Vocal Production & Recording

Produce professional-grade vocal tracks! This book guides you through the vocal production process, looking at how to coach singers, how to use sound processing tools and techniques, and how to add various types of vocals to a track in order to produce expressive, professional-sounding recordings.

You will learn to coach singers to use effective vocal skills and good microphone technique, helping them to create compelling performances. On the engineering side, you will learn the language and tool sets used to control your vocals, from microphones to sound processing plug-ins, such as reverbs, delays, compressors, automatic tuning, manual tuning, and others. You will also learn to arrange vocals, using lead lines, background tracks, rap, and spoken elements, making all of these elements sit in the mix to create a polished sound and tell a compelling story.

Whatever tools you use, and whatever style of music you create, these techniques will lead you to better sounding tracks.

These vocal techniques are time-tested by countless hit-song producers and recording engineers, as taught in the world-renowned vocal and audio production programs at Berklee College of Music. Included audio tracks and hit-song listening lists demonstrate all techniques.

You will learn to:

• Caoch singers to perform with better sound, expression, and intonation.

• Use tools for effective arranging and collaboration for all aspects of vocal production.

• Evaluate, select, and position microphones to optimize their sound capture capabilities.

• Understand and use the essential audio processing tools that are critical to professional-sounding vocal tracks.

• Identify and create various types of vocal tracks: lead lines, background tracks, rap tracks, and others.

• Create interesting contemporary vocal effects, such as vocal stacking, whisper tracks, creative use of processing tools (e.g., Auto-Tune robot voice), and others.

• Solve common recording problems.

• Create compelling recorded performances, with optimal sound quality, that best serve your inteded song story and style.