On Monday we recorded the vocals for our song. Before recording, we first talked about the problems that we may encounter when recording the vocals, and how we can prevent them. Some things that we talked about included: Plosives, which can be avoided by using a pop-shield; sibilance, which can be avoided by using certain microphones and by placing the microphone off-axis; and also, the Close Proximity Effect, which is caused when the sound source is close to the microphone and creates louder low frequencies. We also spoke about potential problems with performance, the vocalist needs to ensure that they deliver a performance with enough emotion, intelligibility and at the correct pitch. It is also important to make sure that the vocalist is comfortable.

We spent quite a while deciding which microphone we wanted to use. We set up an Electro Voice RE20 (a large diaphragm dynamic microphone with a flat frequency response, no proximity effect, and can roll off low frequencies – which we used. We put the pop-shield close to the microphone.), a Shure SM57 (a small diaphragm dynamic microphone with a strong proximity effect, reduces low frequencies and peaks high frequencies which could cause sibilance. We placed the pop-shield 10cm away from the microphone to reduce proximity effect.) and finally, an AKG C414 (a large diaphragm condenser microphone, which has lots of detail. Cardioid polar pattern was use and a bass roll off of 160 Hz. The pop-shield was placed 15cm away from the microphone.).

We got Panashé to sing into each microphone so that we could decide which one to use. We pretty much ruled out the SM57, and initially decided to go with the RE20. However, we then got Panashé to sing whilst playing the track, and decided that the 414 sounded better because it sat in the track more. After the first take we realised that the microphone made Panashé’s voice sound slightly nasally, so we tilted the microphone downward slightly for the second take in an attempt to cancel out this effect. Overall the vocal recording went OK, however the pitch problem is rather annoying, and it is harder to edit a piece of music if you don’t like parts of it!