Welcome to the vocal recording masterclass, today I'm going to show you different techniques of recording vocals and we're going to discuss of course the different microphones as you can see but also considerations like the room that we're going to make the recording in the different types of voice how are we what what type of vocalist are we're dealing with. And of course, also the different types of music that you're dealing with all these all these things, of course, dictate the actual techniques we're going to be using to record our vocal with. So first of all, I want to start talking about recording lead vocals here recording lead vocals Of course, lead vocals are one of the most important tracks that you're going to Having your song most of the time. So we need to work to look at that in depth as to how we're going to do this.

Now, first of all, the first most important thing to think of is the type of voice we're going to be dealing with. So So clearly, you have rock vocals that produce really high sound pressure levels, versus really soft, perhaps female vocals that are a lot softer and more detailed sounding, and so completely different sound sources. There's also different types of music. So all these things can can help you determine how to record the lead vocal. In any case, what's important with a lead vocal is to to to be aware of the fact that the lead vocal has to be very focused, you want to do the lead vocal typically pretty forward in the mix, and and all of all, with all of its intelligibility in text, and that means that that's compared to lots of other sound sources you might mix the vocal in with, you want to minimize reflections that you may get.

And this is because because of two reasons because reflections as opposed to the direct sound, they interfere with the sound in different ways. For instance, if we have a reflection path is a very short reflection path and this short reflection path will arrive at the microphone a little bit behind the direct sound, and it will come filter and comb filtering is a sort of unnatural EQ effects that you will get as a result of the time delay between there between the direct sound and the reflected sound. And of course, this artificial EQ is going to affect the vocal sounds in a natural way and therefore something to be avoided. Longer reflections, they tend not to come filter as much but they're more likely to sound like reverb, and so and reverb, although in itself, it doesn't harm the the vocal sound in the same way that comb filtering does.

But of course, what reverb does do it does unfocus the sound to a certain extent. Yeah, so both comb filtering, as well as reverb and ambient sounds have to be minimized to a certain extent when recording lead vocals. Now there's there's various ways we can do this. For instance, if if, if we if we record a lead vocal, then then the most often use speaker pattern is the cardioid pickup pattern. The cardioid pickup pattern is a pickup pattern or by the microphone. This microphone here friends is a cardioid microphone is sensitive at the front and reject sounds more from the sides and it completely rejects sounds from the back.

And this allows us to point the microphone at the sound source the vocalist in this in this case, and sort of reject all the other reflections that otherwise could of course come filtering or an excess of of ambient reverb sound. So that's the reason why a cardioid pickup pattern is not the only but for sure. It's the most often To use pick a pattern that we use for lead vocal recording. And another way is to consider here is the how you situate the microphone in the room itself. As you can see in this room, for instance, there are certain surfaces that are highly absorbing absorb if there's other surfaces that are more reflective. So in any case, what you what you want to do is you want to make sure that the microphone sees the sound that you want, and it sort of discriminates against the sound that you don't want.

Yeah, so in room like in a room like this, for instance, it would make sense to point the microphone towards an absorbing surface. Yeah, that means that if the vocalist is standing behind the absorbing surface, that's all the sound Yeah, that is coming towards the microphone is direct sound coming from the mouth of the singer flowing straight into the microphone. And in effect, we felt we've reduced the amount of reflections that might otherwise give too much comb filtering, or too much reverb. So first of all, I'll talk a little bit about the microphones that we've got. We've got quite a few of my my favorite vocal microphones here. I'll I'll introduce them to you.

And I'll tell you a little bit about them. Here right in front of me is the world famous short, sm 58 vocal microphone. It's an industry standard microphone very much. So in live sound. It's cheap, it's reliable. It's rogat.

And it's a dynamic microphone, which means that dynamic microphones unless there's something wrong with them, they cannot distort This is one huge big advantage that you have of dynamic microphones that you don't see for instance, with capacitor microphones. Dynamic microphones can deal with very high sound pressure levels. And they are also very good at dealing with with distorted sounds. They are for instance, very good for male rock vocals, especially when they're when the sound pressure level is up and people are screaming into the microphone you'll find an SM 58 is perhaps giving you a much better result compared to To the much more expensive capacitor microphones, there are no electronics inside it. There's almost nothing What can go wrong with this microphone, which is why it's so good. Of course, these microphones are designed here to to.

