Capturing Your Voice

Top tips for vocal recording in a home studio

Hearing your recorded voice and not dying of shock is a learnable skill. Let’s assume you’ve managed to get past that, and that even though you’re not accustomed to $500,000 recording budgets, you’d still like to record your vocal tracks professionally and efficiently. Whether you’re a crooner, a diva, a rapper, or a writer recording demos, cutting a great vocal track at home is very doable.

In this article, we’ll dive into that process, so you have the tools to record vocals you can be confident about. I’ll talk from the point of view of a vocalist recording their own vocals, but everything applies to recording someone else in your space.

There are two major things you need to accomplish in any recording session, and it’s no different for vocals: first you need a killer performance, and then you need to capture it cleanly. We’re going to tackle those in reverse order—I know you gear-heads are going to want to learn all the juicy tech details before we get into the touchy feely stuff.