PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic What do you think?

I'm back...

I have just completed my first full session in the Booth. I will be posting the result shortly.
My first initial attempts were catastrophic fails. The booth is 3 – 4 steps from the control panel monitor. So setting the levels from the mic was actually a two man job and I was all along. When it came time to record, I punched the record then I had to quick step over into the booth (with headphones on squeezing between the curtain doors and waiting as I listened for my que. The song had a 4-5 bar piano intro before my verse starts, which I missed the first couple times. I was used to sitting/standing in front of the video monitor so I always had a visual que for when I was to come in. Without that visual que it was a challenge.

Then there was the dark. I don’t think I had ever sung in the dark before. Difficult to read the lyrics. Then the light went out and left me in pitch black while the recording continued (several times since I needed to charge the battery). By this time, it was starting to get hot in the booth. Literally a comedy of errors!

That was day 1. Nothing of any value recorded.

Truth be told it took 2 – 3 days before I settled down on the new workflow. Luckily my producer (Steve) was patient and didn’t put any pressure on me.

Over this time period, I set up a Rode condenser mic in the booth and a SM57 outside the booth by the computer monitor. I was able to do an A/B comparison over the first days. The two mics are generally very similar in my hands but I have always consider the Rode to be a bit warmer. I found this same conclusion when the Rode went in the booth. So I did not notice any significant difference in the recording between in and out of the booth - at first.
The song I was covering was a Rock tune. So when I got to the louder passages (including a rebel yell) that is when I noticed the value of the booth. The yell in the booth was much clearer and cleaner where outside I could hear the echoes from the room.

Fact is I don’t often sing “loud”, so I am not sure how much improvement I will hear in the long term or how much value the $500 booth was. I need to do a couple more songs to be more comfortable with it overall. When you hear the final result listen for the “yell” and tell me if it was worth the money?

I should have our cover Collaboration up by tomorrow morning. That is, if it passes my “final listen before posting test”. I will come back here and add a link.

Dan