the most important aspect to tracking vocals is
having some kind of a vision of what you want to hear in
the final product before you start. Is the vocal supposed
to sit in the track or on top of it? Will the genre of music
inform the vocal performance and treatment? Should the
vocal be pitch-perfect? Knowing where you’re headed in
advance will save troubleshooting and creative head-
aches along the way.
It will also help you commit to your decisions about
vocal performances and treatments earlier in your pro-
duction, making you a more effective record-maker. The
more experience one has, the faster answers to these
questions will come. Here are a few tips that will help in-
form the process before tracking begins:
1. Know the Genre: Share reference material with the vo-
calist to get an understanding of what will be needed in
terms of skill, techniques, and equipment to achieve the
desired results. For example, pop music tends to have
layered vocals. Knowing how precisely things need to be
sung on doubles or how many harmony layers are de-
sired will inform your workflow and scheduling.
2. Know the Vocalist: Understanding a vocalist’s physi-
cal limitations (or lack thereof) will inform decisions like
song keys, anticipated harmony layers, and how much
endurance a vocalist has. Understanding the vocalist as
a person can be even more important. Having a great
rapport and knowing when and how to coach a singer is a
very personal thing. Being able to read people and gauge
boundaries is a valuable skill when it comes to achieving
great performances in the studio.
3. Warm Up: I will typically ask vocalists if they would like to
take a few minutes to get warmed up. Stretching, breath-
ing exercises, and a few minutes of lip rolls in the key of
the song can go a long way. The results are often a richer
tone, better pitch control, and sometimes, greater endur-
ance. If I am working with a vocalist who doesn’t sing reg-
ularly, I encourage them to warm up every day leading up
to our session. There are some really excellent vocal warm
up videos on YouTube that I frequently share with clients.
Staying hydrated is also incredibly important for vocal-
ists. Vocal chords have air passing by them constantly
and they are the last organ to become fully hydrated. A
well-hydrated vocalist will have better endurance and
fewer mouth-clicks to clean up.
Microphones: Options & Implications
When I was starting out, I found it easy to feel as though
most microphones sounded alike; however, I’ve found
over the years that differences that used to feel subtle
are now stark and choosing the right microphone for
the voice and setting is extremely important. There are
three popular types of microphones, each lending its
own benefits and compromises:
1. Condenser Microphones: The classic studio vocal
microphone is a condenser. Condensers are bright,
detailed, and have broad pickup patterns. They are sen-
sitive, hyper-real sounding, and often reproduce a lot
of the space in which the vocals are being recorded. If
you are in an untreated or noisy room, a condenser can
be a questionable choice. If the vocalist has abnormally
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