Recording Vocals

One of the biggest challenges in any recording project is getting a great vocal recording. For many different styles of music, especially popular music, the vocal is incredibly important, and arguably the single most important part of a track. Maybe you have a thing for guitars, bass or drums, or you get particularly attached to the Kazoo, but for most people the vocal will make or break a song.

How to get a great vocal sound

A professional studio will have a selection of esoteric and industry standard mics to choose from; a choice of pre-amps to play with and a proper vocal booth or acoustically designed recording space. So how can home recordists get a great vocal sound on a budget? Luckily, I attended a Sound on Sound Seminar at Sounds Expo 2006. Paul White and Hugh Robjohns gave a very practical demonstration of some tried and tested techniques in vocal recording and vocal production to a large crowd.

Setting up the recording space

Pro studios will have an acoustically designed room for recording vocals. Home studios are not normally blessed by such luxuries, but with a bit of ingenuity, anyone can create the right environment for a great vocal recording. Unless you have a large budget, and can afford a professional studio designer who can build a room that is neither dead or too live from an acoustic point of view. The best thing that a home studio engineer can do is try and deaden the recording area. The idea being that the vocal recording is not coloured by the sound of the room. Trying to remove natural reverb is quite difficult, so the best thing to do is record with reverb and the room sound itself deadened as much as possible.

Duvets Rock

The Sound on Sound crew demonstrated the use of a couple of duvets to act as a low budget vocal booth. Using a couple of boom microphone stands, 2 duvets and some carpenters clips (£1 in the pound store). Paul and Hugh created an L shaped recording backdrop.

Duvet Vocal Booth Front

In front of this they placed the microphones, which were aimed toward the duvets. Normally you would use a cardiod or hyper cardiod microphone to record vocals. This means that the microphone is "focused" in one direction. So by aiming the mic at the duvet booth, any room reflections are muffled and muted by this portable audio screen. This makes it possible to get a more intimate vocal sound, one that has less noise, and is easier to effect with compression, eq and reverb to get just the right vocal sound for your track.

Duvet Vocal Booth Rear

Choosing the right Microphone

Once your happy with your vocal booth, you can then choose a microphone. It maybe that you have no choice in the matter, maybe your stuck with a dodgy old dynamic microphone. Many rock singers will deliberately choose a Shure SM58 or SM57 dynamic microphone to record with in the studio. For the Sound on Sound seminar they set up three different microphones; an "industry standard" AKG C414 XLS (approx. £550 /$900 ); a Shure SM57A Beta (approx. £80 / $140); and a Audio Technica 2020 (approx. £100/$100). The AKG and Audio Technica mics are condenser microphones. In order to use them you would need a recording interface with "Phantom Power" or plug them into a pre-amp or mixer before your computer interface. The Shure mic is a dynamic model, which does not require any phantom power to work.

Battle of the Mics

Luckily for the assembled audience we were treated to an excellent display of vocal talent by Debbie Powell. Recording through the three microphones simultaneously onto three separate tracks. We could then determine which microphone suited Debbie's voice best. On playback each vocal take was soloed so we could get an idea of each microphones inherent sonic characteristics. Expecting the AKG to win hands-down I was somewhat taken back when the cheapest microphone on test, sounded the best, to my jaded ears anyway. The Shure sounded a little dull and flat, the song was quite delicate though for a dynamic mic. The AKG sounded smooth and relaxed but to me the Audio Technica sounded a whole lot better. I was quite relieved that Paul White came to the same conclusion. He also pointed out that this was to be expected. A lot depends on the vocalist, choice of material, and the style of music. So don't dismiss a microphone because it is cheap, and conversely just because you have swapped your Grandmother for a Neumann, won't mean you have a killer vocal sound.

Microphone Placement

The microphones were placed about 6 to 9 inches from the singer. Popshields were placed about 3 inches away from the mics. A popshield is a device that diffuses explosive "B" and "P" sounds, which helps stop the microphone from popping with the explosive nature of these sounds. You can buy a popshield from your favourite music shop, or make your own. An old coat hanger and a pair of your mum's tights will work fine. Not so good if your mum wears fishnets though. Paul suggested a frying pan cover as a cheap alternative, available from most good pound shops.

