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How to Record Vocals Like a Pro (DAW Tips):



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Henry has heaps of experience and it shows in his music.
Where this tutorial falls a little short is apparent in the 1st seconds and carries through to the end: his voice recording is full of room sound. I usually turn off when someone is talking about recording but fails to record their voice/narration/voice-over correctly. I persisted because this is Henry & I know he can do better. It's ironic that he actually talks about just this problem.
After that his insistence on a DAW is misleading. It's what works for him BUT plenty of people do pro sounding vocal recording to tape, to stand alone HDD/SD/RWCD etc. devices. Access to a long & varied effects chain is probably why Henry's enarmoured of a DAW for vocals but many "stand alone" machines have these - though "tuning" is probably not available on a note by note basis.
After 5.15 he talks about very complex things "vocals sit nicely", EQ Carving" etc. without explaining them or linking to a video/article/chart that does.
Reference tracks are useful IF trying to sound like something else...the Reaper Frequency Matcher *takes that a step further and is well worth looking into for treating a single instrument, a vocal track OR a full mix.
I suppose this is more an advertisement for Henry's channel and the many, varied and detailed tutorials he provides there.

* This free JS Reaper VST allows one to get an EQ/gain/dynamics etc. profile of a user's song or individual track. The users does the same with a reference song or track, (access to isolated tracks from classic songs is pretty easy to come by these days), and saves that as a preset. The reference preset can be open in the VST on the user's track and then "correction" applied. This can give a vocal some David Bowie nuance, a guitar some Mark Knofler tonality or a mix the overall mastered sound of Pink Floyd etc. Mileage may vary but, in general good quality reference tracks help achieve the best results.


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rayc
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IMHO this is all common sense.
But I have been doing this a long long time so YMMV.


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Hi Ray. I don't spend a lot of time in the forum but I did see this and you are 100% CORRECT. THE AUDIO ABSOLUTELY STINKS !! In my haste I had other stuff going on (the grandkids :-) and uploaded the wrong vocal dub. By the time I realized it the video was already released. I can't let that happen again. As far as vocal recordings yes the vocal may be "recorded" on hardware with pro sounding vocals but they are still usually mixed in a DAW type recording environment. Maybe not a mid range DAW like Pro Tools but still master SSL consoles with tons of plug-ins. Hopefully readers of this thread will look at your suggestion on the Reaper VST. There's always more than one way to accomplish an objective in music and your suggestion does sound like a very good one. As far as the channel I am trying to "broaden" the content to encompass more elements for seniors while at the same time not trying to put too much in the video trying to keep them around the 7 - 11 minute mark. Thanks for the valuable analysis. henry

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Your voice-overs are usually good, Henry, so I presumed you'd accidentally used a 'singing' copy this time.
It happens.


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I'm sorry, a vocal tips video should have great audio. This doesn't even come close. I suggest a re-do.


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