How to: Record your voice – on a budget!
Someone suggested this topic for a blog yesterday, and, today, someone else asked, “How do you record your voice, I have trouble doing that with my PC.”
Of course to say, “Buy a £2,000 mic – get £1,000 worth of digital music editing equipment and away you go!”, is no good! I post music at several (amatuer music?) ’sites and even with that kind of equipment the voice recording is sometimes very iffy.
From a business/financial aspect too chucking out £thousands on a ‘whim’ is really bad business as, getting that £ back from any music venture, is, these days, almost impossible.
About ten years ago I recorded my voice well enough, I thought, to ‘publish’ it on the ‘net. I still use the same gear – and now I have about ten years of experience – which is the most useful ‘bit of gear!’
Equipment:
I have an oldish tower PC with added RAM. I now have a 1000 gig HDD that stores everything thus keeping PC drive fairly ‘clear’ – to record and play sounds at the same time does stretch PC capabilities – but today’s PC’s and laptops can handle this – indeed with image files too – as my ‘video’s show.
My mic costs under £5 from a supermarket. It is an ordinary PC mic.
I edit and enhance music files with Soundforge. This is an ‘oldie’ program now but I’m well used to it and it’s still available – just put Soundforge into Google and umpteen sales sites will come up. Soundforge uses Direct X plug-ins and the Noise Reduction, Volume, Vibrato (echo), and Normalize are, I’d say, the ones I use the most – but get as many as you can – get used to them.
You can, from a mic, record directly into Windows Recorder, but with Soundforge you record directly into the editor, as a WAV., which is then all ready to ‘enhance’ and edit.
I have a pair of ordinary PC earphones which cost .50p from a car-boot sale.
Simple Recording:
If you plug a mic into a PC that has ‘live’ speakers you may get a load of screeching feedback – it’s awful! So first plug-in your ear-phones! This (on most PC’s and laptops) shuts-off the speakers! So the mic, when plugged-in, won’t ‘feedback’.
The secret number one about PC recording is ‘Do it as quietly as possible.’
So, go to Control Panel, and bring up ‘Audio Controls’ and lower ALL volume sliders to the ‘first volume level’ line – especially the mic slider.
This done you can come out of ‘Audio’ and bring-up Windows Recorder or the Soundforge editor. By clicking ‘RECORD’ anything said into the mic will be recorded – on Soundforge the Record Level lights are handy! But, when doing a Voice recording on Low Volume, don’t panic if the level indicators hardly move – this is good in fact. Digital mic’s are extremely sensitive – even cheapo ones, and recording at normal hearing levels is far too loud and will result in a recording of loud hissing and crackles – the very give-away noises of ‘too loud’ recordings!
Once you’ve done the actual recording STOP the recorder and a wav-form should appear in the editor – don’t panic if it doesn’t and you’ve only a straight line! If you’re in Windows Recorder go back to AUDIO settings, raise the mic VOLUME slider by a line or two and RECORD again. The lower the RECORD volume the clearer the PLAYBACK will be – for spoken words, such as a poem, this is vital.
If you’re in Soundforge use the VOLUME plug-in to enhance the wavfile so that the wavline just exceeds the two lines above and below the middle line.
Scroll along the wavform and if any noises or clicks appear where there should be silence, clean them up by SELECTING the silent section, then bring up VOLUME plug-in, set it to nought – lowest level – and the plug-in will remove all noises on that silent section.
You should now have a wav file with just words and no clicks, that you can use on it’s own, or, if it’s a lyric, mixed with it’s backing-music. To record a singing voice, sing as quietly as possible – it’s all about control, not lung-power. Clarity is the important aim.
Mic Tips:
When you say some sounds, such as ‘SSS’ sensitive mic’s pick this up as a whistle – even with a good sound-editor this is hard to shift. A good tip is to cover the mic with some material that will deflect the air of your breath from the sensitive ‘head’ of your mic. Put a good 2 to 3 inch layer of…something??? over your mic head (use imagination!)
When actually recording a voice keeping the same distance from the mic head at all times helps. About six inches is good I’ve found. If there is a loudish bit to a vocal (say) don’t go ‘loud’ too much – far better to record the other bits soft! Then gently raise volumes in music editor. Once you’ve got a good, clear, click-free recording it’s quite easy to make it as loud as you like.
If you’re recording a vocal to a backing-track play the backing through earphones to avoid it ‘bleeding’ into vocal track – then ‘mix’ the two later.
Recording Vocal & Guitar at same time (‘Live’ Play)
Recording both as you play – to get a reasonable sound – is difficult with basic home-recording tackle. The secret here I think is – concentrate on getting The Voice rather than The Guitar. After listening to umpteen ‘acoustic’ recordings on the ‘net I think this point is vital. Most recorders spend all day getting their ‘guitar-sound’ and as a result the vocal – the words – don’t come over very well.
To get a reasonable ‘live play’ sound follow the text above for general recording – sing six inches from mic head while picking guitar. The voice will come over clearly and the guitar will be in the background. You might have to do a few ‘takes’ – varying the distance of your singing voice from the mic. But one of the takes will sound ok for both voice & guitar. The problem with ‘live play’ is that any enhancement to the voice will also apply to the guitar part, so keep such effects to a minimum, but a tiny bit of say ‘REVERB’ will enhance both parts of the music.
In a studio of course guitar part and vocal would be recorded seperately and then ‘mixed’ to get volumes balanced. If you can pick your guitar well enough try doing it this way. Play and record the guitar part then, while this plays back, record the vocal. The two can later be mixed in a sound programe such as Audacity. I feel though that doing it this way, although technically better, the music itself seems to ‘lose’ something – a live play performance, although perhaps rougher, carries far more ‘feeling’.
I think that’s ok for the basics – have fun……..the songs streamed here have all been recorded in the ways explained above. Get your first Million-Seller, THEN dive-in for a PRO’ Recording Set-Up!
Copyright Condor 8th February 2010.