Lyons Leadership

Ever wonder what makes a great recording great? Gives life to a live performance? Makes the difference between a legendary song that marks a milestone in music history and just another flash in the pan top ten hit? It’s almost always the vocal performance. Sometime a guitar piece will change the way we think about music, or a pianist will break new ground, but almost always its a vocal that delivers the message we’ve been waiting to hear.

If you are setting a home recording studio, then you are facing a hundred different choices about where to spend your money. Here’s a no-brainer: get yourself a decent quality vocal microphone. Rest assured, none of your recordings will be worth a damn without warm, audible vocals. The first step is to consider your overall budget before you go shopping.

We’ve all found ourselves in the unfortunate position of attempting to fix a badly recorded track. In most cases, by the time you end up boosting, cutting and adding effects just so your track cuts through the mix, it isn’t worth listening to. There’s nothing worse than listening to a recording from a couple years earlier that could have been great if you hadn’t used the wrong mic on the vocals. At that point all you’ve got is a reasonable facsimile of the song you should have recorded, and a bunch of disappointed would be rock stars who blame you for their failures.

Conventional wisdom is often not wisdom at all, but in this case I have to go with it – start with the best vocal microphone you can afford. Everything else further down the chain will benefit from a good vocal mic. you can get away with fudging a lot of things in your recording setup, but starting with a good solid vocal microphone is absolutely essential to capturing any performance. All the money you spent on Logic or Pro Tools and all your hot new M-Audio gear isnt going to help your vocal track if you’re singing into a Shure SM57.

Start with the right equipment ” get yourself a quality vocal microphone, you will be glad you did. These days, there are tons of manufacturers like AKG, Audio Technica, Shure, Sennheiser, and others who make decent microphones in the $200-$400 range. A large diaphragm cardiod condenser microphone will give your vocals shape and clarity, allowing your vocal tracks to cut through the rest of the mix.

Let’s say it again together – “start with a good quality vocal microphone…” save yourself the heartache and hours trying to do a fix-up on someones vocal performance. It’s pretty simple, bad vocals will sound a little better, and great vocals will sound amazing. If you or the person you are recording has a message, don’t point a crappy mic at them and hit record. Spend a few hundred bucks, get a good one, and thanks me later.