Recording

Recording vocals and guitar at home

6 min read

Vocals and guitar are where most home studio time goes. Both are well within reach in a small room, and both punish the usual beginner mistakes more than any other source.

Vocals

The setup

A cardioid dynamic microphone for an untreated room, a condenser for a treated one.
A pop filter between the microphone and the singer, about 15 cm away.
A shock mount, so chair creaks and floor knocks stay out of the recording.
Headphones, so the singer hears the track and not the room.
A short stand with a boom arm, so the microphone stays where you put it.

Position

15 to 20 cm from the mouth. This is where a cardioid microphone gives the full low end and the least room.
Slightly off-axis — aim a few degrees past the side of the mouth rather than straight into it. Plosives and sibilance drop noticeably.
At mouth height, roughly where the singer can see it, so they can keep a consistent distance. Consistency is what makes a comp possible later.
Between the singer and the reflective surface when the room is live. The microphone rejects sound arriving from behind it, so pointing the back of the microphone at the worst reflection is worth more than most panel placement.

Levels

Set the preamp so the loudest part of the performance peaks around -12 dBFS, and leave it there for the whole session. Do not ride the gain between takes. A fixed level means the takes are directly comparable, and it makes comping possible.

For reference: a normal speaking voice at 20 cm needs roughly 55 to 60 dB of preamp gain from a typical dynamic microphone. If your interface runs out of gain, that is an interface or microphone problem, not a "turn it up louder" problem.

Getting good takes

Record three to five full takes rather than dozens of fragments. Long takes capture the performance, including the mistakes that make it human.
Record the rehearsal too, then save it and keep going. Performers warm up, and the fifth take is usually better than the first.
Stand or sit consistently — the distance to the microphone changes the tone and the level.
Watch for sibilance — sharp "s" and "t" sounds that spike the meter. If they are there, they are in the recording; move the microphone slightly off-axis or back a few centimetres and try again.
Leave a few seconds of silence at the start and end of each take. It gives you room to trim and gives the singer a moment to settle.

Comping

Import the takes, align them by a transient — the start of a word works well.
Listen for the best phrase, not the best take. A good comp is built from pieces.
Use crossfades of a few milliseconds at the edit points, and listen to the joins on headphones at a low level. Clicks at the edit points are the giveaway.
Do not over-edit. A comp that sounds stitched together is worse than the second-best take.

Doubling

Record the same vocal twice and pan them slightly apart. It thickens the sound and is the cheapest way to make a thin vocal sit better. Even a few cents of timing difference between the two takes is useful — it stops the doubling sounding like a copy.

Guitar

Three routes, and when each one wins

Microphone the amplifier. Best tone, most room, least repeatable. This is how most records people love were made.

Microphone the speaker in a treated room. A good middle ground, and cheaper than a proper amp.

Direct input. The guitar's pickups go straight into the interface. Clean, repeatable and instant, but you get the pickup sound and nothing else — no amp character, no dynamics from the speaker, no room.

The most common home studio mistake is reaching for a large-diaphragm condenser on a guitar amp at close range. It will sound harsh, and it can damage the microphone. A dynamic microphone — a small diaphragm condenser is the other option — is the right tool for an amp at three feet.

Where to aim

At the 12th fret for a balanced, woody tone with the midrange that cuts through a mix.
At the bridge for a brighter, sharper, more defined tone.
At the soundhole for a warmer, rounder tone.
Never at the centre of the speaker cone unless you want a harsh, honky result — that is where the cone is moving the most air at high frequencies.

Move the microphone a few centimetres at a time and listen. The differences between positions are large and they are cheap to explore.

Amplifier noise

An amplifier at high gain is a noise generator. Hum from a transformer, hiss from the valves, and buzz from a bad ground all end up in the recording.

Keep the gain low enough that the amp is not screaming. For home recording, a clean, slightly compressed tone at lower gain is easier to record and easier to use.
Try the amplifier at a lower volume in the room. Recording hot and turning it down later is a habit that comes from live work, and it is not necessary in a treated room.
If the hum changes when you dim the lights, you have a lighting interference problem, not an audio one.

Recording a clean guitar

For a clean electric guitar, the DI is often the better place to start. Feed the DI into the interface, record it, and add amp or amp-simulation processing later if you want it. It means you can change your mind about the tone without re-recording.

If you want to reamp later, record a clean take, note the guitar's volume knob position and the pickup setting, and capture a reamp pass with the amplifier at a fixed level.

Performance

Play along with the track rather than to it. Timing recorded against a click is noticeably tighter than timing recorded against a song being played back.
Keep the picking consistent. Varying dynamics and picking force is what makes a MIDI part sound real.
If you are playing to yourself, remember that you will want to double the track later, so leave room.

The recording is the performance and the microphone position. Everything after that is editing.

Recording both at once

You can, but expect bleed. The vocal microphone will pick up the guitar, and vice versa. It works well when the guitar is quiet and the vocal is the focus.

For cleaner results, record the guitar first, then listen to it through headphones while the singer records. It is less fun and it saves a lot of editing.