Headphone mix

Probably more important than a good microphone, is a great vocal performance. This should start with making sure the singer is comfortable. Make sure they like the sound mix in their headphones, not too loud, enough reverb, backing track levels. Always use closed back headphones to help reduce microphone spill too. One trick to help with nervous vocalists is to ask her/him to sing the song so you can check the level. Record this take, chances are it will be the best take of the session. Whatever you can do to reduce any pressure, nerves or tension in the studio, will make all the difference to your final recording.

Recording Levels

With 24Bit recording, it is not essential that the overall recording level is high. 16Bit recordings definitely benefit from near maxiumum sound levels. Fortunately 24Bit offers a considerable benefit in signal to noise ratio than 16Bit, so you can back off a little when recording, which will help stop any horrible clipping. Alas GarageBand V3 records in 16Bit, so the recording level is very important in order to get a good signal to noise ratio. Whatever you do, try and make sure you don't clip the recording and remember it doesn't matter on the mic, computer or app used. It's what you do with it that really matters.

Recording Vocals Summary

In order to get a great vocal recording, do this:

• Create a "vocal booth" using duvets, sound tiles, blankets etc
• Try several different microphones to pick the best one for the project
• Use a pop shield
• Record as far away from any noise as possible - i.e. noisy G4s.
• Use closed back headphones
• Make sure you don't clip the recording (over record)

Discuss Recording Vocals

GarageBand 3.0.1 Update

Apple have released a Free, 1.5mb update to their GarageBand music application.

"GarageBand 3.0.1 addresses an issue with Podcast production using the French or Finnish localized versions."

Learn more about the GarageBand 3.01 Update.

GarageBand 3.0.1 update Discussion

GarageBand 3 Tutorial Finder

Apple iLife '06 Multimedia Tutorials

Apple have created a great tutorial site for iLife '06 and in particular GarageBand 3. You can find help from Creating your first GarageBand project to more complex tutorials like Scorings Movies, and publishing your own podcasts.

GarageBand 3 Help Menu

Apple seem to have gone a lot further with their help and support for this iteration of GarageBand than they have done previously. GarageBand 3 has a pretty comprehensive help menu - Help > GarageBand Help.

Need help with GarageBand?

So if you get stuck with GarageBand 3, try the built-in help menu, check out Apple's iLife '06 Multimedia Tutorials, visit GarageBand Master or ask for help in the Macidol GarageBand Forums - GarageBand Tips and Tricks or the GarageBand General Discussion.

Apple GarageBand Seminar

Making music on the Mac with GarageBand

Making music on the Mac with GarageBand is a Apple Online Seminar and consists of three Quicktime video tutorials, which will help you get to grips with GarageBand and Apple Jam Packs.

Registration is free and you can then join Eric Thomas, Apple audio marketing manager and John Danty, Apple product marketing manager for GarageBand and GarageBand Jam Packs, as they provide an in-depth tour of GarageBand.

Great for Beginners

The seminar is a great introduction to GarageBand. If you are new to the app, this is a great first step towards becoming a GarageBand Master. I would suggest watching through all 3 videos and finding out what GarageBand is capable of. Then fire up GarageBand and start making some music. A good book can sometimes prove invaluable too, but you can also find some useful help in our GarageBand Tips, and GarageBand Discussion forums and of course by Googling.

GarageBand Hardware and Software Tour

The first video introduces you to the basics of what Apple GarageBand can do. Using what looks like the GarageBand Gibson Semi. Apple's dynamic duo then show you how to hook up your axe to your Mac using a Monster iStudio Link Guitar adapter. They said it would work with any Mac, but the Mac mini (currently) does not have an audio input, so you would need some kind of USB or Firewire interface to plug your guitar into your Mac mini. This is a great all-round introduction to GarageBand.

