5 Tips for Recording Vocals

 Now that you have your song written and a good start on figuring out how you want to arrange it, you need to figure out how to how you are going to record your vocals. Here are five tips that will help you with your vocals.

1. Vocal Doubling - This technique has been used on thousands of recordings. This is one of the easiest technique to add some depth to your vocal lines. A cool trick is to use slightly different adjustments for each vocal. Perhaps make one version with the lows a little higher and the other with the highs bumped up just a bit. If you want you can also slightly panned left and right.

2. EQ - Speaking of EQ settings, don't be afraid to mess around with the EQ settings on your vocals. Adjusting the Highs all the way and everything else down will make it sound like an old transistor radio. Whereas, if you do the opposite and turn the lows up but the other settings down, it'll sound like you're in a very dead room or a hole in the ground.

3. Mic Placement - Feel free to experiment with mic placement. Sometimes putting your mic in a different place, or using more than one mic can give you an interesting sound.

4. Larger than Life Vocal - Double or Triple your vocal, then trim off a bit from one, and then increase the length of the other, just a tiny little bit, then pan one Left and the other Right, and leave one center. The resulting effect gives you a larger than life vocal, and if you add effects to each track, you can get some really interesting effects.

5. Accent - Try a different accent. You might move your voice closer to the front of your face, or back further into your chest. Using a slightly different accent can make your vocal pop when you need it to. Also, thinning out a vocal can help blend harmonies and other vocals that seem to stick out too much in a mix. By thinning out the vocal, I mean holding back on vibrato or other resonating techniques.

So there are a few more ideas to try out when recording your vocals. If you found these tips helpful, you can find out more about songwriting tips and tricks in my new book: "Lyrics and Music: Music Theory for Aspiring Songwriters" available now at Amazon.com, or with several additional Appendices at Barnes and Noble..

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