Question on recording clean vocals

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Jenna

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« on: June 12, 2017, 04:39:10 AM »
I've tried a few different approaches to avoiding this problem and so far none of them are working, so I'll ask the songwriting veterans here. How do you record a vocal track without muddying it with all of the other bits recorded? It seems you could just play the others through the headset and not pick that up in the vocal audio. No joy here. It keeps getting recorded into the mix. I've tried locking them, muting them, and a few other approaches. But I need to hear them to get the vocals right. So how do you go about this? Do I need to play them on my phone with a headset instead of through the DAW?

Boydie

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« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2017, 07:47:39 AM »
It would be useful to know a bit more about your setup but most people use good quality CLOSED BACK headphones to listen to the backing track whilst they record the vocal to a new track

This approach avoids the "spill" of the backing track in to the vocal track so the vocal remains "clean"

You may find that recording in this way uncovers "latency" - where you hear a bit of a delay between when you sing and hearing your voice back in the headphones but there are things we can help you with to overcome this

But first things first...

How are you currently recording - i.e. What device? (PC, Mac, Phone etc.), what software/daw? (garage band, audacity, reaper, cubase, sonar etc.) and what hardware? (Audio interface, microphone etc.)

Once we know this we can recommend the best approach with the setup you have
To check out my music please visit:

http://soundcloud.com/boydiemusic

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BoydieMusic

Ramshackles

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« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2017, 04:45:34 PM »
Like Boydie says, a bit more info on your setup would help.

I have recorded with relatively poor-quality open headphones with minimal leakage (compared to level of vocal), so its possible you might have some poor gain staging we could help with

Jenna

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« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2017, 06:21:44 PM »
No problem. The current setup looks like this:
 
BM-800 Condenser mic routed through a
Voicelive 3 processor connected by USB to
Toshiba laptop running
Windows 10 and Mixcraft 8 Recording Studio
Feeding sound back into VoiceLive 3 where I've connected a
Sennheiser closed back HD 280 Pro headset


Ramshackles

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« Reply #4 on: June 13, 2017, 08:30:29 PM »
Lol your headphones are 5x more expensive than your mic  :o

Certainly shouldnt be having any leakage problems with those headphones.
Assuming you have connected voicelive up fine it should also be a-ok (Im guessing that you can run a monitor feed through it without it being fed back to the USB output)

Do you have a clip of a vocal track? That will help with the diagnosis...

Jenna

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« Reply #5 on: June 13, 2017, 10:39:52 PM »
Ha. Truth! I bought the headset for listening pleasure to replace a very nice on that had gone south. It doesn't even come close to the same quality, to be honest. The other was like listening to live music. And that was before being gifted a guitar for Mother's day, which led to lessons, then the teacher encouraging this and that, and the rest sort of came along bit by bit. I wasn't sure what to get in a mic, so picked this one up super cheap on Ebay to give the style a trial. Until I get back to work, it's what I've got.

There IS a good sense story behind every nonsensible reality. ;)

I think I may have found the solution, though. I've not been using the performance panel at all. I've just been recording everything straight into the tracks segment of the screen. I'm hoping that recording into the performance panel instead takes care of the issue. Thoughts?

Jenna

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« Reply #6 on: June 14, 2017, 03:38:30 AM »
Finally got to the bottom of this. That was the problem. I was recording them through the main clip area instead of recording them in the performance panel. I just about drove myself mad this week trying to get to troubleshoot this silly problem. Oy. All better.

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