So that's that even at very high sound pressure levels. The diaphragm with the moving coil attached to it is still able to vibrate freely inside the body of the microphone. Hence why there is no distortion. Yeah, so there's no amplifier inside. So it's, it's, it's it's a great microphone for high pressure levels. Yeah.

Now, there's also a downside to a dynamic microphone. And that is the reason that's the diaphragm attached to the moving coil is quite heavy. Yeah. What that means is that if you consider sound coming from a voice, of course, there's lots of lots of frequencies. So there's a there's a more powerful fundamental frequencies. That's the notes that the singers actually singing, but there's also much more weaker upper harmonic and upper partial frequencies, which are much weaker.

Terms of their amplitude. Now this those weaker frequencies, those weaker higher frequencies primarily and that, of course are less powerful, and therefore less able to set that's relatively heavy moving coil elements into motion, which basically means in effect here that these dynamic microphones don't pick up the high end, as well as the microphones that we'll discuss later, the capacitor microphones. So these microphones, they have a built in what's called low pass filter, meaning that's lower frequencies, they are picked up quite nicely, but these the higher frequencies that are picked up not as well. So this is very important to be aware of. Because if you're dealing with a certain sound, a certain voice whereby the high end is really important here, then you you understand, then this might not be the microphone of your choice. Yeah.

Yeah. However, if you're dealing with a vocalist that has lots of high end, somebody that screams a lot into the microphone is screaming is a type of distortion for one of a better words has lots of high antennas already, in which case, this microphone is perhaps is just the right type of microphone you would want to use for your project. Another consideration is this. Every physical body has its own resonant frequency, meaning that that that's just like a glass or a cup. Yeah, you can find braces at any frequency you like. Yeah, but if you simply hit it, it tends to want to vibrate at a frequency of its own.

This is called a natural frequency or a resonant frequency. Yeah. Now it's the same with these microphones. So so we can make the diaphragm and therefore the moving coil vibrate at any frequency that we like, yeah. However, there is a certain frequency that it really prefers to vibrators. Now, it turns out that with an SM 58, the resonant frequency of the of the diaphragm itself is around four or five or six kilohertz song somewhere.

So that is sort of in the in the sort of sibilance range of the human voices. That's the The frequency range where that's that we hear when we produce sounds like F and T says the sibling sounds. And so so what? What we see if we look at the frequency characteristics of this sm 58, we see that it is a fairly sort of flat response in the mid range. But then towards 456 kilohertz, we see a slight boost where these frequencies are slightly. The microphone is slightly more sensitive for those frequencies.

And then over six seven kilohertz, that's when then the frequency response drops off really fast. Yeah. So so this is what you end up with this a really unusual looking frequency response. But, but it turns out and this is one of the reasons why the SM 58 is so popular, despite what's seeming imperfection. It turns out that that sibilance range is quite an important range to do with intelligibility intelligibility but what I mean by that is how well you can hear the lyrical content, it turns out, that's that's that that little lifts there. I was just talking about the lift that is a direct result of the natural frequency helps the intelligibility it helps it helps the the the actual words the lyrical content come out better, especially when it's surrounded by lots of other powerful sound sources like distorted guitars.

And so it is another reason why this microphone is so popular in rock music for instance. Okay, the next microphone in line is another industry standard. This time mic, pure studio microphone is the Norman u 87. focal microphone. Now this is a very special microphone. It's a multi purpose microphone but it excels at at vocal recordings, especially vocal recordings at the close range. So essentially, this is quite a complicated microphone because it really is not one microphone, but it's two microphones in one.

We think of it as one microphone, but in reality this microphone doesn't have one diaphragm but it has two diaphragms that that sits right back to back at each other in the middle of this Have these baskets. So so what this construction allows us to do is that that's because we're dealing with two separate microphones that essentially by themselves are just just like the 58. We early discussed earlier cardioid microphones. And so what we can do inside the microphone, we can mix those two microphones together to one single output. And we can do that in different ways. But what I'm talking about here is the polar pattern.

For instance, if you select which is probably what we'll end up doing today, if you select this microphone to be a cardioid, then essentially it's only the front diaphragm is engaged. The rear diaphragm is completely taken out of circuit if you if you switch the microphone to only Yeah, it doesn't become a pressure operated omnidirectional microphone. Now it's cheating a little bit because what's happening when you flick it to only essentially you have a cardioid microphone, looking towards the front and I've carried microphone, looking towards the back and by switching into Omni you see merge these two signals together. Yeah. And there's other options too, you can switch it to figure of eight. Yeah.