GarageBand Tips and Tricks

This video shows you some of the cool things you can do using GarageBand. Like fixing timing, tuning and will even show you how to get that "Cher" autotune style effect. It will also show you how to create harmonies with the vocal transformer, which is neat if you haven't seen that before. It explores AU plug-ins, and shows you how to make your own Apple loops.

They also show the Maudio iControl, which is really worth watching if you haven't seen this before.

Extending GarageBand with Jam Packs

More of a marketing experience than anything else, but it still is a useful visual and audio experience, if you want to see what each of the four (current) Apple Jam Packs can do. It also shows the Logic/GarageBand connection too, which is quite interesting.

Conclusion

A great introduction to Making music on the Mac with GarageBand - Beginners start here.

Sign Up to the Apple GarageBand Seminar and learn for your self.

Many thanks to Paul Brazier for introducing us to these Free seminars

GarageBand Tuner

Edit: It seems Apple must have been listening. GarageBand V2 has a built in instrument tuner. Now you have no excuse not to be in tune! The following instructions still work for GarageBand V1

Where's the Tuner?

One of the biggest disappointments to me of GarageBand - seeing as there is great support for guitarists in the app - with the built in amp simulators was the lack of a guitar tuner.

Grab a Free guitar tuner

Salvation is at hand my iBrothers and Sisters! Rejoice in the joy of Emagic's free little audio units tuner

Install the tuner

1st step

Download Emagic's ET1 audio units guitar tuner

2nd step

Double click on the appropriately named "Install ET1" icon on your desktop - then follow the instructions.

3rd Step

Launch GarageBand then create a new track, then double click on the track icon to bring up the track info. If the details are not showing for the track click on the little triangle. From the drop down details box, click on one of the pop up lists and select ET1.

Then click on the pencil icon to see the guitar tuner's GUI.

Select monitor to on to listen and tune your guitar. Now you've got no excuse to not be in tune...

Many thanks to RicP for introducing me to the ET1.

GarageBand Beginners

GarageBand is a great music app, but where do you start?

How do you plug the keyboard in?

Well until we get our own tutorials we recommend Apple's GarageBand pages. They have 4 mini tutorials for you to download.

GarageBand: The Missing Manual

We can also recommend David Pogue's free iLife '04 mini manual - This offers a sneak peak into his new book GarageBand: The Missing Manual which will be available in the Spring.

Import MIDI into GarageBand

How to import Midi into GarageBand

Introduction.

If you've got any Midi files, get Bery Rinaldo's excellent Dent du Midi! We have a quick fast guide on how to import Midi files into GarageBand using Bery's excellent Dent du Midi program.

A brief history of MIDI

When I first heard about GarageBand, I was very excited about what Apple could do to the audio sequencer market. In the days before Pro Tools and Logic. Computer musicians had something called MIDI - musical instrument digital interface. Which meant you could connect keyboards to drum machines or even to your computer. When I first started making music with computers. I bought an Atari 1040 STE which had a whole mega byte of memory, no hard drive, but had a floppy disk drive. It also had something that even the latest G5's lack - MIDI in and out ports! So armed with Cubase version 2 this thing was great! It actually had great midi timing as it was the only computer with midi ports built in. That is why Atari's are still considered cool!

No GarageBand 1.0 MIDI import

So no music was made from the computer itself, it just was a sequencer for you to control your external synths and samplers. You could even sync to tape machines with it. So GarageBand had to import Midi right? No (:-(

Enter our knight in shining armor...

Mr Bery Rinaldo creator of Dent du Midi cue applause...

This is a freeware - yes a freeware application that does everything that you would want it to do!

Import MIDI into GarageBand

Step 1

Download Dent du Midi - grab the latest version(v0.3 when I wrote this). He seems to be developing new improved versions all the time - good on him!

Step 2

Install as per Bery's instructions.

Step 3

Open Dent du Midi and drag your favourite midi file on top of it.

Step 4

Wait for the 'completed' message then quit Dent du Midi.

