Testing, testing, one, two…
Before we move on, there are a couple of other things to bear in mind. First of all, you need to create a good monitor mix, where the vocals can be clearly heard above the backing but are not so loud that they mask the other instruments, as this will make pitching near enough impossible.
Also, for songs where the vocals come in before any tuned instruments, you should place a piano note before the start of the section to give you a starting pitch. And if there are any sections where the instruments drop out completely, you may need to make a dummy backing track to enable the vocalist to hear the rhythm and key of the tune – this can then be taken out again once the vocals are in the can, so to speak.
You’ll often see singers in the studio wearing headphones with one ear off. This enables them to hear the backing track and the recorded vocal in one ear while still being able to hear their natural voice in the other. They also tend to use closed-back headphones, which help to stop the backing track leaking onto the vocal recording.
Of course, the most important thing is the performance itself, so disregard all of this information if another method will give you a better performance at the expense of some audio fidelity.
And when all is said and done, these rules can be broken. If you listen to Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful, for instance, you can actually hear the drum track leaking from her headphones at around 3m 45s, but the producer decided to keep this take because the performance was so good. Bono has been known to record his vocals with the band playing in the same room to help him give a more energetic take, and original Asian Dub Foundation vocalist Master D was known to monitor his takes through speakers to help achieve his impassioned delivery.