Which is exactly the same situation. But when we flick to figure of eight, then the rear diaphragm is flicked out of phase. So so so it's, it's, it's a multi diaphragm microphone. That's, that's, that's in this case, probably since we're doing focus, we're going to be we're going to be stick to the cardioid pickup pattern. Now another important thing to remember about this microphone is that it's it's a it's a large diaphragm microphone. A lot of people tend to think that large diaphragm microphones are better at picking up lower frequencies.

Yeah, this is not so the key is that that large diaphragm microphones, they are not quite as precise as registering high frequencies for a little bit the same reason as what we really discussed with the SM 58. We talked about how with the 58 the diaphragm with the moving coil mechanism attached to it is quite heavy. Yeah, well in in sort of similar sense, if you compare a large diaphragm to a small diaphragm, a large diaphragm, by definition is a bit heavier to Yeah. Because of its increased mass, it's not as accurate as registering higher frequencies. This is important when when we consider this for a focus, because because one thing has become very popular in music production is to, uh, to record vocal microphones and very close range. Yeah.

The reason for that is that that, that doesn't give you at all a natural sound because when you listen to normally to somebody speak or somebody sing, you're relatively quiet quite far away from this person. Yeah. And, and so it is very rarely that you have your ear next to somebody's mouth, which is essentially what you're doing if you stick a microphone in some in front of somebody. Yeah. So So the reason why large die from microphones are so good as close proximity is simply because the higher frequencies are not picked up as, as truthfully, as for instance, a small diaphragm microphone will do. And this means that if you use a large diaphragm microphone close to the sound source, if it's a voice Yeah, it means that you can get all the sort of beautiful, sexy detail without harshness.

If you ever tried to, to register a vocal at close proximity with a small diaphragm microphone, you'll find that the sound might be a lot more harsh. Yeah, so despite all the increased detail, you will also have increased harshness. I think that the the main reason why the majority of of lead vocal recordings these days are done, which like with large microphones is because it allows us to get real close. Pick up all the sexy for one of a better words detail of the voice without it ever becoming harsh. That's what the large diaphragm does. One thing to be aware of, no matter what bigger bathroom that you have inside, we're dealing with cardioid microphones.

So directional microphones, and directional microphones, of course, they're great for what it is that we're going to talk about. But they also have a possible downside. And a possible downside is called the proximity effects. The very fact that a microphone is directional, that comes at a price and the price is the proximity effect. And the proximity effect is the effect that as you the sound source gets closer to the microphone, then relatively hearing more low end Yeah, and moving further away from microphone gives you a much more flat frequency response. So that is the price that you pay for having a directional microphone.

So all these things we need to think of when when we choose our microphone when we choose our larger small diaphragm microphone. With a large diaphragm microphone, you're more likely to be able to get closer to the sound source without ever becoming harsh, but there's an increased proximity effects taking place. So all these things we need to we need to be aware of is a few more things to say about us. Seven because yes, it is very truthful signal, but it's also extremely weak. Yeah. So that's the reason why these microphones they have an amplifier built inside them.

So that's so that's so the signal a very weak yet truthful signal as it comes off the capacitor, it is immediately sent to an amplifier and made more powerful so that way it can travel through meters and meters of microphone cable before it reaches the microphone preamplifier in the mixing desk, for instance. Yeah, so so so that's all very well, but this all comes at a price you see, because you can already see that compared to a dynamic microphone, there's a lot more going on in a capacitor microphone. There's a whole lot of this full of electronics. It's it's much more sensitive. And and this means that you can potentially run into trouble and one of these one of these, one of these potential problems you may face is distortion. Earlier I told you that dynamic microphones cannot distort while combustor microphones they can distort simply because they have an amplifier.

And as you know, if you overload the amplifier, you can get distortion. Yeah. So that means that that's that's compared to the typical dynamic microphones, capacitor microphones. They are not so good at picking up altra loud sound pressure levels. Yeah. So typically, you would use a capacitor microphone for sounds that are that are less loud, essentially.

Yeah. Also sounds of course, whereby it's more important to pick up the high end more truthful. Yeah. So So um, now there's a few things, of course that you can do to help on some microphones. For instance, this, this u 87. It does have a pet switch.