Step 5

Find the newly created folder on your desktop with your GB files in and drag all these files straight into your GarageBand arrangement window. - Drag them as far left as you can go, without going over GB's mixers. This makes sure your tracks all line up right at the beginning. Now all you need to do is assign the right type of instrument to each track, choose the right tempo and press play!

Bohemian Rhapsody GarageBand Style...

GarageBand Hot Tips:

I tried this with 2 'commercial' MIDI files which I purchased a few years ago. I found the bass track was an octave too low, both times I tried it. To get round this. Find the transpose function for that particular track and set it to 12.

You may as well find that your computer can not handle 16 complete tracks on a typical 'commercial' midi file, you may have to mute a few tracks to get it to play properley - Now if I had a G5....

Thanks Bery!

GarageBand FAQ

Apple GarageBand Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What are the system requirements of GarageBand?

• 600MHz G3 or faster required for GarageBand
• G4 or faster required for GarageBand software instruments
  
• 256MB of physical RAM
  
• Mac OS X v10.2.6 or later (Mac OS X v10.2.8 or later recommended)
  
• QuickTime 6.4 or later (QuickTime 6.5 included)
  
• Display with at least 1024-by-768-pixel resolution
  
• DVD drive required to install GarageBand and iDVD
  
• 4.3GB of disk space required to install GarageBand, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD;

Q: When can I buy it?
A: Apple will start shipping iLife '04 on the 16th January 2004

My first GarageBand Song

We have the technology

by Clanger

I searched for some time for a replacement for my aging analog Tascam mixer. Quite simply I needed a way to input instruments, multitrack and record it all with the press of a few buttons. I have never wanted to be a sound engineer. For me the most enjoyable part of music making is the composition and performance.

The pro audio software world rests on the shoulders of the three big players: Digidesign's Pro Tools , E-Magic's Logic and Steinberg's Cubase . These applications cry for attention. To perform simple recordings they ask for the latest machines; fast processors.; fast drives ; lots of memory. Since they make little distinction between 'pro' users and people who simply play music these applications are, naturally, better suited to recording suites than teenagers bedrooms. There has been crippled versions of these 'high end' audio applications offered for those that dare to dabble a little. However by the time anyone has mastered the process of using the applications they probably have either decided that they either have to 'borrow' the apps or find a cheaper and easier hobby.

I found a copy of Bias's Deck bundled with the Tascam US-428 USB audio interface I bought via e-bay. Deck is fairly easy to use. It seems to record 2 or 3 tracks quite well. Adding more tracks my efforts fell to pieces as the sound broke up and the application groaned under the strain of multi-tracking. People spend a small fortune on audio applications and effects add-ons. Yet it all holds together like a burning second world war bomber flying on one engine.

The audio discussion boards are full of well meaning people struggling to achieve the impossible. Meanwhile the audio software companies churn out even more software and imply that faultless recording requires their latest product as well as the fastest most expensive hardware. After all..... it is the consumers fault for not being able to afford the best...... isn't it ?

Last year Apple bought pro audio market leader E-Magic. They dropped the PC version of Logic [smiles]. Suddenly PeeCee users were forced to either migrate to Macs or choose another application such as Cakewalk for their audio sequencer applications. Together with the development of OSX and 'audio units' as a new industry standard for linking audio applications Apple were hellbent on regaining the crown as THE platform for music production.

This all sounded like good news for existing Mac/Logic users. But Apple have a talent for extending so called 'Pro' areas of software into the wider public arena. Firstly they utilized E-magic's talents for their existing audio/visual applications with Final Cut Pro /Soundtrack and its consumer equivalent of FC Express . Logic itself has been supplemented with an 'Express ' version too. But now we have GarageBand (I doubt that the German E-Magic team dreamt up the poor name for the application)

GarageBand will, I think, create a revolution in consumer audio production. The hearts of Apple's competitors in the audio software arena must have dropped a beat or two when it was released.

GarageBand (GB) has finally brought stability and ease of use that has been so badly needed in the audio field. Pro audio users will no doubt dismiss the application as a toy. Admittedly it works very well in the hands of kids which in my view is a real plus. However if I had spent the equivalent value of a small house on audio applications I expect I would be dismissive of a $49 (iLife ) software bundle that includes GB and iDVD4 . But I have news for those people. Not only does GB exceed expectations from my point of view as a home user but it partially liberates musicians from their dependency on the recording 'experts' for production.

