> Step by step

1. Finding the best sound

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Here’s our track ready for some vocal magic. It was chosen because the arrangement and instrumentation are fairly simple, providing our vocalist with plenty of space in the mix for both lead and backing tracks. 3

Remember to rename all your tracks, as this will make things much easier later on. We’re now ready to record our first take, so we arm the Vox 1 track. Our vocalist is about five or six inches away from the mic for this one, and we decide to record the whole lead part in one go so that we can judge how it’s going to sound. 2

We engage phantom power for our condenser mic, and as we’re recording in 24-bit, we get our vocalist to sing a few loud notes to check that our interface’s input is peaking around -12dBFS. We create a new audio track, set it to mono input and check that the vocals are clearly heard over the backing track in the headphones. 4

We get our vocalist to move closer to the mic this time – about two or three inches away – for a more upfront sound, which may suit this particular track better. This is also the time to make sure your vocalist is happy with the monitor mix. We then create a new audio track, mute the previous one and go again. 5

It’s now time to pick which of the takes is working best. Listen back to each one in turn and get rid of any effects you’ve applied. After careful consideration, we decide that the second take (the one recorded closer to the mic) is the best in this situation – we’ll stick with this more upfront sound for all of our future takes.

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Having decided that we prefer the closer vocal, we go for another take on a new audio track, making sure to mute the other vocal takes before recording. Alas, a very noisy motorbike outside our bedroom studio ruins the take, so we stop recording. We don’t delete this take, as some parts may still be usable when we come to compile them. We also label it so we don’t have to hunt for it later on. 3

At this stage of multiple takes, Live 11 users can engage the Take Lane feature which creates new tracks whenever you record a new take. Other DAWs have this feature too – it’s in Bitwig Studio 4 for example, and already present in Logic. We’ll assume you are either using this feature for multiple takes or just assembling them manually. It doesn’t matter – for either method we’ll end up with good results! 2

It can be frustrating not being in a completely soundproofed studio environment when recording vocals, but remember that most background sounds in your home will be undetectable in the context of a full mix. All you can do is minimise any potential problems – using a mic stand is preferable to holding the mic in your hand, for example. We go for another take on a new audio track. 4

We take a moment to check the first few takes, just in case any clipping has occurred, for example – there’s nothing worse than recording multiple takes only to realise later on that none of them are usable! We’re pretty happy with things so far, but decide that more takes are needed. The ad-lib section at the end of the second chorus needs work, for instance, so we decide to record this bit separately. 6

We record the new take, then listen back to check the results. Our vocalist seems to have nailed this section on this particular track, but you can feel free to repeat this process as many times as necessary to get every part of the song just right – if your vocalist is happy to oblige, of course! Having said that, some singers actually prefer to record their parts in this step-by-step fashion. 5

We focus on nailing the post-chorus section by recording it again on a new audio track and renaming it accordingly. To give our vocalist time to get into the rhythm of the track and find the first note of the phrase we want to get down, we start recording a reasonable distance before the ad-lib section begins. 7

Listen back again to make sure you have at least one or two good takes for each of the sections, then go back and re-record any sections that aren’t quite up to scratch. We’re satisfied that we’ve got everything we need to make a good composite lead vocal from all our takes, either from manual individual takes or using Take Lanes, so let’s move on to that in the next walkthrough.

COMPUTER MUSIC