This series of Pro Tools tutorials is based around the consumer-priced M-Powered edition of DigiDesign’s famous DAW. However, the principles should work with all versions: check out Pro Tools tutorial 1 for the details.
In this particular tutorial I’m going to talk about recording vocals in Pro Tools, and to make best use of your digital audio workstation to get a great vocal take. Although I’ll be specifically referring to Pro Tools, the general concepts can be applied to most DAWs and recording devices - it’s just a question of working out the equivalent commands and controls for your DAW.
First things first: Mic positioning
This is relatively simple for vocals. Although there can be a few variations, what you need is a large-diaphragm condenser mic and a pop shield. Put the mic about 6 inches away from the singer, directly in line with their mouth, with the pop shield in between. A bit like this:
Pro Tools vocal recording
Method 1: ‘Comping’
Comping is basically recording lots of takes, taking the best bits of each and compiling them into one take. You can be as detailed as you like – even taking different syllables of words from different takes to get the perfect vocal line. However, the more detailed you get, the more editing you’ll have to do to get it to fit all together.
As an example I’ll just describe using three takes to get the final comped one. So first create four mono tracks (three for the takes, one for the comped take) by pressing Cmd + Shift + N. Name them by double clicking on where the track name is (it’ll be audio 1, audio 2 etc by default). Now set the input of the first one to whatever channel you’ve plugged the microphone into. This will be the channel on to which everything will be recorded, so be sure to mute the other three by clicking the little ‘m’ on each channel in the mix window. If the microphone is in the same room as your speakers, you’re going to have to turn them off and use headphones instead; otherwise your mic will record what’s coming out of them and feed back.
Most singers like to have a bit of reverb on their voice while they’re recording. The best way to do this is by using an auxiliary track. So press Cmd + Shift + N again, and select a stereo aux track.
Now you need to add a send to the main vocal track. So go to the mix page, and under the boxes where you’d normally put inserts on a track’s channel there will be boxes for you to add a send. On one of the vocal tracks click on the little button on the left hand side of one of these boxes, then go to bus, then for simplicity’s sake choose bus 1-2. A fade will then pop up: this is to control the volume of signal being sent to bus 1-2. Put it at around -10dB.
Next have a look at your new aux track. Set its inputs to bus 1-2, and add a reverb plug-in to its inserts. Make sure the plug in is at 100% mix if it has the option. Now hold the Cmd button and click on the aux track’s solo button. It will now be in solo safe mode, meaning that if you solo a track the reverb will not be muted. Now you can control the volume of the reverb independently of the clean vocal.
Now put the track into record mode and get your singer to have a run through of the track to allow you to set the input level so that it is on average peaking about three quarters of the way up the level metre. If you can’t hear the vocal through the headphones try pressing Alt + K to change the input monitoring mode. Keep checking with your singer if they want anything louder or quieter in their headphones, including reverb.
Once you’re happy the level is good, and your singer is happy with the volume of everything record your first take all the way through. If the singer makes a mistake it doesn’t particularly matter, two more takes ought to cover it. At the end of the take, choose the grab tool by clicking the little hand towards the top left of the edit window. Now click on your take, hold Ctrl and drag it to one of the muted tracks below (holding Ctrl means it won’t move left or right, and be put out of time). Now you’re ready to record your next take, so just repeat until all three muted vocal tracks have takes on them.
Auditioning and editing
Right, so now you have three tracks of the exact same vocal take, it’s time to pick out the best bits! A few things to start with: make sure the volume of each track is the same. If you altered the input for one of the takes, try to compensate for this by altering the volume of that track. If one of the tracks is perceived as being louder than another, it may be perceived as being better (see what I wrote about the loudness wars in my post about compression).
Now un-mute the first track and play the first line. Then mute it, and do the same for the second track, then the third. It is important to play each line in quick succession otherwise you’ll forget what the first one sounded like. Once you’ve decided which is the best, use the selector tool to highlight the line from the take you want. The press B to separate the selected bit, then hold Ctrl and use the grabber tool to move it up to the empty track. So that’s one line done, now you just need to repeat the process until you have one entire take! Don’t worry, you’ll get a lot quicker with practice.
Once you’ve got your comped take, give it a play through. You will probably notice some pops and slightly dodgy bits where different takes have been stuck together. So now you need to add cross-fades between each edit. One very quick (and slightly sloppy) way to do this is to select all the audio in the take (use the grabber to select the first region on the left, then hold shift and click on the last region on the right). Now just press F. This will have eliminated all the pops, but some words might not fit together so well.
To get the smoothest sounding take you’re going to have to go through the whole take, checking each edit and using the trimmer tool to move the edit around until it sounds right. To apply a fade to each edit individually, select the area you want to fade using the selector tool (don’t make it too large otherwise it will become a bit obvious) then press F.
This can be a bit of a painstaking method. In fact I once recorded a female vocal that consisted of about 300 takes, spread over about 5 or 6 two-hour session, just for one song! The longer you spend on it, though, the better it will sound. I think it’s worth putting in a bit of time to get a really good, final vocal take.
Method 2: Drop-ins
This is a slightly quicker method, but won’t give you quite as good a final take. Simply set up one vocal track (with reverb as described earlier). Once all the levels are set record one take, and as the singer is performing use the enter button on the keypad (not return, this will stop the recording!) to add a marker whenever you hear a mistake or a line that could be sung again. Once the take is done, take the singer through each bit that you marked, and let them choose which ones to do again.
Once you’ve got a line to re-do, put the cursor just before the line you’re going to re-record. Now to give the singer a chance to figure out where they are, press Cmd + K to get a pre-roll. Towards the top you will see a little green marker, as shown below.
Pre-roll marker in Pro Tools
Pull the left green marker back a few bars; this is where the music will start playing from, allowing the singer to sing along and get into the piece before pro tools starts recording. Now press record, and stop as soon as the new take is sung. Now just pull the bit of audio in front of the new line back a bit in case you recorded over any of it, then cross-fade where the edits are. Repeats for each dodgy line and you should end up with a pretty solid take!
And finally…
A few things to note:
- Stick to the same take wherever possible, it tends to give a better flow and continuation to the recording.
- Be wary of where the singer’s breaths are. You can delete them if you like, I tend to keep them in just because it sounds a bit more natural. If there are edits near breaths make sure only one breath is played.
- Your singer will get tired! Give them plenty of water and don’t force too many takes out of them as the quality will just go downhill after a certain point.
If you have any questions at all please leave a comment and I’ll reply to it as soon as possible. Next Pro Tools tutorial coming soon!
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