Virtually anyone can use GB ( given that they have a fairly recent mac and a brain and obviously that will exclude PC users) and it is both intuitive and quickly learnt. GB will mix up to 64 tracks. It has over 50 software instruments. It has over 1,000 sample loops and over 200 pro quality audio effects. I know GB has already been reviewed to death but I have to stress that this isn't a lightweight application as the ' pro' audio users might guess.

With the addition of a relatively cheap USB keyboard you literally have thousands of dollars of instruments at your disposal. In addition with a special lead or a suitable interface you can plug in a electric guitar, microphone or other instrument output. Add in the GB Jam expansion Pack ($99) for adding another 2000 loops, 100 more instruments and 15 guitar settings and this is a rich source of inspiration. For those with the Soundtrack application they can add in the samples that come with that.

Although GB may lack some of the professional features of full blown audio applications like 'midi export' it fills a huge vacuum that has existed for some time in the audio editing market. MacRumours member DavisBAnimal succinctly states" I couldn't decide between Logic Audio Gold. Silver, Red, Blue, Brown, Green, Orange, with support for VST, AU, MIDI, LOL, ROTFLMHO, Virtual Instruments, Banana Muffin ports, DigiDesign MOTU, M-Audio 6 port 96Khz/128 megawatts, 1/8 coaxial with RST GHTEAGHHE at 14 hominid homunculus, garbage garbage garbage. It's ridiculous - I can't for a moment figure this stuff out without a masters degree in computer jargon. I play the guitar and I want to record some of it, sing over it and ROCK OUT. I don't want to become certified in the linguistics of the ubergeeks before doing so".

GarageBand is easy to use. All track volumes can be adjusted separately at any point along the timeline and the overall timing and beat with fade etc can be handled as a whole too. GarageBand's 'professional' controls for both individual tracks and global sound function much the same as you would expect in 'pro' apps including track sound balance and mixing outputs. In fact many of the virtual controls are actually an improvement on similar found on other audio mixing applications and the GUI is intuitive.

Where professionals would be frustrated is in the sound exporting options and integration with their existing audio 'add-ons'. However GB actually integrates quite well with other software synths such as Native Instruments Pro-53, FM7 and B3 that utilize audio units. Currently GB cannot directly import midi files but a workaround is to utilize a third party application Dent du Midi which provides drag and drop conversion of midi files to the GB compatible AIFF format. Its fair to say that with Apple also producing the current professional industry market leader in audio production with Logic had they provided much more with GB they would have lost customers for their high end software including the mid priced Logic Express.

Although GarageBand liberates audio editing and music production for 'the rest of us' this will not in itself enable everyone to necessarily produce new or innovational music. Put garbage in and you get garbage out. Much in the same manner that hip-hop and sampling in the 80s made musical expression possible for a whole generation of kids it was mostly through the reproduction of sound and recycling of old material.

GB will find many friends as a mixing application quite apart from its function as a multitrack recording application. I personally find that I could quite literally become 'loopy' using GB as it is so easy to produce excellent mixes by using samples.

Nobody needs to be able to play an instrument to use GB and can still create some great sounding stuff utilizing the excellent samples provided with the application. However the real bonus for me is the various amplifier emulation and effect settings that can be used for electric guitar. This alone shows how GarageBand can actually surpass the 'pro' applications for sound quality and processing.

Apple and the Logic team have created a consumer audio mixing application where EVERYONE appears a winner. The 'Jennifers' out there can now practice their piano lessons with the sound of a grand piano by using GarageBand a USB keyboard and a mac.

Alternatively if you fancy yourself as a budding Jimi Hendrix plug your guitar in to your mac; crank up the volume on your sound system to 11 and let GarageBand blow you away.

Clanger

Cambridge, UK

Listen to Clanger's first GarageBand track - "We have the technology"