Helpful Hints: Recording Your Own Vocals

Jennifer Hamady is a voice coach and counselor specializing in emotional issues that interfere with self-expression. Based in New York City, Jennifer works in private practice with musicians and non-musicians alike to discover, develop, and confidently release their best personal, professional, and performance voices. Her clients include Grammy, CMA, Emmy, and Tony award-winners, as well as corporate clients across a wide array of industries. Jennifer’s insights and experiences have been captured in her book: The Art of Singing: Discovering and Developing Your True Voice, heralded as a breakthrough in the psychology of personal and musical performance. She also writes regularly for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today

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A client recently emailed me with some great questions about recording vocals in his home studio. I hope you find his experience and my thoughts helpful. Happily, my next book for Hal Leonard, Singing on Stage and in the Studio will be finished soon and will address these issues in greater depth.

Hi Jen, I am at home trying to record vocals on a demo of one of my songs, but it’s sort of a disaster. I’ve been doing takes for a while and everything in playback sounds completely out of control, strained, etc. However, when I go and grab my guitar and sing it everything feels and sounds right. I’ve also tried singing a cappella without anything else and it also feels tensionless and sounds good. I also recorded me doing that into my iPhone to make sure I wasn’t delusional, though I’m starting to question my grip of reality. I’m not sure if I am just unable to get a good mix for myself with this song or am just having a bad day with the sound of my voice in the headphones.

When I’m recording I make sure to have my vocals above everything else in the mix, turn off the bass, and leave in the clean guitars and a low level drum track. I also have tried one ear off as well as both ears on. This may be impossible to address quickly in an email in which case we can just wait to discuss it next week. My actual question would just be is there anything obvious I should try that I haven’t already? One of my worries is that it will translate to the live setting when I’m relying on monitors. Thanks!

Hey there! I’m so sorry to hear you’re having such a hard time with the recording, though these types of struggles tend to be very common.

Because you’re doing well singing a cappella and with the guitar, that suggests to me that it’s either an issue with your mix, the headphones themselves, or an unhelpful shift you’re making in your approach when the red light goes on. My hunch in your case is probably that it is a mix or headphone issue.

Have you tried different mixes? Everyone’s different of course, yet for many people, having the vocal far up often causes them to strain. It may seem counterintuitive, but having the vocal so high above the rest of the music, as well as elements of the music missing or drastically altered, often causes people to simultaneously sing out and hold back in an effort to try and make the voice and song as ‘normal’ sounding as possible… which rarely works.

My suggestion would be to try a more standard mix, along the lines of what you’d hear live. Be sure too to try removing any EQ you might have been playing around with, as that can sometimes alter your own pitch association in your headphones. As well, continue to play around with the way you’re wearing them. This too is an individual issue, not only person to person but even day to day. Something in your hearing, health, or environment can make what works one day less effective on another.

While many engineers would disagree, I would also try replacing headphones with little speakers just behind the microphone. There can be some bleed that way, but at least you get a good performance and can hopefully start to distinguish the differences between your singing this way and with the headphones, and learn to use the latter more effectively.

Another thing to try if you have the time and patience is to record for a week straight without listening. Two to three times or takes a day, just slap on the headphones (or turn on the speakers) with a normal mix and sing without thinking. Record it, don’t listen to it, and go about your day. Do that for 7 days or so, then listen back.

Often listening and more, knowing that you’re going to listen (and therefore wondering: ‘is this right? is this good? am I doing OK’?) causes an adverse shift in the way we sing. If you can get into the habit of just singing, and focusing only on that, you may be really surprised at how good you sound.

It’s a challenge when you’re wearing both the performer and the producer/engineer hats to separate out the roles, but this is required in order to be truly effective at both. Some people can do it moment to moment; for others, it takes some practice to fully experience what each is like in isolation, and then learn how to bring them closer together.