It has a meant minus 10 Db pad switch. What it really does is it's a resistor, so that's the week the signal coming off the capacitor before it flows into the amplifier goes through a resistor so it's turned down before the amplification takes place. And that ensures that the amplifier itself can not distort Yeah, now of course It's not an amplifier that you have have control over during a performance. So once you set the pet switch to certain settings, and then you have to stick with it for for the for the recording, of course, in my experience, the U 87. is a great vocal microphone because of all capacitive microphones that I know that is really good at dealing with high sound pressure levels. But in order to be safe, rather than sorry, I always stick the pet in minus 10 Db to make sure that if I don't know the singer, if I don't know the situation, the last thing I want to do is like oh please can you sing that again?

Because we had some distortion. That's why if I do records with you at seven, I typically switch to pet in knowing that that's a that's a if I especially when I close my kid if they have the Vulcan nearby, I otherwise might run into distortion problems. Here's another industry standard microphone, the AKG 414. Like the U 87. is a very common high quality studio workhorse microphone. It's based upon exactly the same principles So exactly, it's the same thing where you have not one microphone, but two microphones, you have the same mechanism that allows you to switch between the different polar patterns, you have a similar high pass filter and you have a similar pet switching system. What's different is that you have two different pet settings minus 10 and minus 20 db.

So theoretically, you could use the AKG, four and four on even louder sound sources before the amplifier starts to distort. And this the high pass filter has two settings, one for 75 hertz and one for 150 hertz. Okay, now we're coming to the real tasty stuff. So this is this is one of my very favorite microphones is Sony c 37. A microphone. It's, it's again, very similar in principles.

It's a capacitor microphone, it's a large diaphragm microphone, we can switch the polar patterns. Although one big difference between the between these microphones and the 414 and the UID seven we discussed earlier, is the fact that this microphone has A valve or tube amplifier inside it. So we earlier we spoke how it is it's necessary for any capacitor microphone to have an amplifier inside the microphone itself. Yeah, in a tube circuit, it's it's the has the same job of making the signal stronger. Now the thing is, as you may know that tube or valve circuitry has a certain status and sound engineering a certain sound and a lot of people desire the tube sound because how it affects the signal, it may distort the signal in a pleasant way. For instance, people talk about harmonic distortion.

Essentially what it means is that compared to the much more modern microphones that we talked about earlier, this microphone may color the voice in a sort of unexpected but as we'll find out, probably a really good way. So it's perhaps less truthful than a much more modern microphone, but it will be surprisingly sexy sounding microphone came out in 1952. It was the the The Japanese answer to the world famous a Norman you 47 microphone. So so it became popular. I think it was Frank Sinatra, who, once he sing in one of those microphones is the microphone. He then decided that was his personal favorite.

And also Jimi Hendrix is another one that that that's it lots of recordings with this microphone. So we're so very proud to wear two of these microphones here. And I can't wait to to hear Sarah sing on a little bit later. All right, here's another one of my vintage favorites. Norman you 67 so I believe that this was the first Noman microphone that was actually designed for close miking. Before that you had the U 47.

Which is an older microphone, which was competing with this the C 37. As I just discussed, the thing about the U 47. is an absolutely beautiful microphone. But in those days that we there was before the Beatles before Before we had modern pop recordings in those days, it was it was not not common to have the microphones so close to the sound source. Also the U 47. was never designed as a as a close proximity microphone. Yeah. So this was the first microphone that had you know that possibility for it meaning that said, it doesn't distort SS as quickly as as a you 47 might have done before that, like the Sony it's also a uses valve circuitry.

So it has that similar sort of warm colored sound is not at all a natural sounding microphone, but it is certainly enhances any vocal sound in a particular way. I could I couldn't choose between the two. I love them equally as much. And so very often when I do a vocal session, knowing that these microphones are so fantastic. I just I just quickly choose between the two, you know, so I can't I can't wait for Sarah to to compare the two microphones and Android for you guys to listen to that. All right, the last microphone in line Is the ship's microphone.

It's from the ship's Colette series is a series of microphones that whereby you can use different capsules. The capsule I'm using today is an MK four which is the standard cardioid capsule. It's a small diaphragm microphone so different from all the other ones before so it's it's a it's an extremely beautiful sounding microphone is very very natural sounding microphone it's a microphone that you would use perhaps a more classical situations you would use this microphone at a larger distance from the singer whereby you do not want things like proximity effect for by you do not have things like microphone technique head it's like the microphone is not supposed to be there those type of recordings. That's what his microphone excels at. So so typically you're further away from the microphone, like I said earlier because it is a small diaphragm microphone if you get too close, they may start sounding harsh.

Yeah, because of the lightweightness of the diaphragm. So it's it's a microphone that you would use at larger distance from the from the sound source.