[Mike]

Just started to record our band, Guitar Bass Guitar Keyboard Drums and Vocals. Having problem with the backing vocals (female Voices !) we have been recording through mikes with speaker playing back the song for them to sing to. would it be better with headphones, does that not make you sing flat as people do when listening to MP3 players etc   

[chrislong170273]

The normal method would be in a vocal booth with headphones when multitracking. Regarding how they sing, it is just practise. The singers need to 'perform' in the studio, as if it were live. They need to be comfortable and to have the correct balance in the phones. Too quiet and they will sing quiet, too loudd and they may have difficulty with pitch and dynamics.

I spend a lot of time with singers working on the performance aspect of recording, trying to transfer the energy and expression of live performance to the studio. Some singers are great live performers and hopeless in the studio, some are the other way round, some do both. What ever you are working with though, it is about rehearsing with headphones.

One thing I have singers do is to take one ear off so that they get a morelive feel, with the sound of their voice in the room.

Anyway, that's how I do it :-)

Hope it helps

Chris
www.chrislong.me.uk

[Ramshackles]

It is perfectly fine to record with the speaker if she sings better that way. The only problem would be spillage of the music from the speakers into the vocal track. Dont have the speaker too loud to reduce spill. If you want to try to eradicate as much spill as possible from the vocal track, here is a neat trick:
Record the vocal track like normal, with the music playing out the speakers. On this track you have both vocal and spill
Record a second time, but this time without the vocal (i.e. just record the music from the speakers, using the mic - which you have left untouched along with all volume settings!). This is the 'spill' track.
Now, invert the phase of the spill track and play it along with the vocal track. A lot of the spill should be eradicated now

Also, when you setup the mic and the speakers, try to use a cardiod or hyper-cardiod mic and have the null point of the mic pointed toward the speaker, thus reducing the amount of speaker sound that the mic picks up.

Well made headphones with very little sound leakage are of course a preferred method as chris says, as they allow you to record a perfectly clean track, no spill. What you can do to make it easier for the singer, is put a bit of processing on the output channel of the DAW to allow her to hear herself better and to 'flatter' the voice a little. Some compression so that when she sings loud it doesnt bust her ear or when she goes very quiet she can still hear herself, and a little eq to cut out all the rumble below 100hz and maybe a little lift in the 5khz region to help her voice cut through and be clearly heard.

[Shylock]

If your singer is singing flat then that is proably a sign that the balance of the mix in her 'phones is wrong.

When the music is too quiet and the voice is too loud the singer can become self conscious and subconsiously back off a little bit, which makes the performance a little bit below pitch.

Try turning up the headphones a little bit but turn down the vocal in the mix. Make sure that there is a little bit of reverb on the vocal and even a little bit of compression (don't use this compression on the actual recording, add that later, but just a little can give the singer a little bit of confidence).

Some people sing with one ear off but I don't think that it really helps.

Also try hanging up some pictures, posters etc that will make your singer more comforatble in the booth.

[Mike]

 Thanks for your really helpful advice,