Recording A Vocalist

I was asked as a task to record a vocalist with my studio team. The vocalist came with their backing track prepared, so all I had to do was record the vocals. In this situation where I am going to recording a lot of takes of audio I create a playlist on ProTools. To create a playlist you must first change the waveform view into playlist, then you press the drop down menu at the right hand side of the track and select new playlist. This creates a new playlist for you to record, this does not get rid of your first recording. After a few takes, if your singer is not happy with one section, or think a part of her vocals sounds better from another take, you can edit your main take then by selecting parts of the other audio and promoting them by clicking the upwards arrow next to that playlist, and it will take the section and override the main mix, with the original still there but the new region will be played for the part. This is called comping.

We decided to record her vocals with an Avanton CK6, here is its frequency response:

As well as this the Avanton CK6 is a cardioid microphone, which means it will pick up a wide range in front of it, but not behind. sit within mid range frequencies, leaning towards higher frequencies as she is female. This frequency response boosts around 10kHz, which suits a higher frequency note, although, that is very unlikely to be hit.

As well as this the Avanton CK6 is a cardioid microphone, which means it will pick up a wide range in front of it, but not behind. This is good for vocals, as vocalists will move about, therefore, the microphone is will pick up all soundwaves in front of it, mostly directly at the front.

To mix this recording, I did not have to do much at all, because, the music was provided to me. Therefore, I added some slight compression to the vocals to tame the peaks and bring up the rest of her amplitude, as she seemed to vary in amplitude when she was singing.

As for mastering, I used multiband compression, to see how I did this, check my mastering blog.