Saturday, August 24, 2013

Guide To Recording Vocals: Hip Hop Instrumentals

By Delroy Wilkins


Hip hop music is expressionism in popular language, where words groove to the rhythm of a series of beats. Since it is a leading music genre, the entire hip hop production led to beats for sale and silver-tongued vocalists for hire. Despite the booming professional hip hop industry, home studios are still popular and some of the best songs were produced at one of these makeshift recording studios.

You might get beats and instrumentals for sale as an accompaniment to your vocals but still be unable to bring out quality. Good is never excellent and, perfect vocals call for professional music production. As they say, you might have the vocals but not the pocket to fund your recording. However, despite not having the money to invest in high tech equipment for your home studio, you can still improve your hip hop vocals quality using these three simple techniques.

Tip #1. Keep Your Recording Environment Quiet. Common sense will dictate that a recording room should be noise-free but this is often forgotten. Some people also think that a bit of noise won't matter because no one will catch a whiff of it in the final mix. Contrary to that belief, mixing, mastering and EQ'ing enforces these noises and they clutter up your final mix. Hence, you should control the noise that you can, the lower the noise the better. Every source of noise such as police sirens, snapping fingers, road traffic, construction, rattling chains and lawn mowing can all spoil your hip hop vocals even if your mix involves professional beats for sale. Better yet, time your recording at the quietest hour to reduce your background noise.

The perfect vocals are gauged by levelness of volume, audibility and comprehension. To achieve this, consider your distance from the mic. In general, keep your distance from the mic between 6 inches and 12 inches. Maintain this distance throughout the recording. Avoid holding the mic and instead use a stand. This way, any hand cable movements will not produce any noise which in turn would end up being audible within the song. In addition, use a pop filter between you and the mic to filter out the vocals. Although a rhythmic music genre, your final hip hop track should be free from any pops, plosives and hisses.

Every house has its perfect spot for recording. All you need is to find it. This is the spot where your voice sounds just natural. A pint to remember here is that rooms that are too small usually won't make the best spot to set up your recording studio. Apart from being cramped, small rooms won't work well as far as acoustics and physics of sound travel are concerned. Vocals will usually thin out when recording takes place in small spaces. The problem with this is that it makes correction virtually impossible during the recording stages. A simple way to find a great spot to set up your recording studio is clapping our hands. The sound should not echo back and if it does, find sound absorbing objects such as blankets placed on the flat surfaces within the room. Some effects such as delays and reverb can be added during mixing so these should not worry you much if your recording environment does not have these.




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