First of all,  if you record something bad, it’s gonna be hard job to get it sounding really good. So that means if you have a bad sounding room, perhaps use a dynamic mic, or spend the time hanging a duvet.  And also it means if you get bad vocal performance in it doesn’t matter if you have the best gear in the world, it’s not gonna sound good. So your job as a producer isn’t necessarily technical. It’s about making the singer feel  like they’re doing something important and something special.
So if there’s one thing I wanted to take away from today, it be that, make the singer  give the best performance they can in your studio and make them feel that it’s important.  Second thing I would say, I generally now don’t do any limiting or compression on the way in. I only let the vocalist monitor  in the headphones with compression if they want to just because in the past I’ve recorded it with too much compression and it’s a very hard thing to undo.
But of course it’s very easy to add afterwards. So that whole maximum of like do the least harm, I think is a really good thing to think about when you’re recording a vocal. Just do the least harm to on the way in because you can always add a lot of processes to it after you’ve seen the amount of plug plugins I’ve got going on in my track.  So it’s all about  not harming the stuff on the way in  point number three kind of goes back to number one, but it’s respect the singer,  make it a good experience and support them.
It’s a hard thing to stand in front of a mic and sing one of the hardest things I think you can do.  So that I think is massively important to make them feel  valued.  So  let’s go back to desktop share. When comping go for performance over technique. ’cause there isn’t a plugin for like meaning it.  You see what I mean?
So go for the tape. That’s the most startling, most arresting, even if the tuning’s a bit wonky  because you can sort the tuning out, but you can’t sort the attitude out so easily.  And finally,  let your effects and back vocal choices give the song a journey.  So in that way, I’m meaning that  you hear it a lot in pop music, but it works is that first verse. Not much is happening vocally except the lead vocal first pre chorus.
You might put a little backing vocal there. First chorus might have some harmonies or some doubles. Or if you listen to a lot of Ed Sheeran songs, a lot of octaves s singing the same thing and not a lot of harmonies. Â You certainly don’t want your last chorus to be as big as your first chorus. You want something new to happen each time that chorus comes in, whether it’s an octave on the vocal, whether it’s a vocoder effect in the final chorus, whether it’s an ad-lib doing something different. Â It could also be that you are automating your reverbs and your delays.
So the song is sounding bigger and wetter in the choruses and more intimate and  sensitive in the verses.  I do that a lot with reverbs and delays is basically I’m automating the sends  from the vocals. So they build in certain sections, they disappear in other sections. You don’t wanna hear that happening as a listener. You just wanna feel the cinema scope, kind of like the curtains go back a bit wider in the cinema and it goes super wide screen in the choruses.
And that’s easy to do by automating your delay and reverb settings. So they kind of bloom a little bit more and it can get a bit bigger in the final chorus. The same goes for, that’s the place to put more harmonies, boos and ours. That’s them. Â You want the listen to go on a journey.
